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 roadside, 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 so 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.
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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 travelers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside, 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 tiptoe, 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 powwows, 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 or 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 overburdened with the heavy sickness of
his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether there
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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 accents
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.
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“ 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 traveler, 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 powwow, 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 fa
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miliar 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 pendent 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 die 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 benignandy 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 revered
pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, repu
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table, 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 pale-faced enemies were the Indian priests, or
powwows, 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 unconcerted
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 figure 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
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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 worshiping 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 widows’ weeds, has given her husband a
drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom;
how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’
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,
bedchamber, 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
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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-worshipers, 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 die 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
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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
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