Asstands on
the scaffold with all the puritans looking up at her, she thinks back to a simpler life in what
she calls "Old England." Before she arrived in America she used to live in a village
in relatively impoverished conditions. The author describes her house as a decayed building made
out of gray stone. Above the door, it had a shield of arms that had no doubt once belonged to a
proud and well-off family but was now "half-obliterated."
She sees
her father and mother's face. Her father had a "reverend beard that flowed over her
old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff." In comparison, her mother has "a look of heedful and
anxious love." She remembers the sting of her mother's mild admonishments.
Her memory continues to show her a "pale, thin scholar whose bleared eyes ... read
the human soul." She doesn't say exactly where this scholar was from, but apparently he
taught her in a Continental city full of narrow throughways and cathedrals. It seems that
somehow, despite her parent's poverty she was well educated in a city outside of England, most
likely Europe.
At the end of the chapter, her mind returns to reality and she
is back in the market square with the puritans waiting to judge her.
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