Hester Prynne, a Prisoner of the Massachusetts

Hester prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. For haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her. She passed through this portion of her ordeal and came to a sort of scaffold at the western extremity of the market place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there. And above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp and thus hold it up to the public gaze. Make way in the king's name, cried, he