Micro R&D 1/MicroRD-CD-ROM-Vol1-1994.iso/books/hawthorn/g_brown

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                                      1835
                                TWICE-TOLD TALES
                              YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN
                             by Nathaniel Hawthorne

   YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN came forth at sunset, into the street of
Salem village, but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to
exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife
was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting
the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to
Goodman Brown.
   "Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her
lips were close to his ear, "pr'ythee, put off your journey until
sunrise, and sleep in your own bed tonight. A lone woman is troubled
with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afeard of herself,
sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights
in the year!"
   "My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights
in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey,
as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt
now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me
already, and we but three months married!"
   "Then God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons, "and may
you find all well, when you come back."
   "Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go
to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee."
   So they parted; and the young man pursued his way, until, being
about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and
saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a melancholy
air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
   "Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a
wretch am I, to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too.
Methought, as she spoke, there was trouble in her face, as if a
dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But, no, no!
'twould kill her to think it. Well; she's a blessed angel on earth;
and after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to
Heaven."
   With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt
himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He
had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the
forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through,
and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and
there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows
not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick
boughs overhead; so that, with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing
through an unseen multitude.
   "There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman
Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him, as he added,
"What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!"
   His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and
looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent
attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose, at Goodman
Brown's approach, and walked onward, side by side with him.
   "You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the  Old
South was striking, as I came through Boston; and that is full fifteen
minutes agone."
   "Faith kept me back awhile," replied the young man, with a tremor
in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though
not wholly unexpected.
   It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of
it where these two were journeying. As nearly as could be discerned,
the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same
rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable
resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features.
Still, they might have been taken for father and son. And yet,
though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as
simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew
the world, and would not have felt abashed at the governor's
dinner-table, or in King William's court, were it possible that his
affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him, that
could be fixed upon as remarkable, was his staff, which bore the
likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought, that it might
almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent.
This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the
uncertain light.
   "Come, Goodman Brown!" cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a
dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so
soon weary.
   "Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop,
"having kept covenant by meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to
return whence I came. I have scruples, touching the matter thou wot'st
of."
   "Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us
walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go, and if I convince thee not,
thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest, yet."
   "Too far, too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming
his walk. "My father never went into the woods on such an errand,
nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and
good Christians, since the days of the martyrs. And shall I be the
first of the name of Brown, that ever took this path and kept"-
   "Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person,
interrupting his pause. "Well said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well
acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and
that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable,
when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of
Salem. And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot,
kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King
Philip's War. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant
walk have we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight.
I would fain be friends with you, for their sake."
   "If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they
never spoke of these matters. Or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that
the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New England.
We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such
wickedness."
   "Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff,
have a very general acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of
many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen, of
divers towns, make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great
and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and
I, too- but these are state-secrets."
   "Can this be so!" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at
his undisturbed companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the
governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for
a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how
should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem
village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and
lecture-day!"
   Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with due gravity, but
now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so
violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in
sympathy.
   "Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he, again and again; then composing
himself, "Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on; but, prithee, don't
kill me with laughing!"
   "Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown,
considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith. It would break her
dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own!"
   "Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy
ways, Goodman Brown. I would not, for twenty old women like the one
hobbling before us, that Faith should come to any harm."
   As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path,
in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame,
who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and
spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
   "A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the
wilderness, at night-fall!" said he. "But, with your leave, friend,
I shall take a cut through the woods, until we have left this
Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom
I was consorting with, and whither I was going."
   "Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods,
and let me keep the path."
   Accordingly, the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his
companion, who advanced softly along the road, until he had come
within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making
the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and
mumbling some indistinct words, a prayer, doubtless, as she went.
The traveller put forth his staff, and touched her withered neck
with what seemed the serpent's tail.
   "The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
   "Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller,
confronting her, and leaning on his writhing stick.
   "Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship, indeed?" cried the good
dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip,
Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But,
would your worship believe it? my broomstick hath strangely
disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory,
and that, too, when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage
and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane"-
   "Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said
the shape of old Goodman Brown.
   "Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling
aloud. "So, as I was saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no
horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me,
there is a nice young man to be taken into communion tonight. But
now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there
in a twinkling."
   "That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you
my arm, Goody Cloyse, but here is my staff, if you will."
   So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed
life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to
Egyptian Magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take
cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and looking
down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff,
but his fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if
nothing had happened.
   "That old woman taught me my catechism!" said the young man; and
there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.
   They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted
his companion to make good speed and persevere in the path,
discoursing so aptly, that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in
the bosom of his auditor, than to be suggested by himself. As they
went, he plucked a branch of maple, to serve for a walking-stick,
and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet
with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them, they became
strangely withered and dried up, as with a week's sunshine. Thus the
pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy
hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of a
tree, and refused to go any farther.
   "Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another
step will I budge on this errand. What if a wretched old woman do
choose to go to the devil, when I thought she was going to Heaven!
Is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith, and go after her?"
   "You will think better of this by-and-by," said his acquaintance,
composedly. "Sit here and rest yourself awhile; and when you feel like
moving again, there is my staff to help you along."
   Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was
as speedily out of sight as if he had vanished into the deepening
gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the road-side, applauding
himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should
meet the minister, in his morning-walk, nor shrink from the eye of
good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his, that very
night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but purely and
sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and
praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses
along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal himself within
the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had
brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it.
   On came the hoof-tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old
voices, conversing soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds
appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young man's
hiding-place; but owing, doubtless, to the depth of the gloom, at that
particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible.
Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the way-side, it
could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the
faint gleam from the strip of bright sky, athwart which they must have
passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tip-toe,
pulling aside the branches, and thrusting forth his head as far as
he durst, without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the
more, because he could have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he
recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along
quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination or
ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders
stopped to pluck a switch.
   "Of the two, reverend Sir," said the voice like the deacon's, I had
rather miss an ordination-dinner than tonight's meeting. They tell
me that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond,
and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island; besides several of the
Indian powows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much
deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to
be taken into communion."
   "Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the
minister. "Spur up, or we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you
know, until I get on the ground."
   The hoofs clattered again, and the voices, talking so strangely
in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had
ever been gathered, nor solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then,
could these holy men be journeying, so deep into the heathen
wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree, for support,
being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburthened with
the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting
whether there really was a Heaven above him. Yet, there was the blue
arch, and the stars brightening in it.
   "With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm
against the devil!" cried Goodman Brown.
   While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch of the firmament,
and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud, though no wind was
stirring, hurried across the zenith, and hid the brightening stars.
The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this
black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the
air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused and
doubtful sound of voices. Once, the listener fancied that he could
distinguish the accent of townspeople of his own, men and women,
both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at the
communion-table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next
moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard
aught but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind.
Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the
sunshine, at Salem village, but never, until now, from a cloud of
night. There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations,
yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which,
perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain. And all the unseen
multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward.
   "Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and
desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked him, crying-
"Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her, all
through the wilderness.
   The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet piercing the night,
when the unhappy husband held his breath for a response. There was a
scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading
into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear
and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly
down through the air, and caught on the branch of a tree. The young
man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
   "My Faith is gone!" cried he, after one stupefied moment. "There is
no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is
this world given."
   And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did
Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set forth again, at such a rate,
that he seemed to fly along the forest-path, rather than to walk or
run. The road grew wilder and drearier, and more faintly traced, and
vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness,
still rushing onward, with the instinct that guides mortal man to
evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds; the creaking
of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians;
while, sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church-bell, and
sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature
were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the
scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.
   "Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown, when the wind laughed at him.
"Let us hear which will laugh loudest! Think not to frighten me with
your deviltry! Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powow, come
devil himself! and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear
him as he fear you!"
   In truth, all through the haunted forest, there could be nothing
more frightful than the figure of Goodman Brown. On he flew, among the
black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now
giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting
forth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like
demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous, than
when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his
course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before
him, as when the felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been
set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the
hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had
driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn,
rolling solemnly from a distance, with the weight of many voices. He
knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village
meetinghouse. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a
chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted
wilderness, pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried
out; and his cry was lost to his own ear, by its unison with the cry
of the desert.
   In the interval of silence, he stole forward, until the light
glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an open space, hemmed
in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude,
natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded
by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched,
like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage, that had
overgrown the summit of the rock, was all on fire, blazing high into
the night, and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendant
twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light arose and
fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then
disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the
darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
   "A grave and dark-clad company!" quoth Goodman Brown.
   In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro, between
gloom and splendor, appeared faces that would be seen, next day, at
the council-board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after
Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the
crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm,
that the lady of the governor was there. At least, there were high
dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands, and widows,
a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and
fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them.
Either the sudden gleams of light, flashing over the obscure field,
bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the
church-members of Salem village, famous for their especial sanctity.
Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that
venerable saint, his reverend pastor. But, irreverently consorting
with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the
church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of
dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to
all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It
was strange to see, that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were
the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also, among their
palefaced enemies, were the Indian priests, or powows, who had often
scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any
known to English witchcraft.
   "But, where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came
into his heart, he trembled.
   Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such
as the pious love, but joined to words which expressed all that our
nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more.
Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after
verse was sung, and still the chorus of the desert swelled between,
like the deepest tone of a mighty organ. And, with the final peal of
that dreadful anthem, there came a sound, as if the roaring wind,
the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of
the unconverted wilderness, were mingling and according with the voice
of guilty man, in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing
pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and
visages of horror on the smoke-wreaths, above the impious assembly. At
the same moment, the fire on the rock shot redly forth, and formed a
glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With
reverence be it spoken, the apparition bore no slight similitude, both
in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New England churches.
   "Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice, that echoed through
the field and rolled into the forest.
   At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the
trees, and approached the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful
brotherhood, by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He
could have well nigh sworn, that the shape of his own dead father
beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke-wreath, while a
woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him
back. Was it his mother? But he had no power to retreat one step,
nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old
Deacon Gookin seized his arms, and led him to the blazing rock.
Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led between
Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier,
who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A rampant
hag was she! And there stood the proselytes, beneath the canopy of
fire.
   "Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion
of your race! Ye have found, thus young, your nature and your destiny.
My children, look behind you!"
   They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame,
the fiend-worshippers were seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly
on every visage.
   "There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced
from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from
your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness, and
prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet, here are they all, in my
worshipping assembly! This night it shall be granted you to know their
secret deeds; how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered
wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman,
eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a drink at bed-time,
and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youth
have made haste to inherit their father's wealth; and how fair
damsels- blush not, sweet ones- have dug little graves in the
garden, and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant's funeral. By
the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall scent out all
the places-whether in church, bed-chamber, street, field, or forest-
where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole
earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood-spot. Far more than this!
It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies
more evil impulses than human power- than my power at its utmost-
can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each
other."
   They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the
wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling
before that unhallowed altar.
   "Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and
solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once
angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon
one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a
dream! Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must
be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the
communion of your race!"
   "Welcome!" repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair
and triumph.
   And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet
hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this dark world. A basin was
hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by
the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame?
Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark
of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the
mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both
in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The
husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What
polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other,
shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
   "Faith! Faith!" cried the husband. "Look up to Heaven, and resist
the Wicked One!"
   Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he
found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the
wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against
the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that had
been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
   The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street
of Salem village, staring around him like a bewildered man. The good
old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard, to get an appetite
for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as
he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint, as if
to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and
the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window. "What
God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse,
that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her
own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a pint
of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from
the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the
meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons,
gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him,
that she skipt along the street, and almost kissed her husband
before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly
into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
   Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a
wild dream of a witch-meeting?
   Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for
young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a
distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night
of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the congregation
were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of
sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power and fervid
eloquence, and with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths
of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of
future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn
pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray
blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he
shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the
family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and muttered to himself,
and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had
lived long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by
Faith, an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly
procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse
upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.
                        THE END