After Hester leaves the jail, a military procession organizes the crowd and proceeds to the scaffold.
In Chapter Two of Scarlet Letter, a woman named Hester is released from the prison. She had committed the sin of adultery and bore and illegitimate child. She walked out of the prison and made her way to the scaffold, the platform where she is to present herself to the people of the town and get shamed by them. It was a part of her punishment.
People, mostly old women gathered around the scaffold and waited for Hester, who clung to her baby, to make her way in the center. On her way, she was met by ill-words and vulgar insults. Many women stated that her punishment was too lenient for the sin that she committed. In their opinion, she should be killed.
