e calls to Hester and Pearl to come to him. Though Chillingworth tries to stop him, Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold with them. Supported by Hester, Dimmesdale begins his confession, calling himself "the one sinner of the world." At the final moment of his confession, he throws off Hester's assistance and tells everyone to see that he, like Hester, has a red stigma. Tearing "away the ministerial band from before his breast," Dimmesdale reveals the scarlet letter and sinks onto the scaffold. The crowd is shocked and Chillingworth cries out, "Thou hast escaped me!" Only after this does Pearl finally consent to kiss him. Then Dimmesdale and Hester exchange words: she asks him whether they will spend their afterlives together; he tells her that the God will decide how much more they need to be punished for breaking His sacred law. Then, Dimmesdale dies. The conclusion tells us what happened in the wake of the minister's death. People at the third scaffold scene later cannot agree on exactly what they saw. Most say they saw on Dimmesdale's chest a scarlet letter exactly like Hester's. To their minds, it either came from his own physical self-torture, Chillingworth's poisonous magic, or Dimmesdale's inner remorse. Others, though, say they saw nothing on his chest; his "revelation" was just that every man, however, high, can be as guilty of sin as Hester. (It is the narrator's opinion that these deniers are friends of Dimmesdale who are too anxious to protect his reputation.) Chillingworth dies within a year of the minister's death, leaving a sizeable inheritance to Pearl. Shortly after Chillingworth's death, Hester and Pearl disappear. In their absence, the story of the scarlet letter grows into a legend. The story is so powerful that the town preserves the scaffold and Hester's cottage. Later, Hester returns, without Pearl, and takes up her charity work again. By the time of her death, the "A" that she still wears has lost all of its stigma an...
