The Minister's Black Veil

One Sunday morning in the village of Milford, the congregation gathered outside the meeting-house, waiting for their minister, Mr. Hooper.When he finally appeared, a gasp ran through the crowd: swathed across his forehead and hanging down to his chin was a plain black veil.“Our parson has gone mad!” one villager cried, and the whispers followed Mr. Hooper all the way to the pulpit.

He preached that morning on secret sin, the private guilt that everyone hides even from the people closest to them.Every listener felt oddly certain that the veiled minister could somehow see straight into their own hidden thoughts.When the service ended, people hurried outside, relieved to escape from beneath his gaze at last.

In the days that followed, the whole village talked of nothing but the veil, yet no one dared to ask Mr. Hooper directly why he wore it.A group from the church finally visited him, but they sat in awkward silence and left without ever raising the subject.Only one person in Milford was not afraid to face him about it: Elizabeth, the woman he was engaged to marry.

She came to him calmly and asked him plainly to lay the veil aside and tell her why he wore it.“There is an hour to come when all of us shall cast aside our veils,” he told her gently. “Take it not amiss if I wear this one until then.”Elizabeth pressed him further, warning that people already whispered he was hiding some secret sin behind it.

“If I hide my face for sorrow,” he answered, “there is cause enough; and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?”“Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,” Elizabeth pleaded, but he only answered, “Never! It cannot be.”“Then farewell,” she said quietly, and drew her arm from his grasp.

At the door she paused and looked back at him one last time, as if trying to see through the black crape at last, but then she turned and walked away for good.Mr. Hooper never removed the veil again, not for any friend, not for any occasion, for the rest of his long life.