The Recognition

Then touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood near to him,
he addressed him in a formal and courteous manner: "I pray you, good Sir," said he, "who is this woman?--and
wherefore is she here set up to public shame?"

"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend," answered
the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage
companion, "else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester
Prynne and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I
promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale's church."

"You say truly," replied the other; "I am a stranger, and have
been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with
grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in
bonds among the heathen-folk to the southward; and am now
brought hither by this Indian to be redeemed out of my
captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell me of Hester
Prynne's--have I her name rightly?--of this woman's offences,
and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?"

"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after
your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness," said the townsman,
"to find yourself at length in a land where iniquity is searched
out and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in
our godly New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the
wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had
long ago dwelt in Amsterdam, whence some good time agone he was
minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the
Massachusetts. To this purpose he sent his wife before him,
remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. Marry,
good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a
dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned
gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, look you, being
left to her own misguidance--"