The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night,
when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There
was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices,
fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away,
leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But
something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on
the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink
ribbon.

"My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There
is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to
thee is this world given."

And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did
Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate
that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to walk
or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly
traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the
dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that
guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with
frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild
beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled
like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar
around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to
scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and
shrank not from its other horrors.

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him.