San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-06-28

this poor minister's should be so misera-
bly,, deceived! We have had and may
still have worse things to tell of him,
but none we sapprehend SO pitiahly
weak: no evidence, at once so slight and
irrefragable, of a subtle disease that had
long since begun to eat into the real
substance of his character. No man for
any considerable period can wear one
face to himself;a and another to the null
titnde without finally getting bewilderec
as towhich may be the true.
The excitement of Mr.. Dimmesdale's
feelings as he returned from his inter
view with Hester lent him unaccus-
toned physicalenergy and hurried him
downward at rapid pace. The path
way among the 7woods seemed wilder,
more uncouth with its rude natural OBJ
stacles, and lessytrodden by the foot of
man, than he remembered it on his out
ward journey. But he leaped across
the plashy places, thrust himself
through the clinging underbrush,
climbed the ascent. plunged into the
hollow, and overcame, in short, all the
difficulties of the track with an I'M
weariable activity that astonished him
He .collld not but rscall how feebly, and
with what frequent pauses for breath,
he had toiled over the same GROUND
only two days before. AS he drew near
the town he took AN impression OF
change from the series of familiar OBJ
jects that presented themselves. Ii
seemed not yesterday. not one. not two,
but many days, or even years ago, since
he had Quilted them. There, indeed.
was each fc-mer trace,of the street, as
he remembered it, and all the peculiar
tiles of the houses, with the due multi
tnde of gable peaks, and. a weathercock
at every point where his memory sug
gested one.
Not the less, however, game this i'm
Fortunately. obtrusive sense of change.
The same was true as regarded the ac-
uuaintances whom he met, and all the
well known shapes of human life about
the little town. They looked neither
older nor younger now; the boards of
the aged We're no winter, nor could the
creeping babe of yesterday walk on his
feet today: + was impossible to describe
in what respect they differed from the
individual, on whom he had so recently
bestowed a parting glance: and yet the
minister's deepest sense seemed to in-
form them of their mutability. A SINH
lar impression struck him most remark
ably. as he passed under the walls of his
own church. The edifice had so very
strange and yet so familiar an aspect
that Mr.. Dimmesdale's mind yibrate
between two ideas-either that he had
seen it only in dream hitherto, or that
he was merely dreaming about it now.
This phenomenon, in the various shapes
which it assumed, indicated no externHl
change, but so sudden and important
change in the spectator of the familiar
scene that the intervening space of a
single day lad operated on his conscious
ness like the lapse of years. The min
ister's own will, and Hester's will. and
the fate that grew between them, had
wrought this transformation. 1t was
the same town as heretofore, but the
same minister returned not from the
forest. He might have said to the friends
who greeted him:>'I am not the man
for whom you take me! left him yon-
der in the forest, withdrawn into secret
dell by messy tree trunk and near
melancholy brook! Go seek your min
lister and see if his emaciated figure, his
thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain wrin-
killed. brow be not flung down there like
a cast off garment" His friends, no
doubt, would still have insisted with
him. Thou art myself the mani" but
the error would have been their own,
not his.
Before Mr.. Dimmesdale reached home
his inner man gave him other evidences
of revolution in the sphere of thought
and feeling. In truth, nothing short of
total change of dynasty and moral
code in that interior kingdom was ade-
quate to account for the impulses now
communicated to the unfortunate and
startled minister. At every step he was
melted to do some strange, wild, wicked
thing or other, with a sense that it would
be at once involuntary and Intentional
in spite of himself, yet growing out of
sprofounder self than that which opposed
the impulse.
He had by this time reached his
dwelling on the edge of the burial
, ground, and Fastening up the stairs
took refuge in his study. The minister
was glad to have reached this shelter,
without first betraying himself to the
world by any of those strange and wicked
eccentricities to which he had been con-
tinually impelled while passing through
the streets. He entered the accustomed
room and looked around him on its
books, its windows, its fireplace and the
| tapestried comfort of the walls with the