CHAPTER V. HESTURE. At her needle.

Hester Prince' term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison door was thrown open,

and she came forth into the sunshine which, falling on all alike, seemed to her sick and

morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scar that let her on her

breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the

threshold of the prison, then even in the procession and spectacle that have been described,

where she has made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its

finger. Then she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combat

of energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lured

triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime,

and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength

that would have suffice for many quite years. The very law that condemned her, a giant of

stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate in his iron arm,

had held her up through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended

walk from her prison door began the daily custom, and she must either sustain and carry it

forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow

from the future to help through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial

with it, so the next day and so the next, each its own trial, and yet the very same that

was now so unutterably griefous to be born. The days of the far-off future would toil

onward, still would the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never

to fling down. For the accumulating days and added years would pile up their misery upon

the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, should become the general

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