raised himself in bed; and there he sat, shivering with the arms
of death around him, while the black veil hung down, awful, at
that last moment, in the gathered terrors of a lifetime. And yet
the faint, sad smile, so often there, now seemed to glimmer from
its obscurity, and linger on Father Hooper's lips.

"Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled
face round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each
other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children
screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery
which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so
awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the
lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from
the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of
his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I
have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a
Black Veil!"

While his auditors shrank from one another, in mutual affright,
Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow, a veiled corpse, with a
faint smile lingering on the lips. Still veiled, they laid him in
his coffin, and a veiled corpse they bore him to the grave. The
grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the
burial stone is moss-grown, and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust;
but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the
Black Veil!