Chapter: THERE was a message brought, one day, from the worshipful Gervayse
Pyncheon to young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, desiring his immediate
presence at the House of the Seven Gables.

"And what does your master want with me?" said the carpenter to Mr.
Pyncheon's black servant.  "Does the house need any repair?  Well it
may, by this time; and no blame to my father who built it, neither! I
was reading the old Colonel's tombstone, no longer ago than last
Sabbath; and, reckoning from that date, the house has stood
seven-and-thirty years.  No wonder if there should be a job to do on
the roof."

"Don't know what massa wants," answered Scipio.  "The house is a berry
good house, and old Colonel Pyncheon think so too, I reckon;--else why
the old man haunt it so, and frighten a poor nigga, As he does?"

"Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that I'm coming," said
the carpenter with a laugh.  "For a fair, workmanlike job, he'll find
me his man.  And so the house is haunted, is it? It will take a tighter
workman than I am to keep the spirits out of the Seven Gables.  Even if
the Colonel would be quiet," he added, muttering to himself, "my old
grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty sure to stick to the Pyncheons
as long as their walls hold together."

"What's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?" asked Scipio.
"And what for do you look so black at me?"

"No matter, darky," said the carpenter.  "Do you think nobody is to
look black but yourself? Go tell your master I'm coming; and if you
happen to see Mistress Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule's humble
respects to her.  She has brought a fair face from Italy,--fair, and
gentle, and proud,--has that same Alice Pyncheon!"

"He talk of Mistress Alice!" cried Scipio, as he returned from his
errand.  "The low carpenter-man! He no business so much as to look at
her a great way off!"

This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be observed, was a
person little understood, and not very generally liked, in the town
where he resided; not that anything could be alleged against his
integrity, or his skill and diligence in the handicraft which he
exercised.  The aversion (as it might justly be called) with which many
persons regarded him was partly the result of his own character and
deportment, and partly an inheritance.

He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one of the early
settlers of the town, and who had been a famous and terrible wizard in
his day.  This old reprobate was one of the sufferers when Cotton
Mather, and his brother ministers, and the learned judges, and other
wise men, and Sir William Phipps, the sagacious governor, made such
laudable efforts to weaken the great enemy of souls, by sending a
multitude of his adherents up the rocky pathway of Gallows Hill.  Since
those days, no doubt, it had grown to be suspected that, in consequence
of an unfortunate overdoing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the
proceedings against the witches had proved far less acceptable to the
Beneficent Father than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were intended
to distress and utterly overwhelm.  It is not the less certain,
   however, that awe and terror brooded over the memories of those who
   died for this horrible crime of witchcraft.  Their graves, in the
   crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be incapable of retaining the
   occupants who had been so hastily thrust into them.  Old Matthew Maule,
   especially, was known to have as little hesitation or difficulty in
   rising out of his grave as an ordinary man in getting out of bed, and
   was as often seen at midnight as living people at noonday.  This
   pestilent wizard (in whom his just punishment seemed to have wrought no
           manner of amendment) had an inveterate habit of haunting a certain
   mansion, styled the House of the Seven Gables, against the owner of
   which he pretended to hold an unsettled claim for ground-rent.  The
   ghost, it appears,--with the pertinacity which was one of his
   distinguishing characteristics while alive,--insisted that he was the
   rightful proprietor of the site upon which the house stood.  His terms
   were, that either the aforesaid ground-rent, from the day when the
   cellar began to be dug, should be paid down, or the mansion itself
   given up; else he, the ghostly creditor, would have his finger in all
   the affairs of the Pyncheons, and make everything go wrong with them,
   though it should be a thousand years after his death.  It was a wild
   story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incredible to those who
   could remember what an inflexibly obstinate old fellow this wizard
   Maule had been.

   Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule of our story, was
   popularly supposed to have inherited some of his ancestor's
   questionable traits.  It is wonderful how many absurdities were
   promulgated in reference to the young man.  He was fabled, for example,
   to have a strange power of getting into people's dreams, and regulating
   matters there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the
   stage-manager of a theatre.  There was a great deal of talk among the
   neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones, about what they called
   the witchcraft of Maule's eye.  Some said that he could look into
   people's minds; others, that, by the marvellous power of this eye, he
   could draw people into his own mind, or send them, if he pleased, to do
   errands to his grandfather, in the spiritual world; others, again, that
   it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable faculty
   of blighting corn, and drying children into mummies with the heartburn.
   But, after all, what worked most to the young carpenter's disadvantage
   was, first, the reserve and sternness of his natural disposition, and
   next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant, and the suspicion
   of his holding heretical tenets in matters of religion and polity.

   After receiving Mr. Pyncheon's message, the carpenter merely tarried to
   finish a small job, which he happened to have in hand, and then took
   his way towards the House of the Seven Gables.  This noted edifice,
   though its style might be getting a little out of fashion, was still as
   respectable a family residence as that of any gentleman in town.  The
   present owner, Gervayse Pyncheon, was said to have contracted a dislike
   to the house, in consequence of a shock to his sensibility, in early
   childhood, from the sudden death of his grandfather.  In the very act
   of running to climb Colonel Pyncheon's knee, the boy had discovered the
   old Puritan to be a corpse.  On arriving at manhood, Mr. Pyncheon had
   visited England, where he married a lady of fortune, and had
   subsequently spent many years, partly in the mother country, and partly
   in various cities on the continent of Europe.  During this period, the
   family mansion had been consigned to the charge of a kinsman, who was
   allowed to make it his home for the time being, in consideration of
   keeping the premises in thorough repair.  So faithfully had this
   contract been fulfilled, that now, as the carpenter approached the
   house, his practised eye could detect nothing to criticise in its
   condition.  The peaks of the seven gables rose up sharply; the shingled
   roof looked thoroughly water-tight; and the glittering plaster-work
   entirely covered the exterior walls, and sparkled in the October sun,
   as if it had been new only a week ago.

   The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like the cheery
   expression of comfortable activity in the human countenance.  You could
   see, at once, that there was the stir of a large family within it.  A
   huge load of oak-wood was passing through the gateway, towards the
   outbuildings in the rear; the fat cook--or probably it might be the
   housekeeper--stood at the side door, bargaining for some turkeys and
   poultry which a countryman had brought for sale.  Now and then a
   maid-servant, neatly dressed, and now the shining sable face of a
   slave, might be seen bustling across the windows, in the lower part of
   the house.  At an open window of a room in the second story, hanging
   over some pots of beautiful and delicate flowers,--exotics, but which
   had never known a more genial sunshine than that of the New England
   autumn,--was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the flowers,
   and beautiful and delicate as they.  Her presence imparted an
   indescribable grace and faint witchery to the whole edifice.  In other
   respects, it was a substantial, jolly-looking mansion, and seemed fit
   to be the residence of a patriarch, who might establish his own
   headquarters in the front gable and assign one of the remainder to each
   of his six children, while the great chimney in the centre should
   symbolize the old fellow's hospitable heart, which kept them all warm,
   and made a great whole of the seven smaller ones.

   There was a vertical sundial on the front gable; and as the carpenter
   passed beneath it, he looked up and noted the hour.

   "Three o'clock!" said he to himself.  "My father told me that dial was
   put up only an hour before the old Colonel's death.  How truly it has
   kept time these seven-and-thirty years past! The shadow creeps and
   creeps, and is always looking over the shoulder of the sunshine!"

   It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew Maule, on being sent
   for to a gentleman's house, to go to the back door, where servants and
   work-people were usually admitted; or at least to the side entrance,
   where the better class of tradesmen made application.  But the
   carpenter had a great deal of pride and stiffness in his nature; and,
   at this moment, moreover, his heart was bitter with the sense of
   hereditary wrong, because he considered the great Pyncheon House to be
   standing on soil which should have been his own.  On this very site,
   beside a spring of delicious water, his grandfather had felled the
   pine-trees and built a cottage, in which children had been born to him;
   and it was only from a dead man's stiffened fingers that Colonel
   Pyncheon had wrested away the title-deeds.  So young Maule went
   straight to the principal entrance, beneath a portal of carved oak, and
   gave such a peal of the iron knocker that you would have imagined the
   stern old wizard himself to be standing at the threshold.

   Black Scipio answered the summons in a prodigious, hurry; but showed
   the whites of his eyes in amazement on beholding only the carpenter.

   "Lord-a-mercy, what a great man he be, this carpenter fellow!" mumbled
   Scipio, down in his throat.  "Anybody think he beat on the door with
   his biggest hammer!"

   "Here I am!" said Maule sternly.  "Show me the way to your master's
   parlor."

   As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and melancholy music
   thrilled and vibrated along the passage-way, proceeding from one of the
   rooms above stairs.  It was the harpsichord which Alice Pyncheon had
   brought with her from beyond the sea.  The fair Alice bestowed most of
   her maiden leisure between flowers and music, although the former were
   apt to droop, and the melodies were often sad.  She was of foreign
   education, and could not take kindly to the New England modes of life,
   in which nothing beautiful had ever been developed.

   As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule's arrival, black
   Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering the carpenter into his
   master's presence. The room in which this gentleman sat was a parlor of
   moderate size, looking out upon the garden of the house, and having its
   windows partly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees. It was Mr.
   Pyncheon's peculiar apartment, and was provided with furniture, in an
   elegant and costly style, principally from Paris; the floor (which was
           unusual at that day) being covered with a carpet, so skilfully and
   richly wrought that it seemed to glow as with living flowers. In one
   corner stood a marble woman, to whom her own beauty was the sole and
   sufficient garment. Some pictures--that looked old, and had a mellow
   tinge diffused through all their artful splendor--hung on the walls.
   Near the fireplace was a large and very beautiful cabinet of ebony,
   inlaid with ivory; a piece of antique furniture, which Mr. Pyncheon had
   bought in Venice, and which he used as the treasure-place for medals,
   ancient coins, and whatever small and valuable curiosities he had
   picked up on his travels. Through all this variety of decoration,
   however, the room showed its original characteristics; its low stud,
   its cross-beam, its chimney-piece, with the old-fashioned Dutch tiles;
so that it was the emblem of a mind industriously stored with foreign
ideas, and elaborated into artificial refinement, but neither larger,
    nor, in its proper self, more elegant than before.

    There were two objects that appeared rather out of place in this very
    handsomely furnished room.  One was a large map, or surveyor's plan, of
    a tract of land, which looked as if it had been drawn a good many years
    ago, and was now dingy with smoke, and soiled, here and there, with the
    touch of fingers.  The other was a portrait of a stern old man, in a
    Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and a remarkably
    strong expression of character.

    At a small table, before a fire of English sea-coal, sat Mr. Pyncheon,
    sipping coffee, which had grown to be a very favorite beverage with him
    in France.  He was a middle-aged and really handsome man, with a wig
    flowing down upon his shoulders; his coat was of blue velvet, with lace
    on the borders and at the button-holes; and the firelight glistened on
    the spacious breadth of his waistcoat, which was flowered all over with
    gold.  On the entrance of Scipio, ushering in the carpenter, Mr.
    Pyncheon turned partly round, but resumed his former position, and
    proceeded deliberately to finish his cup of coffee, without immediate
    notice of the guest whom he had summoned to his presence.  It was not
    that he intended any rudeness or improper neglect,--which, indeed, he
    would have blushed to be guilty of,--but it never occurred to him that
    a person in Maule's station had a claim on his courtesy, or would
    trouble himself about it one way or the other.

    The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth, and turned
    himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in the face.

    "You sent for me," said he.  "Be pleased to explain your business, that
    I may go back to my own affairs."

    "Ah! excuse me," said Mr. Pyncheon quietly.  "I did not mean to tax
    your time without a recompense.  Your name, I think, is Maule,--Thomas
    or Matthew Maule,--a son or grandson of the builder of this house?"

    "Matthew Maule," replied the carpenter,--"son of him who built the
    house,--grandson of the rightful proprietor of the soil."

    "I know the dispute to which you allude," observed Mr. Pyncheon with
    undisturbed equanimity.  "I am well aware that my grandfather was
    compelled to resort to a suit at law, in order to establish his claim
    to the foundation-site of this edifice.  We will not, if you please,
    renew the discussion.  The matter was settled at the time, and by the
    competent authorities,--equitably, it is to be presumed,--and, at all
    events, irrevocably.  Yet, singularly enough, there is an incidental
    reference to this very subject in what I am now about to say to you.
    And this same inveterate grudge,--excuse me, I mean no offence,--this
    irritability, which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from the
    matter."

    "If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyncheon," said the
    carpenter, "in a man's natural resentment for the wrongs done to his
    blood, you are welcome to it."

    "I take you at your word, Goodman Maule," said the owner of the Seven
    Gables, with a smile, "and will proceed to suggest a mode in which your
    hereditary resentments--justifiable or otherwise--may have had a
    bearing on my affairs.  You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon
    family, ever since my grandfather's days, have been prosecuting a still
    unsettled claim to a very large extent of territory at the Eastward?"

    "Often," replied Maule,--and it is said that a smile came over his
    face,--"very often,--from my father!"

    "This claim," continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a moment, as if to
    consider what the carpenter's smile might mean, "appeared to be on the
    very verge of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my
    grandfather's decease.  It was well known, to those in his confidence,
    that he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay.  Now, Colonel
    Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted with
    public and private business, and not at all the person to cherish
    ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out of an impracticable
    scheme.  It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that he had grounds, not
    apparent to his heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the
    matter of this Eastern claim.  In a word, I believe,--and my legal
    advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is authorized, to a
    certain extent, by the family traditions,--that my grandfather was in
    possession of some deed, or other document, essential to this claim,
    but which has since disappeared."

    "Very likely," said Matthew Maule,--and again, it is said, there was a
    dark smile on his face,--"but what can a poor carpenter have to do with
    the grand affairs of the Pyncheon family?"

    "Perhaps nothing," returned Mr. Pyncheon, "possibly much!"

    Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule and the proprietor
    of the Seven Gables, on the subject which the latter had thus broached.
    It seems (although Mr. Pyncheon had some hesitation in referring to
            stories so exceedingly absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief
    pointed to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing between
    the family of the Maules and these vast unrealized possessions of the
    Pyncheons.  It was an ordinary saying that the old wizard, hanged
    though he was, had obtained the best end of the bargain in his contest
    with Colonel Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the great
    Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground.  A very
    aged woman, recently dead, had often used the metaphorical expression,
    in her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Pyncheon lands had
    been shovelled into Maule's grave; which, by the bye, was but a very
    shallow nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill.
    Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for the missing document,
    it was a by-word that it would never be found, unless in the wizard's
    skeleton hand.  So much weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these
    fables, that (but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter
            of the fact) they had secretly caused the wizard's grave to be
    searched.  Nothing was discovered, however, except that, unaccountably,
    the right hand of the skeleton was gone.

    Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of these popular
    rumors could be traced, though rather doubtfully and indistinctly, to
    chance words and obscure hints of the executed wizard's son, and the
    father of this present Matthew Maule.  And here Mr. Pyncheon could
    bring an item of his own personal evidence into play.  Though but a
    child at the time, he either remembered or fancied that Matthew's
    father had had some job to perform on the day before, or possibly the
    very morning of the Colonel's decease, in the private room where he and
    the carpenter were at this moment talking.  Certain papers belonging to
    Colonel Pyncheon, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been
    spread out on the table.

    Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.

    "My father," he said,--but still there was that dark smile, making a
    riddle of his countenance,--"my father was an honester man than the
    bloody old Colonel! Not to get his rights back again would he have
    carried off one of those papers!"

    "I shall not bandy words with you," observed the foreign-bred Mr.
    Pyncheon, with haughty composure.  "Nor will it become me to resent any
    rudeness towards either my grandfather or myself.  A gentleman, before
    seeking intercourse with a person of your station and habits, will
    first consider whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the
    disagreeableness of the means.  It does so in the present instance."

    He then renewed the conversation, and made great pecuniary offers to
    the carpenter, in case the latter should give information leading to
    the discovery of the lost document, and the consequent success of the
    Eastern claim. For a long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a
    cold ear to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange kind
    of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon would make over to him the
    old wizard's homestead-ground, together with the House of the Seven
    Gables, now standing on it, in requital of the documentary evidence so
    urgently required.

    The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copying all its
            extravagances, my narrative essentially follows) here gives an account
    of some very strange behavior on the part of Colonel Pyncheon's
    portrait.  This picture, it must be understood, was supposed to be so
    intimately connected with the fate of the house, and so magically built
    into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very instant
    the whole edifice would come thundering down in a heap of dusty ruin.
    All through the foregoing conversation between Mr. Pyncheon and the
    carpenter, the portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and
    giving many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without
    attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists.  And finally,
    at Matthew Maule's audacious suggestion of a transfer of the
    seven-gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is averred to have lost
    all patience, and to have shown itself on the point of descending
    bodily from its frame.  But such incredible incidents are merely to be
    mentioned aside.

    "Give up this house!" exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in amazement at the
    proposal.  "Were I to do so, my grandfather would not rest quiet in his
    grave!"

    "He never has, if all stories are true," remarked the carpenter
    composedly.  "But that matter concerns his grandson more than it does
    Matthew Maule.  I have no other terms to propose."

    Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with Maule's conditions,
    still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyncheon was of opinion that they might
    at least be made matter of discussion.  He himself had no personal
    attachment for the house, nor any pleasant associations connected with
    his childish residence in it.  On the contrary, after seven-and-thirty
    years, the presence of his dead grandfather seemed still to pervade it,
    as on that morning when the affrighted boy had beheld him, with so
    ghastly an aspect, stiffening in his chair.  His long abode in foreign
    parts, moreover, and familiarity with many of the castles and ancestral
    halls of England, and the marble palaces of Italy, had caused him to
    look contemptuously at the House of the Seven Gables, whether in point
    of splendor or convenience.  It was a mansion exceedingly inadequate to
    the style of living which it would be incumbent on Mr. Pyncheon to
    support, after realizing his territorial rights.  His steward might
    deign to occupy it, but never, certainly, the great landed proprietor
    himself.  In the event of success, indeed, it was his purpose to return
    to England; nor, to say the truth, would he recently have quitted that
    more congenial home, had not his own fortune, as well as his deceased
    wife's, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion.  The Eastern claim once
    fairly settled, and put upon the firm basis of actual possession, Mr.
    Pyncheon's property--to be measured by miles, not acres--would be worth
    an earldom, and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, or enable him
    to purchase, that elevated dignity from the British monarch.  Lord
    Pyncheon!--or the Earl of Waldo!--how could such a magnate be expected
    to contract his grandeur within the pitiful compass of seven shingled
    gables?

    In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpenter's terms
    appeared so ridiculously easy that Mr. Pyncheon could scarcely forbear
    laughing in his face.  He was quite ashamed, after the foregoing
    reflections, to propose any diminution of so moderate a recompense for
    the immense service to be rendered.

    "I consent to your proposition, Maule!" cried he. "Put me in possession
    of the document essential to establish my rights, and the House of the
    Seven Gables is your own!"

    According to some versions of the story, a regular contract to the
    above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and signed and sealed in the
    presence of witnesses.  Others say that Matthew Maule was contented
    with a private written agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon pledged his
    honor and integrity to the fulfillment of the terms concluded upon.
    The gentleman then ordered wine, which he and the carpenter drank
    together, in confirmation of their bargain.  During the whole preceding
    discussion and subsequent formalities, the old Puritan's portrait seems
    to have persisted in its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without
    effect, except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass, he
    thought he beheld his grandfather frown.

    "This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected my brain
    already," he observed, after a somewhat startled look at the picture.
    "On returning to Europe, I shall confine myself to the more delicate
    vintages of Italy and France, the best of which will not bear
    transportation."

    "My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and wherever he
    pleases," replied the carpenter, as if he had been privy to Mr.
    Pyncheon's ambitious projects.  "But first, sir, if you desire tidings
    of this lost document, I must crave the favor of a little talk with
    your fair daughter Alice."

    "You are mad, Maule!" exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon haughtily; and now, at
    last, there was anger mixed up with his pride.  "What can my daughter
    have to do with a business like this?"

    Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter's part, the proprietor of
    the Seven Gables was even more thunder-struck than at the cool
    proposition to surrender his house.  There was, at least, an assignable
    motive for the first stipulation; there appeared to be none whatever
    for the last.  Nevertheless, Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the
    young lady being summoned, and even gave her father to understand, in a
    mysterious kind of explanation,--which made the matter considerably
    darker than it looked before,--that the only chance of acquiring the
    requisite knowledge was through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and
    virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Alice.  Not to encumber our
    story with Mr. Pyncheon's scruples, whether of conscience, pride, or
    fatherly affection, he at length ordered his daughter to be called.  He
    well knew that she was in her chamber, and engaged in no occupation
    that could not readily be laid aside; for, as it happened, ever since
    Alice's name had been spoken, both her father and the carpenter had
    heard the sad and sweet music of her harpsichord, and the airier
    melancholy of her accompanying voice.

    So Alice Pyncheon was summoned, and appeared.  A portrait of this young
    lady, painted by a Venetian artist, and left by her father in England,
    is said to have fallen into the hands of the present Duke of
    Devonshire, and to be now preserved at Chatsworth; not on account of
    any associations with the original, but for its value as a picture, and
    the high character of beauty in the countenance.  If ever there was a
    lady born, and set apart from the world's vulgar mass by a certain
    gentle and cold stateliness, it was this very Alice Pyncheon.  Yet
    there was the womanly mixture in her; the tenderness, or, at least, the
    tender capabilities.  For the sake of that redeeming quality, a man of
    generous nature would have forgiven all her pride, and have been
    content, almost, to lie down in her path, and let Alice set her slender
    foot upon his heart.  All that he would have required was simply the
    acknowledgment that he was indeed a man, and a fellow-being, moulded of
    the same elements as she.

    As Alice came into the room, her eyes fell upon the carpenter, who was
    standing near its centre, clad in green woollen jacket, a pair of loose
    breeches, open at the knees, and with a long pocket for his rule, the
    end of which protruded; it was as proper a mark of the artisan's
    calling as Mr. Pyncheon's full-dress sword of that gentleman's
    aristocratic pretensions.  A glow of artistic approval brightened over
    Alice Pyncheon's face; she was struck with admiration--which she made
    no attempt to conceal--of the remarkable comeliness, strength, and
    energy of Maule's figure.  But that admiring glance (which most other
            men, perhaps, would have cherished as a sweet recollection all through
            life) the carpenter never forgave.  It must have been the devil himself
    that made Maule so subtile in his preception.

    "Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?" thought he,
    setting his teeth.  "She shall know whether I have a human spirit; and
    the worse for her, if it prove stronger than her own!"

    "My father, you sent for me," said Alice, in her sweet and harp-like
    voice.  "But, if you have business with this young man, pray let me go
    again.  You know I do not love this room, in spite of that Claude, with
    which you try to bring back sunny recollections."

    "Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!" said Matthew Maule.  "My
    business with your father is over.  With yourself, it is now to begin!"

    Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry.

    "Yes, Alice," said Mr. Pyncheon, with some disturbance and confusion.
    "This young man--his name is Matthew Maule--professes, so far as I can
    understand him, to be able to discover, through your means, a certain
    paper or parchment, which was missing long before your birth.  The
    importance of the document in question renders it advisable to neglect
    no possible, even if improbable, method of regaining it.  You will
    therefore oblige me, my dear Alice, by answering this person's
    inquiries, and complying with his lawful and reasonable requests, so
    far as they may appear to have the aforesaid object in view.  As I
    shall remain in the room, you need apprehend no rude nor unbecoming
    deportment, on the young man's part; and, at your slightest wish, of
    course, the investigation, or whatever we may call it, shall
    immediately be broken off."

    "Mistress Alice Pyncheon," remarked Matthew Maule, with the utmost
    deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm in his look and tone, "will no
    doubt feel herself quite safe in her father's presence, and under his
    all-sufficient protection."

    "I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension, with my father
    at hand," said Alice with maidenly dignity.  "Neither do I conceive
    that a lady, while true to herself, can have aught to fear from
    whomsoever, or in any circumstances!"

    Poor Alice! By what unhappy impulse did she thus put herself at once on
    terms of defiance against a strength which she could not estimate?

    "Then, Mistress Alice," said Matthew Maule, handing a
    chair,--gracefully enough, for a craftsman, "will it please you only to
    sit down, and do me the favor (though altogether beyond a poor
            carpenter's deserts) to fix your eyes on mine!"

    Alice complied, She was very proud.  Setting aside all advantages of
    rank, this fair girl deemed herself conscious of a power--combined of
    beauty, high, unsullied purity, and the preservative force of
    womanhood--that could make her sphere impenetrable, unless betrayed by
    treachery within.  She instinctively knew, it may be, that some
    sinister or evil potency was now striving to pass her barriers; nor
    would she decline the contest.  So Alice put woman's might against
    man's might; a match not often equal on the part of woman.

    Her father meanwhile had turned away, and seemed absorbed in the
    contemplation of a landscape by Claude, where a shadowy and
    sun-streaked vista penetrated so remotely into an ancient wood, that it
    would have been no wonder if his fancy had lost itself in the picture's
    bewildering depths.  But, in truth, the picture was no more to him at
    that moment than the blank wall against which it hung.  His mind was
    haunted with the many and strange tales which he had heard, attributing
    mysterious if not supernatural endowments to these Maules, as well the
    grandson here present as his two immediate ancestors.  Mr. Pyncheon's
    long residence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and
    fashion,--courtiers, worldings, and free-thinkers,--had done much
    towards obliterating the grim Puritan superstitions, which no man of
    New England birth at that early period could entirely escape.  But, on
    the other hand, had not a whole community believed Maule's grandfather
    to be a wizard? Had not the crime been proved? Had not the wizard died
    for it? Had he not bequeathed a legacy of hatred against the Pyncheons
    to this only grandson, who, as it appeared, was now about to exercise a
    subtle influence over the daughter of his enemy's house?  Might not
    this influence be the same that was called witchcraft?

    Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule's figure in the
    looking-glass.  At some paces from Alice, with his arms uplifted in the
    air, the carpenter made a gesture as if directing downward a slow,
    ponderous, and invisible weight upon the maiden.

    "Stay, Maule!" exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping forward.  "I forbid
    your proceeding further!"

    "Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young man," said Alice,
    without changing her position.  "His efforts, I assure you, will prove
    very harmless."

    Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the Claude.  It was then his
    daughter's will, in opposition to his own, that the experiment should
    be fully tried.  Henceforth, therefore, he did but consent, not urge
    it.  And was it not for her sake far more than for his own that he
    desired its success? That lost parchment once restored, the beautiful
    Alice Pyncheon, with the rich dowry which he could then bestow, might
    wed an English duke or a German reigning-prince, instead of some New
    England clergyman or lawyer! At the thought, the ambitious father
    almost consented, in his heart, that, if the devil's power were needed
    to the accomplishment of this great object, Maule might evoke him.
    Alice's own purity would be her safeguard.

    With his mind full of imaginary magnificence, Mr. Pyncheon heard a
    half-uttered exclamation from his daughter.  It was very faint and low;
    so indistinct that there seemed but half a will to shape out the words,
    and too undefined a purport to be intelligible.  Yet it was a call for
    help!--his conscience never doubted it;--and, little more than a
    whisper to his ear, it was a dismal shriek, and long reechoed so, in
    the region round his heart! But this time the father did not turn.

    After a further interval, Maule spoke.

    "Behold your daughter," said he.

    Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward.  The carpenter was standing erect in
    front of Alice's chair, and pointing his finger towards the maiden with
    an expression of triumphant power, the limits of which could not be
    defined, as, indeed, its scope stretched vaguely towards the unseen and
    the infinite.  Alice sat in an attitude of profound repose, with the
    long brown lashes drooping over her eyes.

    "There she is!" said the carpenter.  "Speak to her!"

    "Alice! My daughter!" exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon.  "My own Alice!"

    She did not stir.

    "Louder!" said Maule, smiling.

    "Alice! Awake!" cried her father.  "It troubles me to see you thus!
    Awake!"

    He spoke loudly, with terror in his voice, and close to that delicate
    ear which had always been so sensitive to every discord.  But the sound
    evidently reached her not.  It is indescribable what a sense of remote,
    dim, unattainable distance betwixt himself and Alice was impressed on
    the father by this impossibility of reaching her with his voice.

    "Best touch her!" said Matthew Maule "Shake the girl, and roughly, too!
    My hands are hardened with too much use of axe, saw, and plane,--else I
    might help you!"

    Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with the earnestness of
    startled emotion.  He kissed her, with so great a heart-throb in the
    kiss, that he thought she must needs feel it.  Then, in a gust of anger
    at her insensibility, he shook her maiden form with a violence which,
    the next moment, it affrighted him to remember.  He withdrew his
    encircling arms, and Alice--whose figure, though flexible, had been
    wholly impassive--relapsed into the same attitude as before these
    attempts to arouse her.  Maule having shifted his position, her face
    was turned towards him slightly, but with what seemed to be a reference
    of her very slumber to his guidance.

    Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man of conventionalities
    shook the powder out of his periwig; how the reserved and stately
    gentleman forgot his dignity; how the gold-embroidered waistcoat
    flickered and glistened in the firelight with the convulsion of rage,
    terror, and sorrow in the human heart that was beating under it.

    "Villain!" cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his clenched fist at Maule.
    "You and the fiend together have robbed me of my daughter.  Give her
    back, spawn of the old wizard, or you shall climb Gallows Hill in your
    grandfather's footsteps!"

    "Softly, Mr. Pyncheon!" said the carpenter with scornful composure.
    "Softly, an' it please your worship, else you will spoil those rich
    lace-ruffles at your wrists! Is it my crime if you have sold your
    daughter for the mere hope of getting a sheet of yellow parchment into
    your clutch? There sits Mistress Alice quietly asleep.  Now let Matthew
    Maule try whether she be as proud as the carpenter found her awhile
    since."

    He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, subdued, inward
    acquiescence, and a bending of her form towards him, like the flame of
    a torch when it indicates a gentle draught of air.  He beckoned with
    his hand, and, rising from her chair,--blindly, but undoubtingly, as
    tending to her sure and inevitable centre,--the proud Alice approached
    him.  He waved her back, and, retreating, Alice sank again into her
    seat.

    "She is mine!" said Matthew Maule.  "Mine, by the right of the
    strongest spirit!"

    In the further progress of the legend, there is a long, grotesque, and
    occasionally awe-striking account of the carpenter's incantations (if
            so they are to be called), with a view of discovering the lost
    document.  It appears to have been his object to convert the mind of
    Alice into a kind of telescopic medium, through which Mr. Pyncheon and
    himself might obtain a glimpse into the spiritual world.  He succeeded,
    accordingly, in holding an imperfect sort of intercourse, at one
    remove, with the departed personages in whose custody the so much
    valued secret had been carried beyond the precincts of earth.  During
    her trance, Alice described three figures as being present to her
    spiritualized perception.  One was an aged, dignified, stern-looking
    gentleman, clad as for a solemn festival in grave and costly attire,
    but with a great blood-stain on his richly wrought band; the second, an
    aged man, meanly dressed, with a dark and malign countenance, and a
    broken halter about his neck; the third, a person not so advanced in
    life as the former two, but beyond the middle age, wearing a coarse
    woollen tunic and leather breeches, and with a carpenter's rule
    sticking out of his side pocket.  These three visionary characters
    possessed a mutual knowledge of the missing document.  One of them, in
    truth,--it was he with the blood-stain on his band,--seemed, unless his
    gestures were misunderstood, to hold the parchment in his immediate
    keeping, but was prevented by his two partners in the mystery from
    disburdening himself of the trust.  Finally, when he showed a purpose
    of shouting forth the secret loudly enough to be heard from his own
    sphere into that of mortals, his companions struggled with him, and
    pressed their hands over his mouth; and forthwith--whether that he were
    choked by it, or that the secret itself was of a crimson hue--there was
    a fresh flow of blood upon his band.  Upon this, the two meanly dressed
    figures mocked and jeered at the much-abashed old dignitary, and
    pointed their fingers at the stain.

    At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon.

    "It will never be allowed," said he.  "The custody of this secret, that
    would so enrich his heirs, makes part of your grandfather's
    retribution.  He must choke with it until it is no longer of any value.
    And keep you the House of the Seven Gables! It is too dear bought an
    inheritance, and too heavy with the curse upon it, to be shifted yet
    awhile from the Colonel's posterity."

    Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but--what with fear and passion--could
    make only a gurgling murmur in his throat.  The carpenter smiled.

    "Aha, worshipful sir!--so you have old Maule's blood to drink!" said he
    jeeringly.

    "Fiend in man's shape! why dost thou keep dominion over my child?"
    cried Mr. Pyncheon, when his choked utterance could make way.  "Give me
    back my daughter.  Then go thy ways; and may we never meet again!"

    "Your daughter!" said Matthew Maule.  "Why, she is fairly mine!
    Nevertheless, not to be too hard with fair Mistress Alice, I will leave
    her in your keeping; but I do not warrant you that she shall never have
    occasion to remember Maule, the carpenter."

    He waved his hands with an upward motion; and, after a few repetitions
    of similar gestures, the beautiful Alice Pyncheon awoke from her
    strange trance.  She awoke without the slightest recollection of her
    visionary experience; but as one losing herself in a momentary reverie,
    and returning to the consciousness of actual life, in almost as brief
    an interval as the down-sinking flame of the hearth should quiver again
    up the chimney.  On recognizing Matthew Maule, she assumed an air of
    somewhat cold but gentle dignity, the rather, as there was a certain
    peculiar smile on the carpenter's visage that stirred the native pride
    of the fair Alice.   So ended, for that time, the quest for the lost
    title-deed of the Pyncheon territory at the Eastward; nor, though often
    subsequently renewed, has it ever yet befallen a Pyncheon to set his
    eye upon that parchment.

    But, alas for the beautiful, the gentle, yet too haughty Alice!  A
    power that she little dreamed of had laid its grasp upon her maiden
    soul.  A will, most unlike her own, constrained her to do its grotesque
    and fantastic bidding.  Her father as it proved, had martyred his poor
    child to an inordinate desire for measuring his land by miles instead
    of acres.  And, therefore, while Alice Pyncheon lived, she was Maule's
    slave, in a bondage more humiliating, a thousand-fold, than that which
    binds its chain around the body.  Seated by his humble fireside, Maule
    had but to wave his hand; and, wherever the proud lady chanced to
    be,--whether in her chamber, or entertaining her father's stately
    guests, or worshipping at church,--whatever her place or occupation,
    her spirit passed from beneath her own control, and bowed itself to
    Maule.  "Alice, laugh!"--the carpenter, beside his hearth, would say;
    or perhaps intensely will it, without a spoken word.  And, even were it
    prayer-time, or at a funeral, Alice must break into wild laughter.
    "Alice, be sad!"--and, at the instant, down would come her tears,
    quenching all the mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a
    bonfire.  "Alice, dance."--and dance she would, not in such court-like
    measures as she had learned abroad, but some high-paced jig, or
    hop-skip rigadoon, befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making.
    It seemed to be Maule's impulse, not to ruin Alice, nor to visit her
    with any black or gigantic mischief, which would have crowned her
    sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to wreak a low, ungenerous scorn
    upon her.  Thus all the dignity of life was lost.  She felt herself too
    much abased, and longed to change natures with some worm!

    One evening, at a bridal party (but not her own; for, so lost from
            self-control, she would have deemed it sin to marry), poor Alice was
    beckoned forth by her unseen despot, and constrained, in her gossamer
    white dress and satin slippers, to hasten along the street to the mean
    dwelling of a laboring-man.  There was laughter and good cheer within;
    for Matthew Maule, that night, was to wed the laborer's daughter, and
    had summoned proud Alice Pyncheon to wait upon his bride.  And so she
    did; and when the twain were one, Alice awoke out of her enchanted
    sleep.  Yet, no longer proud,--humbly, and with a smile all steeped in
    sadness,--she kissed Maule's wife, and went her way.  It was an
    inclement night; the southeast wind drove the mingled snow and rain
    into her thinly sheltered bosom; her satin slippers were wet through
    and through, as she trod the muddy sidewalks.  The next day a cold;
    soon, a settled cough; anon, a hectic cheek, a wasted form, that sat
    beside the harpsichord, and filled the house with music!  Music in
    which a strain of the heavenly choristers was echoed! Oh; joy! For
    Alice had borne her last humiliation! Oh, greater joy! For Alice was
    penitent of her one earthly sin, and proud no more!

    The Pyncheons made a great funeral for Alice.  The kith and kin were
    there, and the whole respectability of the town besides.  But, last in
    the procession, came Matthew Maule, gnashing his teeth, as if he would
    have bitten his own heart in twain,--the darkest and wofullest man that
    ever walked behind a corpse! He meant to humble Alice, not to kill her;
    but he had taken a woman's delicate soul into his rude gripe, to play
    with--and she was dead!

 One day Matthew Maule II gets a message to come to the House of the Seven Gables. The servant who brings the message, Scipio, says the house is haunted by Colonel Pyncheon. Matthew Maule II adds that, if Colonel Pyncheon weren't haunting the place, his grandfather Matthew Maule certainly would be. Matthew Maule II sends his respects to Alice Pyncheon, the daughter of the house. Scipio thinks Maule shouldn't be thinking such thoughts about Alice. Maule is a carpenter and not widely liked in the town. The fact that his grandfather was executed for witchcraft doesn't look good to these god-fearing townspeople. Also, the villagers think that Maule has the ability to control other people with his mind. Everyone suspects that he is a wizard like his grandfather. Eventually Maule makes his way to the House of the Seven Gables. The current owner of the house is Mr. Gervayse Pyncheon, the grandson of the original Colonel Pyncheon. Apparently, he's the grandson who ran up to his grandfather and discovered him dead on the day of that housewarming party many years before. As a result, Gervayse Pyncheon hates the House of the Seven Gables. He traveled to Europe and married a wealthy woman there. While Pyncheon has been away, the rest of the family has been keeping up the house. The House of the Seven Gables looks jolly and well-filled - not as fashionable as it once was, but still very respectable. Even though he's a servant, Maule goes straight up to the front door. He doesn't care - he's filled with bitterness towards the Pyncheon family anyway. The servant, Scipio, is startled by the loudness of Maule's knock, but he lets him in. Maule hears a pleasant sound: it's young Alice Pyncheon playing her harpsichord Scipio ushers Maule into Gervayse Pyncheon's visiting room. The room has two interesting things in it: a large map of land that looks like "it had been drawn a good many years ago" , and , a portrait of a stern Puritan man. Maule demands that Pyncheon explain why he has sent for him. Pyncheon asks if Maule is aware of the Pyncheon family claim on this land in Maine. Apparently the story goes that Matthew Maule I somehow got hold of the deed before he was hanged. Gervayse Pyncheon's lawyers had Maule's grave searched, but they couldn't find the deed. They did find one weird detail: his right hand was missing. Pyncheon wants to know whether Matthew Maule's father Thomas Maule might have come away from the Colonel's study with this important piece of paper. Pyncheon promises Maule lots of money if he can produce the deed. Maule makes a counteroffer: if Pyncheon promises to abandon the House of the Seven Gables, he will help him. Pyncheon thinks it over. After all, he doesn't really like the house, and he has spent a lot of time abroad. So finally, Pyncheon agrees. Pyncheon promises that, if Maule can produce the land documents, he will give him the deed to the House of the Seven Gables. Maule also insists on speaking to Alice Pyncheon. Gervayse Pyncheon calls in his daughter. As soon as she looks at Maule, she is impressed by his handsome appearance. But Maule totally misinterprets her look: he thinks she thinks he's "a brute beast" . Maule decides to show her that he has the stronger spirit. He asks Alice to sit down and look into his eyes. Gervayse Pyncheon turns around to examine a landscape painting. Twice he turns around and thinks of stopping Maule from whatever strange ritual he's performing. But each time, he remembers how much money is in it for him if Maule produces that land deed. Finally Maule speaks: "Behold your daughter" . Alice seems to be in a deep sleep and Pyncheon can't wake her, no matter how hard he tries. Pyncheon demands that Maule give him back his daughter. Maule laughs and says she is his: he has the strongest spirit. Under hypnosis, Alice sees three men who know the secret location of the land document. The men she describes are Colonel Pyncheon, Matthew Maule I, and Thomas Maule. But the Maules won't let Colonel Pyncheon say what he knows. Matthew Maule II decides that his grandfather's curse on the Pyncheon family has to run its course. They can't leave the House of the Seven Gables yet. Pyncheon demands that Maule release Alice. Alice wakes up without any memory of what has happened to her. And so the secret deed is never found. After this hypnotic incident, Alice is never the same. Maule can make her laugh or cry in an instant, whenever he feels like it. Alice is so ashamed and embarrassed that she withdraws from society. The last humiliation is when Maule makes her come along to wait on his bride on their wedding night. When Alice comes to, she kisses the bride then goes out into the wild weather. She catches a terrible cold and slowly wastes away and dies. But frankly, she is glad to be free of Maule's humiliations. The Pyncheons hold a big funeral for Alice. Maule attends, and he looks furious. He meant to "humble" Alice, "not to kill her" .

