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."

 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.

