From the scaffold Hester saw, at the edge of the crowd, a small man with a furrowed face and one shoulder higher than the other. She knew him at once. He was her husband, whom she had believed lost at sea. He raised a finger to his lips. Then the Reverend Mr. Wilson called on the young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, to speak to her. Pale and trembling, Dimmesdale begged her to name the father of her child. Be not silent from any mistaken pity for him, he said, for, believe me, though he were to step down from a high place and stand there beside thee, it were better so than to hide a guilty heart through life. Hester only shook her head. I will not speak, she answered. And my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one.