blood began to stream from her nose. Something seemed to have injured the eye; perhaps it was the pole when it first struck the body. The complexion was a dark red, almost purple; the hands were white, with the same rigidity in their clench as in all the rest of the body. Two of the men got water and began to wash away the blood from her face; but it flowed and flowed, and continued to flow; and an old carpenter, who seemed to be skilful in such matters, said that this was always the case, and that she would continue to 'purge,' as he called it, until her burial, I believe. He said, too, that the body would swell, by morning, so that nobody would know her. Let it take what change it might, it could scarcely look more horrible than it did now, in its rigidity; certainly she did not look as if she had gotten grace in the world whither she had precipitated herself but rather, her stiffened death-agony was an emblem of inflexible judgment pronounced upon her. If she could have foreseen, while she stood, at five o'clock that morning, on the bank of the river, how her maiden corpse would have looked, eighteen hours afterwards, and how coarse men would strive with hand and foot to reduce it to a decent aspect, and all in vain, it would surely have saved her from the deed. So horribly did she look, that a middleaged man, David Buttrick, absolutely fainted away, and was found lying on the grass at a little distance, perfectly insensible. It required much rubbing of hands and limbs to restore him.

"Meantime General Buttrick had gone to give notice to the family that the body was found; and others had gone in search of rails, to make a bier. Another boat now arrived, and added two or three more horror-struck spectators. There was a dog with them, who looked at the body; as it seemed to me, with pretty much the same feelings as the rest of us, horror and curiosity. A young brother of the deceased, apparently about twelve or fourteen years old, had been on the spot from the beginning. He seemed not much moved, externally; but answered questions about his sister, and the number of the brothers and sisters (ten in all), with composure. No doubt, however, he was stunned and bewildered by the scene, to see his sister lying there, in such terrific guise, at midnight, under an oak, on the verge of the black river, with strangers clustering about her, holding their lanterns over her face; and that old carpenter washing the blood away, which still flowed forth, though from a frozen fountain. Never was there a wilder scene. All the while, we were talking about the circumstances, and about an inquest, and whether or no it were necessary, and of how many it should consist; and the old carpenter was talking of dead people, and how he would as lief handle them as living ones.

"By this time two rails had been procured, across which were laid some boards or broken oars from the bottom of the boat; and the body, being wrapt in an old quilt, was laid upon this rude bier. All of us

took part in bearing the corpse or in steadying it. From the bank of the river to her father's house was nearly half a mile of pasture-ground, on the ascent of a hill; and our burden grew very heavy before we reached the door. What a midnight procession it was! How strange and fearful it would have seemed if it could have been foretold, a day beforehand, that I should help carry a dead body along that track! At last we reached the door, where appeared an old gray-haired man, holding a light; he said nothing, seemed calm, and after the body was laid upon a large table, in what seemed to be the kitchen, the old man disappeared. This was the grandfather. Good Mrs. Pratt was in the room, having been sent for to assist in laying out the body, but she seemed wholly at a loss how to proceed; and no wonder, for it was an absurd idea to think of composing that rigidly distorted figure into the decent quiet of the coffin. A Mrs. Lee had likewise been summoned, and shortly appeared, — a withered, skin-and-bone-looking woman; but she too, though a woman of skill, was in despair at the job, and confessed her ignorance how to set about it. Whether the poor girl did finally get laid out, I know not; but can scarcely think it possible. I have since been. told that on stripping the body they found a strong cord wound round the waist and drawn tight,- for what purpose is impossible to guess.

'Ah, poor child!' that was the exclamation of an elderly man, as he helped draw her out of the

water.

I suppose one friend would have saved her; but she died for want of sympathy, a severe penalty for having cultivated and refined herself out of the sphere of her natural connections.

"She is said to have gone down to the river at five in the morning, and to have been seen walking to and fro on the bank, so late as seven, there being all that space of final struggle with her misery. She left a diary, which is said to exhibit (as her whole life did) many high and remarkable traits. The idea of suicide was not a new one with her; she had before attempted it, walking up to her chin in the water, but coming back again, in compassion to the agony of a sister who stood on the bank. She appears to have been religious and of a high morality.

"The reason, probably, that the body remained so near the spot where she drowned herself, was that it had sunk to the bottom of perhaps the deepest spot in the river, and so was out of the action of the current."

CHAPTER VII.

SALEM.

FOUR years in his native town of Salem succeeded Hawthorne's four years' residence in Concord. The period is externally definable as that in which he held the post of Surveyor in the Salem Custom House, and wrote "The Scarlet Letter." In its more interior aspect it was a season of ripened manhood, of domestic happiness and sorrow, of the bringingup of children, of the broadening and deepening of character. The country was exchanged for the town; and something symbolical, perhaps, may be divined. in the change. The man was made to feel, more intimately than heretofore, the strength and beauty of human sympathies; and the lovely experience of married happiness which he enjoyed, raised him to a moral standpoint from which he was enabled clearly to discern and state the nature and consequences of unfaithfulness, which form the theme of his memorable Romance.

The Hawthornes occupied, in succession, three houses during their Salem residence. The first was the old family mansion in Herbert Street, where they had for fellow-inmates Madame Hawthorne