to the whole multitude.
"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said the
voice.
It has already been noticed that directly
over the platform on which Hester Prynne stood
was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended
to the meeting-house. It was the place whence
proclamations were wont to be made, amidst
an assemblage of the magistracy, with all
the ceremonial that attended such public observances
in those days. Here, to witness the scene
which we are describing, sat Governor Bellingham
himself with four sergeants about his chair,
bearing halberds, as a guard of honour. He
wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of
embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet
tunic beneath—a gentleman advanced in years,
with a hard experience written in his wrinkles.
He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative
of a community which owed its origin and progress,
and itspresent state of development, not
to the impulses of youth, but to the stern
and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre
sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely
because it imagined and hoped so little. The
other eminent characters by whom the chief
ruler was surrounded were distinguished by
a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when
the forms of authority were felt to possess
the sacredness of Divine institutions. They
were, doubtless, good men, just and sage.
But, out of the whole human family, it would
not have been easy to select the same number
of wise and virtuous persons, who should be
less capable of sitting in judgment on an
erring woman's heart, and disentangling its
mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid
aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned
her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that
whatever sympathy she