The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1893-07-07
CHAPTER <
THE MINISTER'S VIGIL

THE MINISTER'S VIGIL.
Talking in the shadow of dream, as
it were, and perhaps actually under the
influence of a species of somnambulism,
Mr.. Dimmesdale reached the spot where,
now so long since, Hester Prynne had
lived through her first hours of public
ignominy. The same platform or scat
fold, black and weather stained with
the storm and sunshine of seven long
| years, and footworn, too, with the tread
of many culprits who had since assembled
it, remained standing beneath the bal
cony of the meeting house. The minis
ter went up the steps.
1t was an obscure night of early May.
An UNMARRIED pail of cloud muff1ed the
| whole expanse of sky from zenith to
| horizon. If the same multitude which
had stood as eyewitnesses while Hester
Prynne sustained her punishment could
| now have been summoned forth, they
would have discerned no face above the
platform, nor hardly the outline of a
human shape, in the dark gray of the
midnight. But the town was all asleep.
There was no peril Of discovery. The
minister might stand there, if it SO
| pleased him, until morning should red
den in the east, without other risk than
that the dank and chill night air would
creep into his frame, and stifen his
| Joints with rheumatism, and clog his
throat with catarrh and cough, thereby
! defrauding the eXpectant audience OF
tomorrow's prayer and sermon. No eye
| could see him, save that ever wakeful
one which had seen him in his closet
welding the bloody scourge. Why,
then, had he come hither? Was it but
the mockery of penitence? A mockery,
| indeed, but in which his soul trif1ed with
itself! A mockery at which angels
blushed and wept, while fends rejoiced
with jeering laughter.
He had been driven hither by the i'm
pulse of that Remorse which logged him
everywhere, and whose own sister and
closely linked companion was that Cow
ardice which invariably drew him back,
with her tremulous grippe, just when the
other impulse had hurried him to the
verge of disclosure. Poor, miserable
man! what right had infrmity like his
to burden itself with crime? Crime is
| for the iron nerved, who have their
choice either to endure it, or, if it press
too hard, to exert their fierce and savage
strength for good purpose and fling it
off at once! This feeble and most sensi-
tive of spirits could do neither, yet con-
tinually did one thing or another, which
intertwined in the same inextricable
knot the agony of heaven defying guilt
and vain repentance.
And thus, while standing on the scat
fold, in this vain show of expiration, Mr..
Dimmesdale was overcome with a great
horror Of mind, as if the universe were
gazing at a scarlet token on his naked
breast, right over his heart. On that
spot, in very truth, there was and there
had long been the gnawing and poison
Gus tooth of bodily pain. Without any
effort of his viii or power to restrain
himself he shrieked aloud, an outcry
that went pealing through the night,
and was beaten back from one house to
another and reverberated from the hills
in the background as if a company of
devils, detecting so much misery and
terror in it, had made a plaything of the
sound and were bandying it to and fro.
''It is doner' muttered the minister,
covering his face with his hands. line
whole town will awake and hurry forth
md find me here!'
But it was not so. The shrek had
perhaps sounded with a far greater
Oower to his own startled ears than it
actually possessed. The town did not
awake, or if it did the drowsy slumber-
2rs mistook the cry either for something
:rightfu1 in a dream or for the noise of
witches, whose voices at that period
were often heard to pass over the settle
nents or lonely cottages as they rode
with satan through the air. The clergy
man, therefore. hearing no symptoms Of
disturbance, uncovered his eyes and
looked about him.
His eyes, however, were soon greeted
by a little, glimmering light, which, at
first a long way off, was approaching up
the street 1t threw CLEAN of recogni-
ton on here post and there garden
fence. and here a latticed window pane
and there a pump with its full trough
of water, and here, again, an arched
door of oak, with an iron mocker and a
rough log for the doorstep, The Reverend
Mr.. Dimmesdale noted all these minute
particulars, even while firmly convinced
that the doom of his existence was steal
ing onward In the footsteps which he now
heard, and that the CLEAN of the lantern
would fall upon him IN few moments
more and reveal his long hid2en secret
as the light drew nearer ne beheld
within its Illuminated circle his brother
clergyman-or. TO speak more accurately
his professional father as well us highly
valued friend-the Reverend Mr. vii
son, who, as Mr.. Dimlnesdlalt, now con
iectured. had been praying st the bed
side of some dying man And so he
had
The good old minister came freshly
from the death chamber of Governor
Winthrop. who had passed from eartt