The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne — Read

Old Roger Chillingworth had been a calm and kind man throughout his life. He may not have been warm, but he was always honest and upright in his dealings with the world. In his mind, he had begun his latest investigation with the stern but fair integrity of a judge, desiring only to find the truth. He figured he would approach the problem with the same dry logic and deductive reasoning that a mathematician brings to a geometrical question, rather than with the human emotions of someone wronged. But as he proceeded, a horrible fascination—a kind of fierce, though still calm, need to know—gripped the old man and would not let go. He now dug into the clergyman’s heart like a miner searching for gold—or like a gravedigger digging into a grave with the hopes of stealing a jewel buried on the dead man’s bosom, though he was likely to find nothing but death and decay. It’s too bad for Chillingworth’s soul that death and decay were all he sought!

At times, a light glimmered in the doctor’s eyes, like the reflection of a furnace, or those terrifying lights that shined onto the pilgrim’s face from Bunyan’s awful hillside doorway. Perhaps the ground where that dark miner was digging provided some hint to encourage him.