Roger Malvin's Burial

Malvin, a much older man, asks Reuben to leave him to die alone, since his wounds are mortal.

His unease is exacerbated by his failure to tell his fiancée, Dorcas (Malvin's daughter) that he left her father to die.

Reuben thinks he hears a deer in the brush and fires his gun, but discovers that he has killed his own son.

"Roger Malvin's Burial" was likely conceived as early as 1825, the year Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and the 100th anniversary of the historical event that inspired its plot.

Hawthorne published Twice-Told Tales in 1837, which collected several of his stories previously included in gift books, though it excluded many of his darker stories like "Roger Malvin's Burial", "My Kinsman, Major Molineux", and "Young Goodman Brown", each of which has become recognized as one of Hawthorne's early masterpiece by modern critics.