"The Scarlet Letter"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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     "Come, my child!" said Hester, looking about her from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the sunshine--"we will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves."

     "I am not aweary, mother," replied the little girl. "But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile."

     "A story, child!" said Hester. "And about what?"

     "Oh, a story about the Black Man," answered Pearl, taking hold of her mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face.

 

     "How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?"

     "And who told you this story, Pearl," asked her mother, recognising a common superstition of the period.

 
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