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Chapter 17. The pastor and his parishioner. Slowly as the minister walked, he'd almost

gone by before Hesterprin could gather her voice enough to attract his observation.

At length, she succeeded. Arthur Dimstale, she said, faintly at first,

then louder, but harsely. Arthur Dimstale. Who speaks? Answered the minister.

Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood

to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction

of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments, so somber,

and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage

had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It

may be that his pathway through life was haunted thus, by a specter that had stolen

out from among his thoughts. He made a step-nire and discovered the scarlet letter.

Hesterprin said he, is it thou? Art thou in life?

Even so, she answered. In such life as has been mind these seven years passed, and thou

Arthur Dimstale, thus thou yet live? It was no wonder that they thus questioned one

another's actual and bodily existence and even doubted of their own. So strangely did

they meet in the dim wood, that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the

...