On that June morning, in the middle years of the seventeenth century the prison in Boston was still a new building. But it already looked old, and was a dark, ugly place, surrounded by rough grass. The only thing of beauty was a wild rose growing by the door' and its bright, sweet-smelling flowers seemed to smile kindly at the poor prisoners who went into that place, and at those who came out to their death.

The door of the prison opened and, like a black shadow coming out into sunshine, the prison officer appeared. He put his right hand on the shoulder of a woman and pulled her forward, but she pushed him away and stepped out into the open air. There was a child in her arms - a baby of three months –which shut its eyes and turned its head away from the bright sun.

The woman's face was suddenly pink under the stares of the crowd, but she smiled proudly and looked round at her neighbours and the people of her town.

On the bosom of her dress, in fine red cloth and surrounded

with fantastic patterns of gold thread, was the letter "A"

The young woman was tall and perfectly shaped. She had long dark hair which shone in the sunlight, and a beautiful face with deep black eyes. She walked like a lady, and those who had expected her to appear sad and ashamed were surprised how her beauty shone our through her misfortune.

The officer stepped forward and people moved back to allow the woman to walk through the crowd. It was not far from the prison to the market-place, where, at the western end, in front of Boston's earliest church, stood the scaffold. Here, criminals met their death before the eyes of the townspeople, but the scaffold platform was also used as a place of shame, where those who had done wrong in the eyes of God were made to stand and show their shameful faces to the world.

A thousand eyes fixed on her, looking at the Scarlet letter on her bosom. People today might laugh at a sight like this, but in those early years of New England, religious feeling was very strong, and the shame of Hester Prynne's sin was felt deeply by young and old throughout the town.

As she stood there, feeling every eye upon her, she felt she wanted to scream and throw herself off the platform, or else go mad at once.Pictures from the past came and went inside her head: pictures of her village in Old England, of her dead parents - her father's face with his white beard, her mother's look of worried love. And her own face - a girl's face in the dark mirror where she had often stared at it. And then the face of a man old in years,a thin, white face,with the serious look of one who spends most of his time studying books.