prompt:
Chapter: JUDGE PYNCHEON, while his two relatives have fled away with such
ill-considered haste, still sits in the old parlor, keeping house, as
the familiar phrase is, in the absence of its ordinary occupants.  To
him, and to the venerable House of the Seven Gables, does our story now
betake itself, like an owl, bewildered in the daylight, and hastening
back to his hollow tree.

The Judge has not shifted his position for a long while now.  He has
not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his eyes so much as a
hair's-breadth from their fixed gaze towards the corner of the room,
    since the footsteps of Hepzibah and Clifford creaked along the passage,
    and the outer door was closed cautiously behind their exit.  He holds
    his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a manner that you
    cannot see the dial-plate.  How profound a fit of meditation! Or,
    supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what
    wholesome order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so
    entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dreamtalk,
    trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity
    of breath!  You must hold your own breath, to satisfy yourself whether
    he breathes at all.  It is quite inaudible.  You hear the ticking of
    his watch; his breath you do not hear.  A most refreshing slumber,
    doubtless!  And yet, the Judge cannot be asleep.  His eyes are open! A
    veteran politician, such as he, would never fall asleep with wide-open
    eyes, lest some enemy or mischief-maker, taking him thus at unawares,
    should peep through these windows into his consciousness, and make
    strange discoveries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes,
    apprehensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has heretofore
    shared with nobody.  A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep with
    one eye open.  That may be wisdom.  But not with both; for this were
    heedlessness! No, no! Judge Pyncheon cannot be asleep.

    It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with engagements,--and
    noted, too, for punctuality,--should linger thus in an old lonely
    mansion, which he has never seemed very fond of visiting.  The oaken
    chair, to be sure, may tempt him with its roominess.  It is, indeed, a
    spacious, and, allowing for the rude age that fashioned it, a
    moderately easy seat, with capacity enough, at all events, and offering
    no restraint to the Judge's breadth of beam.  A bigger man might find
    ample accommodation in it.  His ancestor, now pictured upon the wall,
    with all his English beef about him, used hardly to present a front
    extending from elbow to elbow of this chair, or a base that would cover
    its whole cushion.  But there are better chairs than this,--mahogany,
    black walnut, rosewood, spring-seated and damask-cushioned, with varied
    slopes, and innumerable artifices to make them easy, and obviate the
    irksomeness of too tame an ease,--a score of such might be at Judge
    Pyncheon's service.  Yes! in a score of drawing-rooms he would be more
    than welcome.  Mamma would advance to meet him, with outstretched hand;
    the virgin daughter, elderly as he has now got to be,--an old widower,
    as he smilingly describes himself,--would shake up the cushion for the
    Judge, and do her pretty utmost to make him comfortable.  For the Judge
    is a prosperous man.  He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other
    people, and reasonably brighter than most others; or did so, at least,
    as he lay abed this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse, planning the
    business of the day, and speculating on the probabilities of the next
    fifteen years.  With his firm health, and the little inroad that age
    has made upon him, fifteen years or twenty--yes, or perhaps
    five-and-twenty!--are no more than he may fairly call his own.
    Five-and-twenty years for the enjoyment of his real estate in town and
    country, his railroad, bank, and insurance shares, his United States
    stock,--his wealth, in short, however invested, now in possession, or
    soon to be acquired; together with the public honors that have fallen
    upon him, and the weightier ones that are yet to fall! It is good! It
    is excellent! It is enough!

    Still lingering in the old chair! If the Judge has a little time to
    throw away, why does not he visit the insurance office, as is his
    frequent custom, and sit awhile in one of their leathern-cushioned
    arm-chairs, listening to the gossip of the day, and dropping some
    deeply designed chance-word, which will be certain to become the gossip
    of to-morrow.  And have not the bank directors a meeting at which it
    was the Judge's purpose to be present, and his office to preside?
    Indeed they have; and the hour is noted on a card, which is, or ought
    to be, in Judge Pyncheon's right vest-pocket.  Let him go thither, and
    loll at ease upon his moneybags! He has lounged long enough in the old
    chair!

    This was to have been such a busy day.  In the first place, the
    interview with Clifford.  Half an hour, by the Judge's reckoning, was
    to suffice for that; it would probably be less, but--taking into
    consideration that Hepzibah was first to be dealt with, and that these
    women are apt to make many words where a few would do much better--it
    might be safest to allow half an hour.  Half an hour? Why, Judge, it is
    already two hours, by your own undeviatingly accurate chronometer.
    Glance your eye down at it and see! Ah; he will not give himself the
    trouble either to bend his head, or elevate his hand, so as to bring
    the faithful time-keeper within his range of vision! Time, all at once,
    appears to have become a matter of no moment with the Judge!

    And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda?  Clifford's
    affair arranged, he was to meet a State Street broker, who has
    undertaken to procure a heavy percentage, and the best of paper, for a
    few loose thousands which the Judge happens to have by him, uninvested.
    The wrinkled note-shaver will have taken his railroad trip in vain.
    Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be an
    auction of real estate, including a portion of the old Pyncheon
    property, originally belonging to Maule's garden ground.  It has been
    alienated from the Pyncheons these four-score years; but the Judge had
    kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on reannexing it to the small
    demesne still left around the Seven Gables; and now, during this odd
    fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen, and transferred our
    ancient patrimony to some alien possessor.  Possibly, indeed, the sale
    may have been postponed till fairer weather.  If so, will the Judge
    make it convenient to be present, and favor the auctioneer with his
    bid, On the proximate occasion?

    The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving.  The one
    heretofore his favorite stumbled, this very morning, on the road to
    town, and must be at once discarded.  Judge Pyncheon's neck is too
    precious to be risked on such a contingency as a stumbling steed.
    Should all the above business be seasonably got through with, he might
    attend the meeting of a charitable society; the very name of which,
    however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite forgotten; so
    that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and no great harm done.  And
    if he have time, amid the press of more urgent matters, he must take
    measures for the renewal of Mrs. Pyncheon's tombstone, which, the
    sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face, and is cracked quite
    in twain.  She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thinks the Judge, in
    spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy with, and
    her foolish behavior about the coffee; and as she took her departure so
    seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone.  It is better, at
    least, than if she had never needed any! The next item on his list was
    to give orders for some fruit-trees, of a rare variety, to be
    deliverable at his country-seat in the ensuing autumn.  Yes, buy them,
    by all means; and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge
    Pyncheon! After this comes something more important.  A committee of
    his political party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars,
    in addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the fall
    campaign.  The Judge is a patriot; the fate of the country is staked on
    the November election; and besides, as will be shadowed forth in
    another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same
    great game.  He will do what the committee asks; nay, he will be
    liberal beyond their expectations; they shall have a check for five
    hundred dollars, and more anon, if it be needed.  What next? A decayed
    widow, whose husband was Judge Pyncheon's early friend, has laid her
    case of destitution before him, in a very moving letter.  She and her
    fair daughter have scarcely bread to eat.  He partly intends to call on
    her to-day,--perhaps so--perhaps not,--accordingly as he may happen to
    have leisure, and a small bank-note.

    Another business, which, however, he puts no great weight on (it is
            well, you know, to be heedful, but not over-anxious, as respects one's
            personal health),--another business, then, was to consult his family
    physician.  About what, for Heaven's sake? Why, it is rather difficult
    to describe the symptoms.  A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of
    brain, was it?--or disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or
    bubbling, in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say?--or was
    it a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather
    creditable to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not
    been left out of the Judge's physical contrivance?  No matter what it
    was.  The doctor probably would smile at the statement of such trifles
    to his professional ear; the Judge would smile in his turn; and meeting
    one another's eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh together! But a fig
    for medical advice.  The Judge will never need it.

    Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, Now! What--not a
    glance! It is within ten minutes of the dinner hour! It surely cannot
    have slipped your memory that the dinner of to-day is to be the most
    important, in its consequences, of all the dinners you ever ate.  Yes,
    precisely the most important; although, in the course of your somewhat
    eminent career, you have been placed high towards the head of the
    table, at splendid banquets, and have poured out your festive eloquence
    to ears yet echoing with Webster's mighty organ-tones.  No public
    dinner this, however.  It is merely a gathering of some dozen or so of
    friends from several districts of the State; men of distinguished
    character and influence, assembling, almost casually, at the house of a
    common friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them welcome to a
    little better than his ordinary fare.  Nothing in the way of French
    cookery, but an excellent dinner, nevertheless.  Real turtle, we
    understand, and salmon, tautog, canvas-backs, pig, English mutton, good
    roast beef, or dainties of that serious kind, fit for substantial
    country gentlemen, as these honorable persons mostly are.  The
    delicacies of the season, in short, and flavored by a brand of old
    Madeira which has been the pride of many seasons.  It is the Juno
    brand; a glorious wine, fragrant, and full of gentle might; a
    bottled-up happiness, put by for use; a golden liquid, worth more than
    liquid gold; so rare and admirable, that veteran wine-bibbers count it
    among their epochs to have tasted it!  It drives away the heart-ache,
    and substitutes no head-ache!  Could the Judge but quaff a glass, it
    might enable him to shake off the unaccountable lethargy which (for the
            ten intervening minutes, and five to boot, are already past) has made
    him such a laggard at this momentous dinner.  It would all but revive a
    dead man! Would you like to sip it now, Judge Pyncheon?

    Alas, this dinner.  Have you really forgotten its true object?  Then
    let us whisper it, that you may start at once out of the oaken chair,
    which really seems to be enchanted, like the one in Comus, or that in
    which Moll Pitcher imprisoned your own grandfather.  But ambition is a
    talisman more powerful than witchcraft.  Start up, then, and, hurrying
    through the streets, burst in upon the company, that they may begin
    before the fish is spoiled! They wait for you; and it is little for
    your interest that they should wait.  These gentlemen--need you be told
    it?--have assembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of the
    State.  They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled
    to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people,
    without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers.  The
    popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as
    thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall
    speak, under their breath, at your friend's festive board.  They meet
    to decide upon their candidate.  This little knot of subtle schemers
    will control the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party.
    And what worthier candidate,--more wise and learned, more noted for
    philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by
    public trusts, more spotless in private character, with a larger stake
    in the common welfare, and deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in
    the faith and practice of the Puritans,--what man can be presented for
    the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to
    the chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before us?

    Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which you have toiled, and
    fought, and climbed, and crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at
    this dinner!--drink a glass or two of that noble wine!--make your
    pledges in as low a whisper as you will!--and you rise up from table
    virtually governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of
    Massachusetts!

    And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like
    this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it.
    Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why
    do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair,
    as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King
    Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will
    hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy.

    Well; it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog,
    woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have
    vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and
    gravies crusted over with cold fat.  The Judge, had he done nothing
    else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork.  It was he,
    you know, of whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like
    appetite, that his Creator made him a great animal, but that the
    dinner-hour made him a great beast.  Persons of his large sensual
    endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time.  But, for
    once, the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we fear,
    even to join the party at their wine! The guests are warm and merry;
they have given up the Judge; and, concluding that the Free-Soilers
have him, they will fix upon another candidate.  Were our friend now to
stalk in among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and
stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer.
Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous
in his attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson
stain upon his shirt-bosom.  By the bye, how came it there? It is an
ugly sight, at any rate; and the wisest way for the Judge is to button
his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from
the livery stable, to make all speed to his own house.  There, after a
glass of brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled
fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had
better spend the evening by the fireside.  He must toast his slippers a
long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this
vile old house has sent curdling through his veins.

Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost a day.  But to-morrow
will be here anon.  Will you rise, betimes, and make the most of it?
To-morrow.  To-morrow! To-morrow.  We, that are alive, may rise betimes
to-morrow.  As for him that has died to-day, his morrow will be the
resurrection morn.

Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the
room.  The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first
become more definite; then, spreading wider, they lose their
distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were,
             that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure
             sitting in the midst of them.  The gloom has not entered from without;
             it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time,
             will possess itself of everything.  The Judge's face, indeed, rigid and
             singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent.  Fainter
             and fainter grows the light.  It is as if another double-handful of
             darkness had been scattered through the air.  Now it is no longer gray,
             but sable.  There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a
             glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer,--any phrase of light would express
             something far brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather,
             that there is a window there.  Has it yet vanished?  No!--yes!--not
             quite! And there is still the swarthy whiteness,--we shall venture to
             marry these ill-agreeing words,--the swarthy whiteness of Judge
             Pyncheon's face.  The features are all gone: there is only the paleness
             of them left.  And how looks it now?  There is no window! There is no
             face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where
             is our universe?  All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos,
             may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and
             murmuring about in quest of what was once a world!

             Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one.  It is the
             ticking of the Judge's watch, which, ever since Hepzibah left the room
             in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand.  Be the cause
             what it may, this little, quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time's pulse,
             repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge
             Pyncheon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not
             find in any other accompaniment of the scene.

             But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder.  It had a tone unlike
             the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all
             mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past.  The wind has
             veered about! It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and, taking
             hold of the aged framework of the Seven Gables, gives it a shake, like
             a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist.  Another and
             another sturdy tussle with the blast! The old house creaks again, and
             makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty
             throat (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney), partly in
             complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a
             half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance.  A rumbling kind of a
             bluster roars behind the fire-board.  A door has slammed above stairs.
             A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an
             unruly gust.  It is not to be conceived, before-hand, what wonderful
             wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with
             the strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and
             sob, and shriek,--and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but ponderous,
             in some distant chamber,--and to tread along the entries as with
             stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks
             miraculously stiff,--whenever the gale catches the house with a window
             open, and gets fairly into it.  Would that we were not an attendant
             spirit here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind through the
             lonely house; the Judge's quietude, as he sits invisible; and that
             pertinacious ticking of his watch!

             As regards Judge Pyncheon's invisibility, however, that matter will
             soon be remedied.  The northwest wind has swept the sky clear.  The
             window is distinctly seen.  Through its panes, moreover, we dimly catch
             the sweep of the dark, clustering foliage outside, fluttering with a
             constant irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight,
             now here, now there.  Oftener than any other object, these glimpses
             illuminate the Judge's face.  But here comes more effectual light.
             Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branches of the pear-tree,
             and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while,
             through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into the
             room.  They play over the Judge's figure and show that he has not
             stirred throughout the hours of darkness.  They follow the shadows, in
             changeful sport, across his unchanging features.  They gleam upon his
             watch.  His grasp conceals the dial-plate,--but we know that the
             faithful hands have met; for one of the city clocks tells midnight.

             A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyncheon, cares no more for
             twelve o'clock at night than for the corresponding hour of noon.
             However just the parallel drawn, in some of the preceding pages,
             between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it fails in this point.  The
             Pyncheon of two centuries ago, in common with most of his
             contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations,
             although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character.  The Pyncheon
             of to-night, who sits in yonder arm-chair, believes in no such
             nonsense.  Such, at least, was his creed, some few hours since.  His
             hair will not bristle, therefore, at the stories which--in times when
             chimney-corners had benches in them, where old people sat poking into
             the ashes of the past, and raking out traditions like live coals--used
             to be told about this very room of his ancestral house.  In fact, these
             tales are too absurd to bristle even childhood's hair.  What sense,
             meaning, or moral, for example, such as even ghost-stories should be
             susceptible of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend, that, at
             midnight, all the dead Pyncheons are bound to assemble in this parlor?
             And, pray, for what? Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor
             still keeps its place upon the wall, in compliance with his
             testamentary directions! Is it worth while to come out of their graves
             for that?

             We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea.  Ghost-stories are
             hardly to be treated seriously any longer.  The family-party of the
             defunct Pyncheons, we presume, goes off in this wise.

             First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak, steeple-hat, and
             trunk-breeches, girt about the waist with a leathern belt, in which
             hangs his steel-hilted sword; he has a long staff in his hand, such as
             gentlemen in advanced life used to carry, as much for the dignity of
             the thing as for the support to be derived from it.  He looks up at the
             portrait; a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted image! All
             is safe.  The picture is still there.  The purpose of his brain has
             been kept sacred thus long after the man himself has sprouted up in
             graveyard grass.  See! he lifts his ineffectual hand, and tries the
             frame.  All safe! But is that a smile?--is it not, rather a frown of
             deadly import, that darkens over the shadow of his features? The stout
             Colonel is dissatisfied!  So decided is his look of discontent as to
             impart additional distinctness to his features; through which,
             nevertheless, the moonlight passes, and flickers on the wall beyond.
             Something has strangely vexed the ancestor! With a grim shake of the
             head, he turns away.  Here come other Pyncheons, the whole tribe, in
             their half a dozen generations, jostling and elbowing one another, to
             reach the picture.  We behold aged men and grandames, a clergyman with
             the Puritanic stiffness still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated
             officer of the old French war; and there comes the shop-keeping
             Pyncheon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned back from his
             wrists; and there the periwigged and brocaded gentleman of the artist's
             legend, with the beautiful and pensive Alice, who brings no pride out
             of her virgin grave.  All try the picture-frame.  What do these ghostly
             people seek? A mother lifts her child, that his little hands may touch
             it! There is evidently a mystery about the picture, that perplexes
             these poor Pyncheons when they ought to be at rest.  In a corner,
             meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly man, in a leathern jerkin
             and breeches, with a carpenter's rule sticking out of his side pocket;
             he points his finger at the bearded Colonel and his descendants,
             nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into obstreperous,
             though inaudible laughter.

             Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the power of
             restraint and guidance.  We distinguish an unlooked-for figure in our
             visionary scene.  Among those ancestral people there is a young man,
             dressed in the very fashion of to-day:  he wears a dark frock-coat,
             almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent
             leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and a
             little silver-headed whalebone stick in his hand.  Were we to meet this
             figure at noonday, we should greet him as young Jaffrey Pyncheon, the
             Judge's only surviving child, who has been spending the last two years
             in foreign travel.  If still in life, how comes his shadow hither?  If
             dead, what a misfortune! The old Pyncheon property, together with the
             great estate acquired by the young man's father, would devolve on whom?
             On poor, foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepzibah, and rustic little Phoebe!
             But another and a greater marvel greets us!  Can we believe our eyes? A
             stout, elderly gentleman has made his appearance; he has an aspect of
             eminent respectability, wears a black coat and pantaloons, of roomy
             width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his attire, but for
             a broad crimson stain across his snowy neckcloth and down his
             shirt-bosom.  Is it the Judge, or no? How can it be Judge Pyncheon? We
             discern his figure, as plainly as the flickering moonbeams can show us
             anything, still seated in the oaken chair! Be the apparition whose it
             may, it advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, tries to
             peep behind it, and turns away, with a frown as black as the ancestral
             one.

             The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be considered as
             forming an actual portion of our story.  We were betrayed into this
             brief extravagance by the quiver of the moonbeams; they dance
             hand-in-hand with shadows, and are reflected in the looking-glass,
             which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the
             spiritual world.  We needed relief, moreover, from our too long and
             exclusive contemplation of that figure in the chair.  This wild wind,
             too, has tossed our thoughts into strange confusion, but without
             tearing them away from their one determined centre.  Yonder leaden
             Judge sits immovably upon our soul.  Will he never stir again? We shall
             go mad unless he stirs! You may the better estimate his quietude by the
             fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its hind legs, in a
             streak of moonlight, close by Judge Pyncheon's foot, and seems to
             meditate a journey of exploration over this great black bulk.  Ha! what
             has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage of grimalkin,
             outside of the window, where he appears to have posted himself for a
             deliberate watch.  This grimalkin has a very ugly look.  Is it a cat
             watching for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul? Would we could
             scare him from the window!

             Thank Heaven, the night is well-nigh past! The moonbeams have no longer
             so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so strongly with the blackness of the
             shadows among which they fall.  They are paler now; the shadows look
             gray, not black.  The boisterous wind is hushed.  What is the hour? Ah!
             the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the Judge's forgetful fingers
             neglected to wind it up, as usual, at ten o'clock, being half an hour
             or so before his ordinary bedtime,--and it has run down, for the first
             time in five years.  But the great world-clock of Time still keeps its
             beat.  The dreary night--for, oh, how dreary seems its haunted waste,
             behind us!--gives place to a fresh, transparent, cloudless morn.
             Blessed, blessed radiance! The daybeam--even what little of it finds
             its way into this always dusky parlor--seems part of the universal
             benediction, annulling evil, and rendering all goodness possible, and
             happiness attainable.  Will Judge Pyncheon now rise up from his chair?
             Will he go forth, and receive the early sunbeams on his brow? Will he
             begin this new day,--which God has smiled upon, and blessed, and given
             to mankind,--will he begin it with better purposes than the many that
             have been spent amiss? Or are all the deep-laid schemes of yesterday as
             stubborn in his heart, and as busy in his brain, as ever?

             In this latter case, there is much to do.  Will the Judge still insist
             with Hepzibah on the interview with Clifford? Will he buy a safe,
             elderly gentleman's horse? Will he persuade the purchaser of the old
             Pyncheon property to relinquish the bargain in his favor?  Will he see
             his family physician, and obtain a medicine that shall preserve him, to
             be an honor and blessing to his race, until the utmost term of
             patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Pyncheon, above all, make due
             apologies to that company of honorable friends, and satisfy them that
             his absence from the festive board was unavoidable, and so fully
             retrieve himself in their good opinion that he shall yet be Governor of
             Massachusetts?  And all these great purposes accomplished, will he walk
             the streets again, with that dog-day smile of elaborate benevolence,
             sultry enough to tempt flies to come and buzz in it? Or will he, after
             the tomb-like seclusion of the past day and night, go forth a humbled
             and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from
             worldly honor, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow
             man, and to do him what good he may? Will he bear about with him,--no
             odious grin of feigned benignity, insolent in its pretence, and
             loathsome in its falsehood,--but the tender sadness of a contrite
             heart, broken, at last, beneath its own weight of sin? For it is our
             belief, whatever show of honor he may have piled upon it, that there
             was heavy sin at the base of this man's being.

             Rise up, Judge Pyncheon! The morning sunshine glimmers through the
             foliage, and, beautiful and holy as it is, shuns not to kindle up your
             face.  Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite,
             and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish,
             iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy
             nature, though they bring the lifeblood with them! The Avenger is upon
             thee! Rise up, before it be too late!

             What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not a jot!  And
             there we see a fly,--one of your common house-flies, such as are always
             buzzing on the window-pane,--which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and
             alights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now, Heaven help us!
             is creeping over the bridge of his nose, towards the would-be
             chief-magistrate's wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly away?
             Art thou too sluggish? Thou man, that hadst so many busy projects
             yesterday! Art thou too weak, that wast so powerful?  Not brush away a
             fly? Nay, then, we give thee up!

             And hark! the shop-bell rings.  After hours like these latter ones,
             through which we have borne our heavy tale, it is good to be made
             sensible that there is a living world, and that even this old, lonely
             mansion retains some manner of connection with it.  We breathe more
             freely, emerging from Judge Pyncheon's presence into the street before
             the Seven Gables.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Meanwhile, back in the old Pyncheon house, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon remains seated in the foreboding house, heedless of time. This is odd, because he is burdened with engagements -- he should see Clifford, and then he should see his broker, attend an auction to add a parcel of land to the Pyncheon holdings, buy a house, check on his wife's fallen tombstone, give generously to his political party and a trifle to a needy widow, and consult with his doctor about his throbbing heart. He also has a private political dinner to attend, with all manner of luxurious foods and wines. Will he be nominated for governor? This is indeed a keen matter, for there is blood on the Judge's shirt front. Darkness falls and covers the Judge's figure, and, meanwhile, the Judge's watch continues to tick on. The wind rises. One might easily imagine at this point that the seated figure might well be viewing a procession of Pyncheon ghosts -- including those of the Judge himself and his son. The moon rises, and a mouse approaches the seated figure. Is that a cat outside or the devil watching for a soul? By dawn, the Judge's watch has stopped ticking. A fly crawls toward the open, lifeless, staring eyes of the Judge.


prompt:
Chapter: UNCLE VENNER, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring
in the neighborhood the day after the storm.

Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, was a far
pleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences, and
bordered with wooden dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be
expected to present.  Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the
five unkindly days which had preceded it.  It would have been enough to
live for, merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as
much of it as was visible between the houses, genial once more with
sunshine.  Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the
breadth, or examined more minutely.  Such, for example, were the
well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the sky-reflecting
pools in the centre of the street; and the grass, now freshly verdant,
      that crept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if
      one peeped over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens.
      Vegetable productions, of whatever kind, seemed more than negatively
      happy, in the juicy warmth and abundance of their life.  The Pyncheon
      Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the
      morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within
      this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whispering all
      at once.  This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the
      gale.  It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of
      leaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that,
      by the earlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the
      autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold.  It was like the golden
      branch that gained Aeneas and the Sibyl admittance into Hades.

      This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the Seven
      Gables, so nigh the ground that any passer-by might have stood on
      tiptoe and plucked it off.  Presented at the door, it would have been a
      symbol of his right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the
      secrets of the house.  So little faith is due to external appearance,
      that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable edifice,
      conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous and happy one,
      and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale.  Its windows
      gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight.  The lines and tufts of
      green moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and
      sisterhood with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such
      old date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks
      and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, have
      acquired a gracious right to be.  A person of imaginative temperament,
      while passing by the house, would turn, once and again, and peruse it
      well:  its many peaks, consenting together in the clustered chimney;
      the deep projection over its basement-story; the arched window,
      imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the
      broken portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of gigantic
      burdocks, near the threshold; he would note all these characteristics,
      and be conscious of something deeper than he saw.  He would conceive
      the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan,
      Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing
      in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in
      the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and
      solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day.

      One object, above all others, would take root in the imaginative
      observer's memory.  It was the great tuft of flowers,--weeds, you would
      have called them, only a week ago,--the tuft of crimson-spotted
      flowers, in the angle between the two front gables. The old people used
      to give them the name of Alice's Posies, in remembrance of fair Alice
      Pyncheon, who was believed to have brought their seeds from Italy.
      They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom to-day, and seemed,
      as it were, a mystic expression that something within the house was
      consummated.

      It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner made his appearance,
      as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along the street. He was going
      his matutinal rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops,
      potato-skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the
      thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside, as
      fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner's pig was fed entirely, and kept
      in prime order, on these eleemosynary contributions; insomuch that the
      patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm,
      he would make a feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his
      neighbors to partake of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped
      to fatten. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's housekeeping had so greatly
      improved, since Clifford became a member of the family, that her share
      of the banquet would have been no lean one; and Uncle Venner,
      accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large earthen
      pan, full of fragmentary eatables, that ordinarily awaited his coming
      at the back doorstep of the Seven Gables.

      "I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before," said the patriarch to
      himself.  "She must have had a dinner yesterday,--no question of that!
      She always has one, nowadays.  So where's the pot-liquor and
      potato-skins, I ask? Shall I knock, and see if she's stirring yet? No,
      no,--'t won't do! If little Phoebe was about the house, I should not
      mind knocking; but Miss Hepzibah, likely as not, would scowl down at me
      out of the window, and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly.  So,
      I'll come back at noon."

      With these reflections, the old man was shutting the gate of the little
      back-yard.  Creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and
      door about the premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant of
      the northern gable, one of the windows of which had a side-view towards
      the gate.

      "Good-morning, Uncle Venner!" said the daguerreotypist, leaning out of
      the window.  "Do you hear nobody stirring?"

      "Not a soul," said the man of patches.  "But that's no wonder.  'Tis
      barely half an hour past sunrise, yet.  But I'm really glad to see you,
      Mr. Holgrave! There's a strange, lonesome look about this side of the
      house; so that my heart misgave me, somehow or other, and I felt as if
      there was nobody alive in it.  The front of the house looks a good deal
      cheerier; and Alice's Posies are blooming there beautifully; and if I
      were a young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart should have one of those
      flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it! Well,
      and did the wind keep you awake last night?"

      "It did, indeed!" answered the artist, smiling.  "If I were a believer
      in ghosts,--and I don't quite know whether I am or not,--I should have
      concluded that all the old Pyncheons were running riot in the lower
      rooms, especially in Miss Hepzibah's part of the house.  But it is very
      quiet now."

      "Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself, after being
      disturbed, all night, with the racket," said Uncle Venner.  "But it
      would be odd, now, wouldn't it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins
      into the country along with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday."

      "At what hour?" inquired Holgrave.

      "Oh, along in the forenoon," said the old man.  "Well, well! I must go
      my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow.  But I'll be back here at
      dinner-time; for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast.  No
      meal-time, and no sort of victuals, ever seems to come amiss to my pig.
      Good morning to you! And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young man, like
      you, I'd get one of Alice's Posies, and keep it in water till Phoebe
      comes back."

      "I have heard," said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his head, "that
      the water of Maule's well suits those flowers best."

      Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went on his way.  For
      half an hour longer, nothing disturbed the repose of the Seven Gables;
      nor was there any visitor, except a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the
      front doorstep, threw down one of his newspapers; for Hepzibah, of
      late, had regularly taken it in.  After a while, there came a fat
      woman, making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran up the steps
      of the shop-door.  Her face glowed with fire-heat, and, it being a
      pretty warm morning, she bubbled and hissed, as it were, as if all
      a-fry with chimney-warmth, and summer-warmth, and the warmth of her own
      corpulent velocity.  She tried the shop-door; it was fast.  She tried
      it again, with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her.

      "The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!" muttered the irascible housewife.
      "Think of her pretending to set up a cent-shop, and then lying abed
      till noon! These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!  But
      I'll either start her ladyship, or break the door down!"

      She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper
      of its own, rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard,--not,
      indeed, by the ears for which they were intended,--but by a good lady
      on the opposite side of the street.  She opened the window, and
      addressed the impatient applicant.

      "You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins."

      "But I must and will find somebody here!" cried Mrs. Gubbins,
      inflicting another outrage on the bell.  "I want a half-pound of pork,
      to fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Gubbins's breakfast; and, lady
      or not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me with it!"

      "But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!" responded the lady opposite.  "She,
      and her brother too, have both gone to their cousin's, Judge Pyncheon's
      at his country-seat.  There's not a soul in the house, but that young
      daguerreotype-man that sleeps in the north gable.  I saw old Hepzibah
      and Clifford go away yesterday; and a queer couple of ducks they were,
      paddling through the mud-puddles!  They're gone, I'll assure you."

      "And how do you know they're gone to the Judge's?" asked Mrs. Gubbins.
      "He's a rich man; and there's been a quarrel between him and Hepzibah
      this many a day, because he won't give her a living.  That's the main
      reason of her setting up a cent-shop."

      "I know that well enough," said the neighbor.  "But they're
      gone,--that's one thing certain.  And who but a blood relation, that
      couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that awful-tempered old
      maid, and that dreadful Clifford? That's it, you may be sure."

      Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot wrath
      against the absent Hepzibah.  For another half-hour, or, perhaps,
      considerably more, there was almost as much quiet on the outside of the
      house as within.  The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny
      sigh, responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a
      swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow, and became
      specks of light whenever they darted into the sunshine; a locust sang,
      once or twice, in some inscrutable seclusion of the tree; and a
      solitary little bird, with plumage of pale gold, came and hovered about
      Alice's Posies.

      At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street, on
      his way to school; and happening, for the first time in a fortnight, to
      be the possessor of a cent, he could by no means get past the shop-door
      of the Seven Gables.  But it would not open.  Again and again, however,
      and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a
      child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his
      efforts for admittance.  He had, doubtless, set his heart upon an
      elephant; or, possibly, with Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile.  In
      response to his more violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a
      moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any exertion
      of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength.  Holding by the
      door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the curtain, and saw that
      the inner door, communicating with the passage towards the parlor, was
      closed.

      "Miss Pyncheon!" screamed the child, rapping on the window-pane, "I
      want an elephant!"

      There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began
      to grow impatient; and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over,
      he picked up a stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the
      window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath.  A
      man--one of two who happened to be passing by--caught the urchin's arm.

      "What's the trouble, old gentleman?" he asked.

      "I want old Hepzibah, or Phoebe, or any of them!" answered Ned,
      sobbing.  "They won't open the door; and I can't get my elephant!"

      "Go to school, you little scamp!" said the man.  "There's another
      cent-shop round the corner.  'T is very strange, Dixey," added he to
      his companion, "what's become of all these Pyncheon's! Smith, the
      livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his horse up
      yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet.
      And one of the Judge's hired men has been in, this morning, to make
      inquiry about him.  He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks
      his habits, or stays out o' nights."

      "Oh, he'll turn up safe enough!" said Dixey.  "And as for Old Maid
      Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in debt, and gone off from
      her creditors.  I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up
      shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away customers.  They
      couldn't stand it!"

      "I never thought she'd make it go," remarked his friend.  "This
      business of cent-shops is overdone among the women-folks.  My wife
      tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!"

      "Poor business!" said Dixey, shaking his head.  "Poor business!"

      In the course of the morning, there were various other attempts to open
      a communication with the supposed inhabitants of this silent and
      impenetrable mansion.  The man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted
      wagon, with a couple of dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty
      ones; the baker, with a lot of crackers which Hepzibah had ordered for
      her retail custom; the butcher, with a nice titbit which he fancied she
      would be eager to secure for Clifford.  Had any observer of these
      proceedings been aware of the fearful secret hidden within the house,
      it would have affected him with a singular shape and modification of
      horror, to see the current of human life making this small eddy
      hereabouts,--whirling sticks, straws and all such trifles, round and
      round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!

      The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb, or
      whatever the dainty might be, that he tried every accessible door of
      the Seven Gables, and at length came round again to the shop, where he
      ordinarily found admittance.

      "It's a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at it," said
      he to himself.  "She can't be gone away! In fifteen years that I have
      driven my cart through Pyncheon Street, I've never known her to be away
      from home; though often enough, to be sure, a man might knock all day
      without bringing her to the door.  But that was when she'd only herself
      to provide for."

      Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little
      while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the
      butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it,
      but ajar, and almost wide open.  However it might have happened, it was
      the fact.  Through the passage-way there was a dark vista into the
      lighter but still obscure interior of the parlor.  It appeared to the
      butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the
      stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sitting in a large
      oaken chair, the back of which concealed all the remainder of his
      figure.  This contemptuous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of
      the house, in response to the butcher's indefatigable efforts to
      attract notice, so piqued the man of flesh that he determined to
      withdraw.

      "So," thought he, "there sits Old Maid Pyncheon's bloody brother, while
      I've been giving myself all this trouble! Why, if a hog hadn't more
      manners, I'd stick him! I call it demeaning a man's business to trade
      with such people; and from this time forth, if they want a sausage or
      an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart for it!"

      He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off in a pet.

      Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the
      corner and approaching down the street, with several intervals of
      silence, and then a renewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody.  A mob
      of children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the
      sound, which appeared to proceed from the centre of the throng; so that
      they were loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony, and
      drawn along captive; with ever and anon an accession of some little
      fellow in an apron and straw-hat, capering forth from door or gateway.
      Arriving under the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, it proved to be the
      Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of puppets, had once before
      played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window.  The pleasant face of
      Phoebe--and doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she had flung
      him--still dwelt in his remembrance.  His expressive features kindled
      up, as he recognized the spot where this trifling incident of his
      erratic life had chanced.  He entered the neglected yard (now wilder
              than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock), stationed himself
      on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, opening his show-box, began
      to play.  Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to
      work, according to his or her proper vocation:  the monkey, taking off
      his Highland bonnet, bowed and scraped to the by-standers most
      obsequiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; and
      the young foreigner himself, as he turned the crank of his machine,
      glanced upward to the arched window, expectant of a presence that would
      make his music the livelier and sweeter.  The throng of children stood
      near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard; two or three
      establishing themselves on the very door-step; and one squatting on the
      threshold.  Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old
      Pyncheon Elm.

      "I don't hear anybody in the house," said one of the children to
      another.  "The monkey won't pick up anything here."

      "There is somebody at home," affirmed the urchin on the threshold.  "I
      heard a step!"

      Still the young Italian's eye turned sidelong upward; and it really
      seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight and almost playful,
      emotion communicated a juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process
      of his minstrelsy.  These wanderers are readily responsive to any
      natural kindness--be it no more than a smile, or a word itself not
      understood, but only a warmth in it--which befalls them on the roadside
      of life.  They remember these things, because they are the little
      enchantments which, for the instant,--for the space that reflects a
      landscape in a soap-bubble,--build up a home about them.  Therefore,
      the Italian boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence with
      which the old house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his
      instrument.  He persisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked
      upward, trusting that his dark, alien countenance would soon be
      brightened by Phoebe's sunny aspect.  Neither could he be willing to
      depart without again beholding Clifford, whose sensibility, like
      Phoebe's smile, had talked a kind of heart's language to the foreigner.
      He repeated all his music over and over again, until his auditors were
      getting weary.  So were the little wooden people in his show-box, and
      the monkey most of all.  There was no response, save the singing of the
      locust.

      "No children live in this house," said a schoolboy, at last.  "Nobody
      lives here but an old maid and an old man.  You'll get nothing here!
      Why don't you go along?"

      "You fool, you, why do you tell him?" whispered a shrewd little Yankee,
      caring nothing for the music, but a good deal for the cheap rate at
      which it was had. "Let him play as he likes!  If there's nobody to pay
      him, that's his own lookout!"

      Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of melodies.  To the
      common observer--who could understand nothing of the case, except the
      music and the sunshine on the hither side of the door--it might have
      been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street-performer.  Will he
      succeed at last? Will that stubborn door be suddenly flung open? Will a
      group of joyous children, the young ones of the house, come dancing,
      shouting, laughing, into the open air, and cluster round the show-box,
      looking with eager merriment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper
      for long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?

      But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Gables as well as its
      exterior face, there is a ghastly effect in this repetition of light
      popular tunes at its door-step. It would be an ugly business, indeed,
      if Judge Pyncheon (who would not have cared a fig for Paganini's fiddle
              in his most harmonious mood) should make his appearance at the door,
      with a bloody shirt-bosom, and a grim frown on his swarthily white
      visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away! Was ever before such a
      grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where nobody was in the cue to dance?
      Yes, very often. This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy with mirth,
      happens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and desolate old house,
      deserted of life, and with awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude,
      was the emblem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is compelled
      to hear the thrill and echo of the world's gayety around it.

      Before the conclusion of the Italian's performance, a couple of men
      happened to be passing, On their way to dinner.   "I say, you young
      French fellow!" called out one of them,--"come away from that doorstep,
      and go somewhere else with your nonsense! The Pyncheon family live
      there; and they are in great trouble, just about this time.  They don't
      feel musical to-day.  It is reported all over town that Judge Pyncheon,
      who owns the house, has been murdered; and the city marshal is going to
      look into the matter.  So be off with you, at once!"

      As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a
      card, which had been covered, all the morning, by the newspaper that
      the carrier had flung upon it, but was now shuffled into sight.  He
      picked it up, and perceiving something written in pencil, gave it to
      the man to read.  In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pyncheon's
      with certain pencilled memoranda on the back, referring to various
      businesses which it had been his purpose to transact during the
      preceding day.  It formed a prospective epitome of the day's history;
      only that affairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the
      programme.  The card must have been lost from the Judge's vest-pocket
      in his preliminary attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the
      house.  Though well soaked with rain, it was still partially legible.

      "Look here; Dixey!" cried the man.  "This has something to do with
      Judge Pyncheon.  See!--here's his name printed on it; and here, I
      suppose, is some of his handwriting."

      "Let's go to the city marshal with it!" said Dixey.  "It may give him
      just the clew he wants.  After all," whispered he in his companion's
      ear, "it would be no wonder if the Judge has gone into that door and
      never come out again! A certain cousin of his may have been at his old
      tricks.  And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in debt by the
      cent-shop,--and the Judge's pocket-book being well filled,--and bad
      blood amongst them already! Put all these things together and see what
      they make!"

      "Hush, hush!" whispered the other.  "It seems like a sin to be the
      first to speak of such a thing.  But I think, with you, that we had
      better go to the city marshal."

      "Yes, yes!" said Dixey.  "Well!--I always said there was something
      devilish in that woman's scowl!"

      The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their steps up the
      street.  The Italian, also, made the best of his way off, with a
      parting glance up at the arched window.  As for the children, they took
      to their heels, with one accord, and scampered as if some giant or ogre
      were in pursuit, until, at a good distance from the house, they stopped
      as suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out.  Their susceptible
      nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they had overheard.  Looking
      back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of the old mansion, they
      fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine
      could dispel.  An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook her finger at
      them, from several windows at the same moment.  An imaginary
      Clifford--for (and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had
      always been a horror to these small people--stood behind the unreal
      Hepzibah, making awful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown.  Children
      are even more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch the
      contagion of a panic terror.  For the rest of the day, the more timid
      went whole streets about, for the sake of avoiding the Seven Gables;
      while the bolder signalized their hardihood by challenging their
      comrades to race past the mansion at full speed.

      It could not have been more than half an hour after the disappearance
      of the Italian boy, with his unseasonable melodies, when a cab drove
      down the street.  It stopped beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cabman took
      a trunk, a canvas bag, and a bandbox, from the top of his vehicle, and
      deposited them on the doorstep of the old house; a straw bonnet, and
      then the pretty figure of a young girl, came into view from the
      interior of the cab.  It was Phoebe! Though not altogether so blooming
      as when she first tripped into our story,--for, in the few intervening
      weeks, her experiences had made her graver, more womanly, and
      deeper-eyed, in token of a heart that had begun to suspect its
      depths,--still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her.
      Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real,
      rather than fantastic, within her sphere.  Yet we feel it to be a
      questionable venture, even for Phoebe, at this juncture, to cross the
      threshold of the Seven Gables.  Is her healthful presence potent enough
      to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous, and sinful phantoms, that
      have gained admittance there since her departure? Or will she,
      likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be only
      another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs,
      and affright children as she pauses at the window?

      At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl that there is
      nothing in human shape or substance to receive her, unless it be the
      figure of Judge Pyncheon, who--wretched spectacle that he is, and
      frightful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil with
      him!--still keeps his place in the oaken chair.

      Phoebe first tried the shop-door.  It did not yield to her hand; and
      the white curtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper
      section of the door, struck her quick perceptive faculty as something
      unusual.  Without making another effort to enter here, she betook
      herself to the great portal, under the arched window.  Finding it
      fastened, she knocked.  A reverberation came from the emptiness within.
      She knocked again, and a third time; and, listening intently, fancied
      that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming, with her ordinary
      tiptoe movement, to admit her.  But so dead a silence ensued upon this
      imaginary sound, that she began to question whether she might not have
      mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself with its exterior.

      Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice, at some distance.  It
      appeared to call her name.  Looking in the direction whence it
      proceeded, Phoebe saw little Ned Higgins, a good way down the street,
      stamping, shaking his head violently, making deprecatory gestures with
      both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.

      "No, no, Phoebe!" he screamed.  "Don't you go in! There's something
      wicked there! Don't--don't--don't go in!"

      But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near
      enough to explain himself, Phoebe concluded that he had been
      frightened, on some of his visits to the shop, by her cousin Hepzibah;
      for the good lady's manifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance
      of scaring children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly
      laughter.  Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how
      unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become.  As her
      next resort, Phoebe made her way into the garden, where on so warm and
      bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford,
      and perhaps Hepzibah also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of
      the arbor.  Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of
      hens half ran, half flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin, which
      was prowling under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered
      hastily over the fence, and vanished.  The arbor was vacant, and its
      floor, table, and circular bench were still damp, and bestrewn with
      twigs and the disarray of the past storm.  The growth of the garden
      seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken advantage
      of Phoebe's absence, and the long-continued rain, to run rampant over
      the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.  Maule's well had overflowed its
      stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of
      the garden.

      The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human
      foot had left its print for many preceding days,--probably not since
      Phoebe's departure,--for she saw a side-comb of her own under the table
      of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she
      and Clifford sat there.

      The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater
      oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house, as
      they appeared now to have done.  Nevertheless, with indistinct
      misgivings of something amiss, and apprehensions to which she could not
      give shape, she approached the door that formed the customary
      communication between the house and garden.  It was secured within,
      like the two which she had already tried.  She knocked, however; and
      immediately, as if the application had been expected, the door was
      drawn open, by a considerable exertion of some unseen person's
      strength, not wide, but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance.
      As Hepzibah, in order not to expose herself to inspection from without,
      invariably opened a door in this manner, Phoebe necessarily concluded
      that it was her cousin who now admitted her.

      Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and
      had no sooner entered than the door closed behind her.

PHOEBE, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether
bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of
the old house.  She was not at first aware by whom she had been
admitted.  Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a
hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus
imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an
indefinable shiver of enjoyment.  She felt herself drawn along, not
towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which
had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables.  The
sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and
fell upon the dusty floor; so that Phoebe now clearly saw--what,
     indeed, had been no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with
     hers--that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave, to whom she
     owed her reception.  The subtile, intuitive communication, or, rather,
     the vague and formless impression of something to be told, had made her
     yield unresistingly to his impulse.  Without taking away her hand, she
     looked eagerly in his face, not quick to forebode evil, but unavoidably
     conscious that the state of the family had changed since her departure,
     and therefore anxious for an explanation.

     The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a thoughtful and
     severe contraction of his forehead, tracing a deep, vertical line
     between the eyebrows.  His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth,
     and had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression that Phoebe had
     ever witnessed, shining out of the New England reserve with which
     Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart.  It was the
     look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful object, in a
     dreary forest or illimitable desert, would recognize the familiar
     aspect of his dearest friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that
     belong to home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs.  And yet,
     as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the
     smile disappeared.

     "I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phoebe," said he.  "We meet
     at a strange moment!"

     "What has happened!" she exclaimed.  "Why is the house so deserted?
     Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?"

     "Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!" answered Holgrave.  "We are
     alone in the house!"

     "Hepzibah and Clifford gone?" cried Phoebe.  "It is not possible!  And
     why have you brought me into this room, instead of the parlor?  Ah,
     something terrible has happened! I must run and see!"

     "No, no, Phoebe!" said Holgrave holding her back.  "It is as I have
     told you.  They are gone, and I know not whither.  A terrible event
     has, indeed happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly believe,
     through any agency of theirs.  If I read your character rightly,
     Phoebe," he continued, fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety,
     intermixed with tenderness, "gentle as you are, and seeming to have
     your sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable strength.
     You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, when tested, will prove
     itself capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the
     ordinary rule."

     "Oh, no, I am very weak!" replied Phoebe, trembling.  "But tell me what
     has happened!"

     "You are strong!" persisted Holgrave.  "You must be both strong and
     wise; for I am all astray, and need your counsel.  It may be you can
     suggest the one right thing to do!"

     "Tell me!--tell me!" said Phoebe, all in a tremble.  "It oppresses,--it
     terrifies me,--this mystery! Anything else I can bear!"

     The artist hesitated.  Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most
     sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing power with which Phoebe
     impressed him, it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret
     of yesterday to her knowledge.  It was like dragging a hideous shape of
     death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire,
     where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the decorousness of
     everything about it.  Yet it could not be concealed from her; she must
     needs know it.

     "Phoebe," said he, "do you remember this?" He put into her hand a
     daguerreotype; the same that he had shown her at their first interview
     in the garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard and
     relentless traits of the original.

     "What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?" asked Phoebe, with
     impatient surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a
     moment.  "It is Judge Pyncheon! You have shown it to me before!"

     "But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour" said the
     artist, presenting her with another miniature.  "I had just finished it
     when I heard you at the door."

     "This is death!" shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale.  "Judge Pyncheon
     dead!"

     "Such as there represented," said Holgrave, "he sits in the next room.
     The Judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepzibah have vanished!  I know no
     more.  All beyond is conjecture.  On returning to my solitary chamber,
     last evening, I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hepzibah's
     room, or Clifford's; no stir nor footstep about the house.  This
     morning, there was the same death-like quiet.  From my window, I
     overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that your relatives were seen
     leaving the house in the midst of yesterday's storm.  A rumor reached
     me, too, of Judge Pyncheon being missed.  A feeling which I cannot
     describe--an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or
     consummation--impelled me to make my way into this part of the house,
     where I discovered what you see.  As a point of evidence that may be
     useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial valuable to myself,--for,
     Phoebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with
     that man's fate,--I used the means at my disposal to preserve this
     pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon's death."

     Even in her agitation, Phoebe could not help remarking the calmness of
     Holgrave's demeanor.  He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole
     awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had received the fact into his mind
     without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening
     inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could
     almost have been prophesied.

     "Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in witnesses?"
     inquired she with a painful shudder.  "It is terrible to be here alone!"

     "But Clifford!" suggested the artist.  "Clifford and Hepzibah! We must
     consider what is best to be done in their behalf.  It is a wretched
     fatality that they should have disappeared! Their flight will throw the
     worst coloring over this event of which it is susceptible.  Yet how
     easy is the explanation, to those who know them! Bewildered and
     terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one, which
     was attended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford, they have
     had no idea but of removing themselves from the scene.  How miserably
     unfortunate! Had Hepzibah but shrieked aloud,--had Clifford flung wide
     the door, and proclaimed Judge Pyncheon's death,--it would have been,
     however awful in itself, an event fruitful of good consequences to
     them.  As I view it, it would have gone far towards obliterating the
     black stain on Clifford's character."

     "And how," asked Phoebe, "could any good come from what is so very
     dreadful?"

     "Because," said the artist, "if the matter can be fairly considered and
     candidly interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Pyncheon could not
     have come unfairly to his end.  This mode of death had been an
     idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; not often
     occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking
     individuals about the Judge's time of life, and generally in the
     tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath.  Old
     Maule's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical
     predisposition in the Pyncheon race.  Now, there is a minute and almost
     exact similarity in the appearances connected with the death that
     occurred yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford's uncle
     thirty years ago.   It is true, there was a certain arrangement of
     circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it possible nay,
     as men look at these things, probable, or even certain--that old
     Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by Clifford's hands."

     "Whence came those circumstances?" exclaimed Phoebe.  "He being
     innocent, as we know him to be!"

     "They were arranged," said Holgrave,--"at least such has long been my
     conviction,--they were arranged after the uncle's death, and before it
     was made public, by the man who sits in yonder parlor.  His own death,
     so like that former one, yet attended by none of those suspicious
     circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a punishment
     for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clifford. But
     this flight,--it distorts everything! He may be in concealment, near at
     hand.  Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge's
     death, the evil might be rectified."

     "We must not hide this thing a moment longer!" said Phoebe.  "It is
     dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts.  Clifford is innocent.
     God will make it manifest! Let us throw open the doors, and call all
     the neighborhood to see the truth!"

     "You are right, Phoebe," rejoined Holgrave.  "Doubtless you are right."

     Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phoebe's
     sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue with
     society, and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary
     rules.  Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the
     precincts of common life.  On the contrary, he gathered a wild
     enjoyment,--as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a
     desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind,--such a flower of momentary
     happiness he gathered from his present position.  It separated Phoebe
     and himself from the world, and bound them to each other, by their
     exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon's mysterious death, and the
     counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it.  The secret, so
     long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a
     spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that
     of an island in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt
     them, standing on its widely sundered shores.   Meanwhile, all the
     circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together; they
     were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one
     another's side, through a shadow-haunted passage.  The image of awful
     Death, which filled the house, held them united by his stiffened grasp.

     These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not
     otherwise have flowered so.  Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave's
     purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs.  "Why do we delay
     so?" asked Phoebe.  "This secret takes away my breath! Let us throw
     open the doors!"

     "In all our lives there can never come another moment like this!" said
     Holgrave.  "Phoebe, is it all terror?--nothing but terror?  Are you
     conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life
     worth living for?"

     "It seems a sin," replied Phoebe, trembling, "to think of joy at such a
     time!"

     "Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me the hour before you
     came!" exclaimed the artist.  "A dark, cold, miserable hour!  The
     presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything;
     he made the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of
     guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt.  The sense of it
     took away my youth.  I never hoped to feel young again! The world
     looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my past life, so lonesome and
     dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy
     shapes!  But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and
     joy came in with you! The black moment became at once a blissful one.
     It must not pass without the spoken word.  I love you!"

     "How can you love a simple girl like me?" asked Phoebe, compelled by
     his earnestness to speak.  "You have many, many thoughts, with which I
     should try in vain to sympathize.  And I,--I, too,--I have tendencies
     with which you would sympathize as little.  That is less matter.  But I
     have not scope enough to make you happy."

     "You are my only possibility of happiness!" answered Holgrave.  "I have
     no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!"

     "And then--I am afraid!" continued Phoebe, shrinking towards Holgrave,
     even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected
     her.  "You will lead me out of my own quiet path.  You will make me
     strive to follow you where it is pathless.  I cannot do so.  It is not
     my nature.  I shall sink down and perish!"

     "Ah, Phoebe!" exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile that
     was burdened with thought.

     "It will be far otherwise than as you forebode.  The world owes all its
     onward impulses to men ill at ease.  The happy man inevitably confines
     himself within ancient limits.  I have a presentiment that, hereafter,
     it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences,--perhaps, even, in
     due time, to build a house for another generation,--in a word, to
     conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society.  Your
     poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine."

     "I would not have it so!" said Phoebe earnestly.

     "Do you love me?" asked Holgrave.  "If we love one another, the moment
     has room for nothing more.  Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied.  Do
     you love me, Phoebe?"

     "You look into my heart," said she, letting her eyes drop.  "You know I
     love you!"

     And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle
     was wrought, without which every human existence is a blank.  The bliss
     which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this
     youth and maiden.  They were conscious of nothing sad nor old.  They
     transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the two
     first dwellers in it.  The dead man, so close beside them, was
     forgotten.  At such a crisis, there is no death; for immortality is
     revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere.

     But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!

     "Hark!" whispered Phoebe.  "Somebody is at the street door!"

     "Now let us meet the world!" said Holgrave.  "No doubt, the rumor of
     Judge Pyncheon's visit to this house, and the flight of Hepzibah and
     Clifford, is about to lead to the investigation of the premises.  We
     have no way but to meet it.  Let us open the door at once."

     But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door,--even
     before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had
     passed,--they heard footsteps in the farther passage.  The door,
     therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked,--which Holgrave,
     indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to
     enter,--must have been opened from without.  The sound of footsteps was
     not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of strangers would
     naturally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they
     knew themselves unwelcome.  It was feeble, as of persons either weak or
     weary; there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the
     listeners.

     "Can it be?" whispered Holgrave.

     "It is they!" answered Phoebe.  "Thank God!--thank God!"

     And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe's whispered ejaculation, they
     heard Hepzibah's voice more distinctly.

     "Thank God, my brother, we are at home!"

     "Well!--Yes!--thank God!" responded Clifford.  "A dreary home,
     Hepzibah! But you have done well to bring me hither! Stay! That parlor
     door is open.  I cannot pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor,
     where I used,--oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has
     befallen us,--where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe!"

     But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it.
     They had not made many steps,--in truth, they were lingering in the
     entry, with the listlessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what
     to do next,--when Phoebe ran to meet them.  On beholding her, Hepzibah
     burst into tears.  With all her might, she had staggered onward beneath
     the burden of grief and responsibility, until now that it was safe to
     fling it down.  Indeed, she had not energy to fling it down, but had
     ceased to uphold it, and suffered it to press her to the earth.
     Clifford appeared the stronger of the two.

     "It is our own little Phoebe!--Ah! and Holgrave with, her" exclaimed
     he, with a glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile, beautiful,
     kind, but melancholy.  "I thought of you both, as we came down the
     street, and beheld Alice's Posies in full bloom.  And so the flower of
     Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house to-day."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The morning is gloriously sunny. The once old and dark Pyncheon house now seems alive and happy, and Alice Pyncheon's posies glow red in a corner of one of the upper mossy eaves. Uncle Venner tries to obtain some leftover vegetables for his pigs, but no one answers his knock at the Pyncheon house, although Holgrave yells a greeting to him. Various neighbors and potential customers of the shop gossip that Hepzibah and her brother must have gone to Judge Pyncheon's country estate. The passing butcher is also annoyed when Hepzibah fails to emerge and buy some choice cuts from him. The young Italian hurdy-gurdy player and his monkey give a performance, but even they fail to elicit any response from the house. A rumor then erupts that the Judge has been murdered, and thus the city marshal is consulted. Crowds suddenly begin to avoid the house, but a few daring young boys race each other past its gloomy confines. Soon Phoebe returns from the country; observing the untidy garden, she too senses a change. As she tries a door near the garden, it opens, oddly, from the inside. Holgrave then gently leads the anxious girl to a big, empty room, where he asks for her wisdom and strength as he shows her a recent picture which he just made of Judge Pyncheon, sitting in death. Worried about Hepzibah and Clifford, Holgrave explains that for certain reasons, Clifford will probably be associated with these events. It is possible, Holgrave explains, that the Colonel, the uncle, and now the Judge all died because of a similar hereditary weakness. He adds that, in his opinion, the natural death of the bachelor Pyncheon uncle was staged by the Judge to look like murder, a murder for which Clifford was unjustly imprisoned. For a brief moment, Holgrave and Phoebe forget the presence of death and exchange tender vows of love, in spite of her brief objection that she is too simple for his pathless ways.