Chapter: WHEN Phoebe awoke,--which she did with the early twittering of the
conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,--she heard movements below
stairs, and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen.
She stood by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose,
    as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its
    contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to read
    them.  If any volume could have manifested its essential wisdom in the
    mode suggested, it would certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah's
    hand; and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have streamed
    with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges,
    puddings, cakes, and Christmas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture
    and concoction.  It was a cookery book, full of innumerable old
    fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with engravings, which
    represented the arrangements of the table at such banquets as it might
    have befitted a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle.  And,
    amid these rich and potent devices of the culinary art (not one of
            which, probably, had been tested, within the memory of any man's
            grandfather), poor Hepzibah was seeking for some nimble little titbit,
    which, with what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she
    might toss up for breakfast.

    Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume, and inquired
    of Phoebe whether old Speckle, as she called one of the hens, had laid
    an egg the preceding day.  Phoebe ran to see, but returned without the
    expected treasure in her hand.  At that instant, however, the blast of
    a fish-dealer's conch was heard, announcing his approach along the
    street.  With energetic raps at the shop-window, Hepzibah summoned the
    man in, and made purchase of what he warranted as the finest mackerel
    in his cart, and as fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so early
    in the season.  Requesting Phoebe to roast some coffee,--which she
    casually observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept that each of the
    small berries ought to be worth its weight in gold,--the maiden lady
    heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace in such
    quantity as soon to drive the lingering dusk out of the kitchen.  The
    country-girl, willing to give her utmost assistance, proposed to make
    an Indian cake, after her mother's peculiar method, of easy
    manufacture, and which she could vouch for as possessing a richness,
    and, if rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled by any other mode of
    breakfast-cake.  Hepzibah gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon the
    scene of savory preparation.  Perchance, amid their proper element of
    smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-constructed chimney, the ghosts
    of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or peeped down the great
    breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of the projected meal,
    yet ineffectually pining to thrust their shadowy hands into each
    inchoate dish.  The half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out
    of their hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy
    atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble.

    Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the truth, had
    fairly incurred her present meagreness by often choosing to go without
    her dinner rather than be attendant on the rotation of the spit, or
    ebullition of the pot.  Her zeal over the fire, therefore, was quite an
    heroic test of sentiment.  It was touching, and positively worthy of
    tears (if Phoebe, the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts
            aforesaid, had not been better employed than in shedding them), to see
    her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the
    mackerel.  Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry.
    She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of
    attention as if,--we know not how to express it otherwise,--as if her
    own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were
    involved in its being done precisely to a turn!

    Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged
    and well-provisioned breakfast-table.  We come to it freshly, in the
    dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are
    in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights
    of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any
    very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for
    yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature.
    The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests have a
    piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more
    rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner.
    Hepzibah's small and ancient table, supported on its slender and
    graceful legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked
    worthy to be the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of
    parties.  The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the
    shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha might have
    gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope
    over a modern breakfast-table.  Phoebe's Indian cakes were the sweetest
    offering of all,--in their hue befitting the rustic altars of the
    innocent and golden age,--or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling
    some of the bread which was changed to glistening gold when Midas tried
    to eat it.  The butter must not be forgotten,--butter which Phoebe
    herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her
    cousin as a propitiatory gift,--smelling of clover-blossoms, and
    diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled
    parlor.  All this, with the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups
    and saucers, and the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah's
            only other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set
    out a board at which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyncheon's guests
    need not have scorned to take his place.  But the Puritan's face
    scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his
    appetite.

    By way of contributing what grace she could, Phoebe gathered some roses
    and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and
    arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its
    handle, was so much the fitter for a flower-vase.  The early
    sunshine--as fresh as that which peeped into Eve's bower while she and
    Adam sat at breakfast there--came twinkling through the branches of the
    pear-tree, and fell quite across the table.  All was now ready.  There
    were chairs and plates for three.  A chair and plate for Hepzibah,--the
    same for Phoebe,--but what other guest did her cousin look for?

    Throughout this preparation there had been a constant tremor in
    Hepzibah's frame; an agitation so powerful that Phoebe could see the
    quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the
    kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor.  Its
    manifestations were so various, and agreed so little with one another,
    that the girl knew not what to make of it.  Sometimes it seemed an
    ecstasy of delight and happiness.  At such moments, Hepzibah would
    fling out her arms, and infold Phoebe in them, and kiss her cheek as
    tenderly as ever her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable
    impulse, and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which
    she must needs pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room.  The
    next moment, without any visible cause for the change, her unwonted joy
    shrank back, appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning; or
    it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of her heart, where
    it had long lain chained, while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place
    of the imprisoned joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised,--a sorrow as
    black as that was bright.  She often broke into a little, nervous,
    hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could be; and forthwith,
    as if to try which was the most touching, a gush of tears would follow;
or perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded our
poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rainbow.
Towards Phoebe, as we have said, she was affectionate,--far tenderer
than ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except for that one kiss
on the preceding night,--yet with a continually recurring pettishness
and irritability.  She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside
all the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and the
next instant renew the just-forgiven injury.

At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Phoebe's
hand in her own trembling one.

"Bear with me, my dear child," she cried; "for truly my heart is full
to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Phoebe, though I speak so
roughly.  Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be
kind, and only kind!"

"My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?" asked
Phoebe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy.  "What is it that moves you
so?"

"Hush! hush! He is coming!" whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping her
eyes. "Let him see you first, Phoebe; for you are young and rosy, and
cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no.  He always liked
bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it.
He never could abide tears.  There; draw the curtain a little, so that
the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let there be a
good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some
people are.  He has had but little sunshine in his life,--poor
Clifford,--and, oh, what a black shadow.  Poor, poor Clifford!"

Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather to her own heart
than to Phoebe, the old gentlewoman stepped on tiptoe about the room,
     making such arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis.

     Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above stairs.  Phoebe
     recognized it as the same which had passed upward, as through her
     dream, in the night-time.  The approaching guest, whoever it might be,
     appeared to pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or
     thrice in the descent; he paused again at the foot.  Each time, the
     delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness of
     the purpose which had set him in motion, or as if the person's feet
     came involuntarily to a stand-still because the motive-power was too
     feeble to sustain his progress.  Finally, he made a long pause at the
     threshold of the parlor.  He took hold of the knob of the door; then
     loosened his grasp without opening it.  Hepzibah, her hands
     convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the entrance.

     "Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don't look so!" said Phoebe, trembling; for
     her cousin's emotion, and this mysteriously reluctant step, made her
     feel as if a ghost were coming into the room.  "You really frighten me!
     Is something awful going to happen?"

     "Hush!" whispered Hepzibah.  "Be cheerful! whatever may happen, be
     nothing but cheerful!"

     The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that Hepzibah, unable
     to endure the suspense, rushed forward, threw open the door, and led in
     the stranger by the hand.  At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly
     personage, in an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and
     wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length.  It quite
     overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared
     vaguely about the room.  After a very brief inspection of his face, it
     was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one
     as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first
     journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward.  Yet there
     were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a
     free and determined gait.  It was the spirit of the man that could not
     walk.  The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding it had
     the light of reason in it--seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to
     die away, and feebly to recover itself again.  It was like a flame
     which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it
     more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly
     upward,--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought
     either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once
     extinguished.

     For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still,
     retaining Hepzibah's hand instinctively, as a child does that of the
     grown person who guides it.  He saw Phoebe, however, and caught an
     illumination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed,
     threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected
     brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the
     sunshine.  He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an
     ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy.  Imperfect as it was, however,
     it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace,
     such as no practised art of external manners could have attained.  It
     was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected
     afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole man.

     "Dear Clifford," said Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes a
     wayward infant, "this is our cousin Phoebe,--little Phoebe
     Pyncheon,--Arthur's only child, you know.  She has come from the
     country to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grown to be very
     lonely now."

     "Phoebe--Phoebe Pyncheon?--Phoebe?" repeated the guest, with a strange,
     sluggish, ill-defined utterance.  "Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No
     matter.  She is very welcome!"

     "Come, dear Clifford, take this chair," said Hepzibah, leading him to
     his place.  "Pray, Phoebe, lower the curtain a very little more.  Now
     let us begin breakfast."

     The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and looked
     strangely around.  He was evidently trying to grapple with the present
     scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more satisfactory
     distinctness.  He desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in
     the low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some
     other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses.  But the
     effort was too great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary
     success.  Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his
     place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took their
     departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy figure--a
     substantial emptiness, a material ghost--to occupy his seat at table.
     Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in
     his eyeballs.  It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and
     was doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and light up
     intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed
     to be a forlorn inhabitant.

     At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still imperfect animation,
     Phoebe became convinced of what she had at first rejected as too
     extravagant and startling an idea.  She saw that the person before her
     must have been the original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin
     Hepzibah's possession.  Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she
     had at once identified the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped him,
     as the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that so elaborately
     represented in the picture.  This old, faded garment, with all its
     pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to
     translate the wearer's untold misfortune, and make it perceptible to
     the beholder's eye.  It was the better to be discerned, by this
     exterior type, how worn and old were the soul's more immediate
     garments; that form and countenance, the beauty and grace of which had
     almost transcended the skill of the most exquisite of artists.  It
     could the more adequately be known that the soul of the man must have
     suffered some miserable wrong, from its earthly experience.  There he
     seemed to sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the
     world, but through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the
     same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which
     Malbone--venturing a happy touch, with suspended breath--had imparted
     to the miniature! There had been something so innately characteristic
     in this look, that all the dusky years, and the burden of unfit
     calamity which had fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy
     it.

     Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant coffee, and
     presented it to her guest.  As his eyes met hers, he seemed bewildered
     and disquieted.

     "Is this you, Hepzibah?" he murmured sadly; then, more apart, and
     perhaps unconscious that he was overheard, "How changed!  how changed!
     And is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow so?"

     Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which time and her
     near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort, had rendered so
     habitual that any vehemence of mood invariably evoked it.  But at the
     indistinct murmur of his words her whole face grew tender, and even
     lovely, with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features
     disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.

     "Angry!" she repeated; "angry with you, Clifford!"

     Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive and really
     exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain
     something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for
     asperity. It was as if some transcendent musician should draw a
     soul-thrilling sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its
     physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony,--so deep
     was the sensibility that found an organ in Hepzibah's voice!

     "There is nothing but love here, Clifford," she added,--"nothing but
     love! You are at home!"

     The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did not half light up
     his face.  Feeble as it was, however, and gone in a moment, it had a
     charm of wonderful beauty.  It was followed by a coarser expression; or
     one that had the effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of
     his countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to temper it.
     It was a look of appetite.  He ate food with what might almost be
     termed voracity; and seemed to forget himself, Hepzibah, the young
     girl, and everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which
     the bountifully spread table afforded.  In his natural system, though
     high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of
     the palate was probably inherent.  It would have been kept in check,
     however, and even converted into an accomplishment, and one of the
     thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his more ethereal
     characteristics retained their vigor.  But as it existed now, the
     effect was painful and made Phoebe droop her eyes.

     In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance of the yet
     untasted coffee.  He quaffed it eagerly.  The subtle essence acted on
     him like a charmed draught, and caused the opaque substance of his
     animal being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a
     spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than
     hitherto.

     "More, more!" he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if
     anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him.  "This is
     what I need! Give me more!"

     Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more erect, and
     looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note of what it rested
     on.  It was not so much that his expression grew more intellectual;
     this, though it had its share, was not the most peculiar effect.
     Neither was what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to
     present itself in remarkable prominence.  But a certain fine temper of
     being was now not brought out in full relief, but changeably and
     imperfectly betrayed, of which it was the function to deal with all
     beautiful and enjoyable things.  In a character where it should exist
     as the chief attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite
     taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness.  Beauty would be
     his life; his aspirations would all tend toward it; and, allowing his
     frame and physical organs to be in consonance, his own developments
     would likewise be beautiful.  Such a man should have nothing to do with
     sorrow; nothing with strife; nothing with the martyrdom which, in an
     infinite variety of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will,
     and conscience, to fight a battle with the world.  To these heroic
     tempers, such martyrdom is the richest meed in the world's gift.  To
     the individual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due
     proportion with the severity of the infliction.  He had no right to be
     a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy and so feeble for all
     other purposes, a generous, strong, and noble spirit would, methinks,
     have been ready to sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have
     planned for itself,--it would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in
     its regard,--if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come
     tempered to such a man.

     Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clifford's nature to
     be a Sybarite.  It was perceptible, even there, in the dark old parlor,
     in the inevitable polarity with which his eyes were attracted towards
     the quivering play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage.  It was
     seen in his appreciating notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of
     which he inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization
     so refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it.  It was
     betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he regarded Phoebe, whose
     fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and flowers,--their
     essence, in a prettier and more agreeable mode of manifestation.  Not
     less evident was this love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the
     instinctive caution with which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from
     his hostess, and wandered to any quarter rather than come back.  It was
     Hepzibah's misfortune,--not Clifford's fault.  How could he,--so yellow
     as she was, so wrinkled, so sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a
     turban on her head, and that most perverse of scowls contorting her
     brow,--how could he love to gaze at her? But, did he owe her no
     affection for so much as she had silently given? He owed her nothing.
     A nature like Clifford's can contract no debts of that kind.  It is--we
     say it without censure, nor in diminution of the claim which it
     indefeasibly possesses on beings of another mould--it is always selfish
     in its essence; and we must give it leave to be so, and heap up our
     heroic and disinterested love upon it so much the more, without a
     recompense.  Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or, at least, acted on the
     instinct of it.  So long estranged from what was lovely as Clifford had
     been, she rejoiced--rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret
     purpose to shed tears in her own chamber that he had brighter objects
     now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features.  They never
     possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him
     would long since have destroyed it.

     The guest leaned back in his chair.  Mingled in his countenance with a
     dreamy delight, there was a troubled look of effort and unrest.  He was
     seeking to make himself more fully sensible of the scene around him;
     or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was
     vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some added brilliancy and
     more durable illusion.

     "How pleasant!--How delightful!" he murmured, but not as if addressing
     any one.  "Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open
     window! An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those
     flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, how
     blooming!--a flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops!
     Ah! this must be all a dream!  A dream! A dream! But it has quite
     hidden the four stone walls!"

     Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or a dungeon had
     come over it; there was no more light in its expression than might have
     come through the iron grates of a prison-window--still lessening, too,
     as if he were sinking farther into the depths.  Phoebe (being of that
             quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained
             from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was going
             forward) now felt herself moved to address the stranger.

     "Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning in the garden,"
     said she, choosing a small crimson one from among the flowers in the
     vase.  "There will be but five or six on the bush this season.  This is
     the most perfect of them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it.
     And how sweet it is!--sweet like no other rose! One can never forget
     that scent!"

     "Ah!--let me see!--let me hold it!" cried the guest, eagerly seizing
     the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to remembered odors, brought
     innumerable associations along with the fragrance that it exhaled.
     "Thank you! This has done me good.  I remember how I used to prize this
     flower,--long ago, I suppose, very long ago!--or was it only yesterday?
     It makes me feel young again!  Am I young? Either this remembrance is
     singularly distinct, or this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind
     of the fair young girl! Thank you! Thank you!"

     The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson rose afforded
     Clifford the brightest moment which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table.
     It might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon
     afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his
     dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like a
     ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one.  The guest made an
     impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed Hepzibah with what might
     easily be recognized as the licensed irritability of a petted member of
     the family.

     "Hepzibah!--Hepzibah!" cried he with no little force and distinctness,
     "why do you keep that odious picture on the wall?  Yes, yes!--that is
     precisely your taste! I have told you, a thousand times, that it was
     the evil genius of the house!--my evil genius particularly! Take it
     down, at once!"

     "Dear Clifford," said Hepzibah sadly, "you know it cannot be!"

     "Then, at all events," continued he, still speaking with some energy,
     "pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad enough to hang in folds,
     and with a golden border and tassels.  I cannot bear it! It must not
     stare me in the face!"

     "Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered," said Hepzibah
     soothingly.  "There is a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs,--a
     little faded and moth-eaten, I'm afraid,--but Phoebe and I will do
     wonders with it."

     "This very day, remember" said he; and then added, in a low,
     self-communing voice, "Why should we live in this dismal house at all?
     Why not go to the South of France?--to Italy?--Paris, Naples, Venice,
     Rome? Hepzibah will say we have not the means.  A droll idea that!"

     He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning
     towards Hepzibah.

     But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were marked, through
     which he had passed, occurring in so brief an interval of time, had
     evidently wearied the stranger.  He was probably accustomed to a sad
     monotony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as
     stagnating in a pool around his feet.  A slumberous veil diffused
     itself over his countenance, and had an effect, morally speaking, on
     its naturally delicate and elegant outline, like that which a brooding
     mist, with no sunshine in it, throws over the features of a landscape.
     He appeared to become grosser,--almost cloddish.  If aught of interest
     or beauty--even ruined beauty--had heretofore been visible in this man,
     the beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own
     imagination of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over that
     visage, and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes.

     Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle
     of the shop-bell made itself audible.  Striking most disagreeably on
     Clifford's auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his
     nerves, it caused him to start upright out of his chair.

     "Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance have we now in the
     house?" cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience--as a matter of
     course, and a custom of old--on the one person in the world that loved
     him.  "I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it?
     In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?"

     It was very remarkable into what prominent relief--even as if a dim
     picture should leap suddenly from its canvas--Clifford's character was
     thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance.  The secret was, that an
     individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his
     sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart.  It is
     even possible--for similar cases have often happened--that if Clifford,
     in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste
     to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this
     period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affections.  Shall
     we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity
     may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom?

     "Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears," said
     Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame.
     "It is very disagreeable even to me.  But, do you know, Clifford, I
     have something to tell you? This ugly noise,--pray run, Phoebe, and see
     who is there!--this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!"

     "Shop-bell!" repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.

     "Yes, our shop-bell," said Hepzibah, a certain natural dignity, mingled
     with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner.  "For you must
     know, dearest Clifford, that we are very poor.  And there was no other
     resource, but either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push
     aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for
     it,--no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence with my
     own hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve.  But you were to
     be given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford," added she,
     with a wretched smile, "that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace
     on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front gable?  Our
     great-great-grandfather did the same, when there was far less need! Are
     you ashamed of me?"

     "Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Hepzibah?" said
     Clifford,--not angrily, however; for when a man's spirit has been
     thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offences, but never
     resentful of great ones.  So he spoke with only a grieved emotion.  "It
     was not kind to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?"

     And then the unnerved man--he that had been born for enjoyment, but had
     met a doom so very wretched--burst into a woman's passion of tears.  It
     was but of brief continuance, however; soon leaving him in a quiescent,
     and, to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable state.  From
     this mood, too, he partially rallied for an instant, and looked at
     Hepzibah with a smile, the keen, half-derisory purport of which was a
     puzzle to her.

     "Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?" said he.

     Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, Clifford fell
     asleep.  Hearing the more regular rise and fall of his breath (which,
             however, even then, instead of being strong and full, had a feeble kind
             of tremor, corresponding with the lack of vigor in his
             character),--hearing these tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized
     the opportunity to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet
     dared to do.  Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest spirit
     sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpressibly sad.  In
     this depth of grief and pity she felt that there was no irreverence in
     gazing at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face.  But no sooner was she
     a little relieved than her conscience smote her for gazing curiously at
     him, now that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away, Hepzibah
     let down the curtain over the sunny window, and left Clifford to
     slumber there.




PHOEBE, on entering the shop, beheld there the already familiar face of
the little devourer--if we can reckon his mighty deeds aright--of Jim
Crow, the elephant, the camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive.
Having expended his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in the
purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young gentleman's
present errand was on the part of his mother, in quest of three eggs
and half a pound of raisins.  These articles Phoebe accordingly
supplied, and, as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a
slight super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a
whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of
Nineveh, immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of
fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded him.  This remarkable
urchin, in truth, was the very emblem of old Father Time, both in
respect of his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because
he, as well as Time, after ingulfing thus much of creation, looked
almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment made.

After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and mumbled
something to Phoebe, which, as the whale was but half disposed of, she
could not perfectly understand.

"What did you say, my little fellow?" asked she.

"Mother wants to know" repeated Ned Higgins more distinctly, "how Old
Maid Pyncheon's brother does? Folks say he has got home."

"My cousin Hepzibah's brother?" exclaimed Phoebe, surprised at this
sudden explanation of the relationship between Hepzibah and her guest.
"Her brother! And where can he have been?"

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose, with that
look of shrewdness which a child, spending much of his time in the
street, so soon learns to throw over his features, however
unintelligent in themselves.  Then as Phoebe continued to gaze at him,
              without answering his mother's message, he took his departure.

              As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made
              his entrance into the shop.  It was the portly, and, had it possessed
              the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately
              figure of a man considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black
              suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible.
              A gold-headed cane, of rare Oriental wood, added materially to the high
              respectability of his aspect, as did also a neckcloth of the utmost
              snowy purity, and the conscientious polish of his boots.  His dark,
              square countenance, with its almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was
              naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had
              not the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate the
              harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and benevolence.  Owing,
              however, to a somewhat massive accumulation of animal substance about
              the lower region of his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous rather
              than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence, not
              altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to be.  A
              susceptible observer, at any rate, might have regarded it as affording
              very little evidence of the general benignity of soul whereof it
              purported to be the outward reflection.  And if the observer chanced to
              be ill-natured, as well as acute and susceptible, he would probably
              suspect that the smile on the gentleman's face was a good deal akin to
              the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him and his
              boot-black, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and
              preserve them.

              As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection of the
              second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree, as well as the
              commodities at the window, created a sort of gray medium, his smile
              grew as intense as if he had set his heart on counteracting the whole
              gloom of the atmosphere (besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hepzibah
                      and her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance.  On
              perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the gaunt presence of
              the old maid, a look of surprise was manifest.  He at first knit his
              brows; then smiled with more unctuous benignity than ever.

              "Ah, I see how it is!" said he in a deep voice,--a voice which, had it
              come from the throat of an uncultivated man, would have been gruff,
              but, by dint of careful training, was now sufficiently agreeable,--"I
              was not aware that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced business under
              such favorable auspices.  You are her assistant, I suppose?"

              "I certainly am," answered Phoebe, and added, with a little air of
              lady-like assumption (for, civil as the gentleman was, he evidently
                      took her to be a young person serving for wages), "I am a cousin of
              Miss Hepzibah, on a visit to her."

              "Her cousin?--and from the country? Pray pardon me, then," said the
              gentleman, bowing and smiling, as Phoebe never had been bowed to nor
              smiled on before; "in that case, we must be better acquainted; for,
              unless I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise!
              Let me see,--Mary?--Dolly?--Phoebe?--yes, Phoebe is the name! Is it
              possible that you are Phoebe Pyncheon, only child of my dear cousin and
              classmate, Arthur?  Ah, I see your father now, about your mouth! Yes,
              yes! we must be better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear.  Surely
              you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?"

              As Phoebe curtsied in reply, the Judge bent forward, with the
              pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose--considering the nearness of
              blood and the difference of age--of bestowing on his young relative a
              kiss of acknowledged kindred and natural affection.  Unfortunately
              (without design, or only with such instinctive design as gives no
               account of itself to the intellect) Phoebe, just at the critical
              moment, drew back; so that her highly respectable kinsman, with his
              body bent over the counter and his lips protruded, was betrayed into
              the rather absurd predicament of kissing the empty air.  It was a
              modern parallel to the case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much
              the more ridiculous as the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy
              matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance.  The truth
              was,--and it is Phoebe's only excuse,--that, although Judge Pyncheon's
              glowing benignity might not be absolutely unpleasant to the feminine
              beholder, with the width of a street, or even an ordinary-sized room,
              interposed between, yet it became quite too intense, when this dark,
              full-fed physiognomy (so roughly bearded, too, that no razor could ever
                      make it smooth) sought to bring itself into actual contact with the
              object of its regards.  The man, the sex, somehow or other, was
              entirely too prominent in the Judge's demonstrations of that sort.
              Phoebe's eyes sank, and, without knowing why, she felt herself blushing
              deeply under his look.   Yet she had been kissed before, and without
              any particular squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different
              cousins, younger as well as older than this dark-browned,
              grisly-bearded, white-neck-clothed, and unctuously-benevolent Judge!
              Then, why not by him?

              On raising her eyes, Phoebe was startled by the change in Judge
              Pyncheon's face.  It was quite as striking, allowing for the difference
              of scale, as that betwixt a landscape under a broad sunshine and just
              before a thunder-storm; not that it had the passionate intensity of the
              latter aspect, but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long
              brooding cloud.

              "Dear me! what is to be done now?" thought the country-girl to herself.
              "He looks as if there were nothing softer in him than a rock, nor
              milder than the east wind! I meant no harm! Since he is really my
              cousin, I would have let him kiss me, if I could!"

              Then, all at once, it struck Phoebe that this very Judge Pyncheon was
              the original of the miniature which the daguerreotypist had shown her
              in the garden, and that the hard, stern, relentless look, now on his
              face, was the same that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing
              out.  Was it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully
              concealed, the settled temper of his life?  And not merely so, but was
              it hereditary in him, and transmitted down, as a precious heirloom,
              from that bearded ancestor, in whose picture both the expression and,
              to a singular degree, the features of the modern Judge were shown as by
              a kind of prophecy?  A deeper philosopher than Phoebe might have found
              something very terrible in this idea.  It implied that the weaknesses
              and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the moral
              diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation to
              another, by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been
              able to establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to
              entail upon posterity.

              But, as it happened, scarcely had Phoebe's eyes rested again on the
              Judge's countenance than all its ugly sternness vanished; and she found
              herself quite overpowered by the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of
              benevolence, which this excellent man diffused out of his great heart
              into the surrounding atmosphere,--very much like a serpent, which, as a
              preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar
              odor.

              "I like that, Cousin Phoebe!" cried he, with an emphatic nod of
              approbation. "I like it much, my little cousin! You are a good child,
              and know how to take care of yourself. A young girl--especially if she
              be a very pretty one--can never be too chary of her lips."

              "Indeed, sir," said Phoebe, trying to laugh the matter off, "I did not
              mean to be unkind."

              Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to the inauspicious
              commencement of their acquaintance, she still acted under a certain
              reserve, which was by no means customary to her frank and genial
              nature.  The fantasy would not quit her, that the original Puritan, of
              whom she had heard so many sombre traditions,--the progenitor of the
              whole race of New England Pyncheons, the founder of the House of the
              Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely in it,--had now stept into
              the shop.  In these days of off-hand equipment, the matter was easily
              enough arranged.  On his arrival from the other world, he had merely
              found it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's, who had
              trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers,
              then, patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had exchanged
              his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under
              his chin, for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons;
              and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a
              gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries ago steps
              forward as the Judge of the passing moment!

              Of course, Phoebe was far too sensible a girl to entertain this idea in
              any other way than as matter for a smile.  Possibly, also, could the
              two personages have stood together before her eye, many points of
              difference would have been perceptible, and perhaps only a general
              resemblance.  The long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so
              unlike that which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must
              inevitably have wrought important changes in the physical system of his
              descendant.  The Judge's volume of muscle could hardly be the same as
              the Colonel's; there was undoubtedly less beef in him.  Though looked
              upon as a weighty man among his contemporaries in respect of animal
              substance, and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental
              development, well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive that
              the modern Judge Pyncheon, if weighed in the same balance with his
              ancestor, would have required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to
              keep the scale in equilibrio.  Then the Judge's face had lost the ruddy
              English hue that showed its warmth through all the duskiness of the
              Colonel's weather-beaten cheek, and had taken a sallow shade, the
              established complexion of his countrymen.  If we mistake not, moreover,
              a certain quality of nervousness had become more or less manifest, even
              in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under
              discussion.  As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance a
              quicker mobility than the old Englishman's had possessed, and keener
              vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something, on which these
              acute endowments seemed to act like dissolving acids.  This process,
              for aught we know, may belong to the great system of human progress,
              which, with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes the necessity
              for animal force, may be destined gradually to spiritualize us, by
              refining away our grosser attributes of body.  If so, Judge Pyncheon
              could endure a century or two more of such refinement as well as most
              other men.

              The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge and his
              ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as the resemblance of
              mien and feature would afford reason to anticipate.  In old Colonel
              Pyncheon's funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely canonized his
              deceased parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof
              of the church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him
              seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the spiritual
              world.  On his tombstone, too, the record is highly eulogistic; nor
              does history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, assail the
              consistency and uprightness of his character.  So also, as regards the
              Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor
              inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics,
              would venture a word against this eminent person's sincerity as a
              Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or
              courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his
              political party.  But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of
              the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that
              writes, for the public eye and for distant time,--and which inevitably
              lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so
              doing,--there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal
              gossip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony.  It is
              often instructive to take the woman's, the private and domestic, view
              of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast
              discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving and the
              pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand behind the original's back.

              For example:  tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been greedy of
              wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show of liberal expenditure, was
              said to be as close-fisted as if his gripe were of iron.  The ancestor
              had clothed himself in a grim assumption of kindliness, a rough
              heartiness of word and manner, which most people took to be the genuine
              warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and inflexible hide
              of a manly character.  His descendant, in compliance with the
              requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized this rude benevolence
              into that broad benignity of smile wherewith he shone like a noonday
              sun along the streets, or glowed like a household fire in the
              drawing-rooms of his private acquaintance.  The Puritan--if not belied
              by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day, under the
              narrator's breath--had fallen into certain transgressions to which men
              of his great animal development, whatever their faith or principles,
              must continue liable, until they put off impurity, along with the gross
              earthly substance that involves it.  We must not stain our page with
              any contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been
              whispered against the Judge.  The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his
              own household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless
              weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation, had sent
              them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves.  Here the
              parallel, in some sort, fails.  The Judge had wedded but a single wife,
              and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage.  There was
              a fable, however,--for such we choose to consider it, though, not
              impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon's marital deportment,--that the
              lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon, and never smiled again,
              because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee every
              morning at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and master.

              But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,--the
              frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line, is truly unaccountable,
              when we consider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind
              every man at the distance of one or two centuries.  We shall only add,
              therefore, that the Puritan--so, at least, says chimney-corner
              tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous
              fidelity--was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty; laying his purposes
              deep, and following them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew
              neither rest nor conscience; trampling on the weak, and, when essential
              to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the strong.  Whether the
              Judge in any degree resembled him, the further progress of our
              narrative may show.

              Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel occurred to
              Phoebe, whose country birth and residence, in truth, had left her
              pitifully ignorant of most of the family traditions, which lingered,
              like cobwebs and incrustations of smoke, about the rooms and
              chimney-corners of the House of the Seven Gables.  Yet there was a
              circumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd
              degree of horror.  She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the
              executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,--that God
              would give them blood to drink,--and likewise of the popular notion,
              that this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in
              their throats.  The latter scandal--as became a person of sense, and,
              more especially, a member of the Pyncheon family--Phoebe had set down
              for the absurdity which it unquestionably was.  But ancient
              superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in
              human breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition,
              through a series of generations, become imbued with an effect of homely
              truth.  The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and
              through.  By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look
              like them, and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home
              that their influence is usually greater than we suspect.  Thus it
              happened, that when Phoebe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon's
              throat,--rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet
              indicative of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or,
              as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,--when the girl heard this
              queer and awkward ingurgitation (which the writer never did hear, and
                      therefore cannot describe), she very foolishly started, and clasped her
              hands.

              Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phoebe to be discomposed by
              such a trifle, and still more unpardonable to show her discomposure to
              the individual most concerned in it.  But the incident chimed in so
              oddly with her previous fancies about the Colonel and the Judge, that,
              for the moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.

              "What is the matter with you, young woman?" said Judge Pyncheon, giving
              her one of his harsh looks.  "Are you afraid of anything?"

              "Oh, nothing, sir--nothing in the world!" answered Phoebe, with a
              little laugh of vexation at herself.  "But perhaps you wish to speak
              with my cousin Hepzibah.  Shall I call her?"

              "Stay a moment, if you please," said the Judge, again beaming sunshine
              out of his face.  "You seem to be a little nervous this morning.  The
              town air, Cousin Phoebe, does not agree with your good, wholesome
              country habits.  Or has anything happened to disturb you?--anything
              remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah's family?--  An arrival, eh? I thought
              so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin.  To be an inmate
              with such a guest may well startle an innocent young girl!"

              "You quite puzzle me, sir," replied Phoebe, gazing inquiringly at the
              Judge.  "There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor,
              gentle, childlike man, whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah's brother.
              I am afraid (but you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not
              quite in his sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a
              mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he would play with
              the baby as if he were only a few years older than itself.  He startle
              me!--Oh, no indeed!"

              "I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account of my
              cousin Clifford," said the benevolent Judge.  "Many years ago, when we
              were boys and young men together, I had a great affection for him, and
              still feel a tender interest in all his concerns.  You say, Cousin
              Phoebe, he appears to be weak minded.  Heaven grant him at least enough
              of intellect to repent of his past sins!"

              "Nobody, I fancy," observed Phoebe, "can have fewer to repent of."

              "And is it possible, my dear," rejoined the Judge, with a commiserating
              look, "that you have never heard of Clifford Pyncheon?--that you know
              nothing of his history? Well, it is all right; and your mother has
              shown a very proper regard for the good name of the family with which
              she connected herself.   Believe the best you can of this unfortunate
              person, and hope the best!  It is a rule which Christians should always
              follow, in their judgments of one another; and especially is it right
              and wise among near relatives, whose characters have necessarily a
              degree of mutual dependence.  But is Clifford in the parlor? I will
              just step in and see."

              "Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah," said Phoebe;
              hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to obstruct the entrance of
              so affectionate a kinsman into the private regions of the house.  "Her
              brother seemed to be just falling asleep after breakfast; and I am sure
              she would not like him to be disturbed.  Pray, sir, let me give her
              notice!"

              But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter unannounced; and
              as Phoebe, with the vivacity of a person whose movements unconsciously
              answer to her thoughts, had stepped towards the door, he used little or
              no ceremony in putting her aside.

              "No, no, Miss Phoebe!" said Judge Pyncheon in a voice as deep as a
              thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as the cloud whence it issues.
              "Stay you here! I know the house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know
              her brother Clifford likewise.--nor need my little country cousin put
              herself to the trouble of announcing me!"--in these latter words, by
              the bye, there were symptoms of a change from his sudden harshness into
              his previous benignity of manner.  "I am at home here, Phoebe, you must
              recollect, and you are the stranger.  I will just step in, therefore,
              and see for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and Hepzibah of my
              kindly feelings and best wishes.  It is right, at this juncture, that
              they should both hear from my own lips how much I desire to serve them.
              Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!"

              Such was the case.  The vibrations of the Judge's voice had reached the
              old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she sat, with face averted,
              waiting on her brother's slumber.  She now issued forth, as would
              appear, to defend the entrance, looking, we must needs say, amazingly
              like the dragon which, in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over
              an enchanted beauty.  The habitual scowl of her brow was undeniably too
              fierce, at this moment, to pass itself off on the innocent score of
              near-sightedness; and it was bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that
              seemed to confound, if not alarm him, so inadequately had he estimated
              the moral force of a deeply grounded antipathy.   She made a repelling
              gesture with her hand, and stood a perfect picture of prohibition, at
              full length, in the dark frame of the doorway.  But we must betray
              Hepzibah's secret, and confess that the native timorousness of her
              character even now developed itself in a quick tremor, which, to her
              own perception, set each of her joints at variance with its fellows.

              Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood lay behind
              Hepzibah's formidable front.  At any rate, being a gentleman of steady
              nerves, he soon recovered himself, and failed not to approach his
              cousin with outstretched hand; adopting the sensible precaution,
              however, to cover his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that,
              had it been only half as warm as it looked, a trellis of grapes might
              at once have turned purple under its summer-like exposure.  It may have
              been his purpose, indeed, to melt poor Hepzibah on the spot, as if she
              were a figure of yellow wax.

              "Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!" exclaimed the Judge most
              emphatically.  "Now, at length, you have something to live for.  Yes,
              and all of us, let me say, your friends and kindred, have more to live
              for than we had yesterday.  I have lost no time in hastening to offer
              any assistance in my power towards making Clifford comfortable.  He
              belongs to us all.  I know how much he requires,--how much he used to
              require,--with his delicate taste, and his love of the beautiful.
              Anything in my house,--pictures, books, wine, luxuries of the
              table,--he may command them all! It would afford me most heartfelt
              gratification to see him! Shall I step in, this moment?"

              "No," replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too painfully to allow of
              many words.  "He cannot see visitors!"

              "A visitor, my dear cousin!--do you call me so?" cried the Judge, whose
              sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the coldness of the phrase.  "Nay,
              then, let me be Clifford's host, and your own likewise.  Come at once
              to my house.  The country air, and all the conveniences,--I may say
              luxuries,--that I have gathered about me, will do wonders for him.  And
              you and I, dear Hepzibah, will consult together, and watch together,
              and labor together, to make our dear Clifford happy.  Come! why should
              we make more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure on my part?
              Come to me at once!"

              On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous recognition of
              the claims of kindred, Phoebe felt very much in the mood of running up
              to Judge Pyncheon, and giving him, of her own accord, the kiss from
              which she had so recently shrunk away.  It was quite otherwise with
              Hepzibah; the Judge's smile seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart
              like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times sourer than ever.

              "Clifford," said she,--still too agitated to utter more than an abrupt
              sentence,--"Clifford has a home here!"

              "May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah," said Judge Pyncheon,--reverently
              lifting his eyes towards that high court of equity to which he
              appealed,--"if you suffer any ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh
              with you in this matter.  I stand here with an open heart, willing and
              anxious to receive yourself and Clifford into it.  Do not refuse my
              good offices,--my earnest propositions for your welfare! They are such,
              in all respects, as it behooves your nearest kinsman to make.  It will
              be a heavy responsibility, cousin, if you confine your brother to this
              dismal house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom of my
              country-seat is at his command."

              "It would never suit Clifford," said Hepzibah, as briefly as before.

              "Woman!" broke forth the Judge, giving way to his resentment, "what is
              the meaning of all this? Have you other resources? Nay, I suspected as
              much! Take care, Hepzibah, take care! Clifford is on the brink of as
              black a ruin as ever befell him yet! But why do I talk with you, woman
              as you are? Make way!--I must see Clifford!"

              Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door, and seemed really
              to increase in bulk; looking the more terrible, also, because there was
              so much terror and agitation in her heart.  But Judge Pyncheon's
              evident purpose of forcing a passage was interrupted by a voice from
              the inner room; a weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating helpless
              alarm, with no more energy for self-defence than belongs to a
              frightened infant.

              "Hepzibah, Hepzibah!" cried the voice; "go down on your knees to him!
              Kiss his feet! Entreat him not to come in! Oh, let him have mercy on
              me! Mercy! mercy!"

              For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not the Judge's
              resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside, and step across the threshold
              into the parlor, whence issued that broken and miserable murmur of
              entreaty.  It was not pity that restrained him, for, at the first sound
              of the enfeebled voice, a red fire kindled in his eyes, and he made a
              quick pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim
              darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole man.  To know Judge
              Pyncheon was to see him at that moment.  After such a revelation, let
              him smile with what sultriness he would, he could much sooner turn
              grapes purple, or pumpkins yellow, than melt the iron-branded
              impression out of the beholder's memory.  And it rendered his aspect
              not the less, but more frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath
              or hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose, which annihilated
              everything but itself.

              Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and amiable man?
              Look at the Judge now! He is apparently conscious of having erred, in
              too energetically pressing his deeds of loving-kindness on persons
              unable to appreciate them.  He will await their better mood, and hold
              himself as ready to assist them then as at this moment.  As he draws
              back from the door, an all-comprehensive benignity blazes from his
              visage, indicating that he gathers Hepzibah, little Phoebe, and the
              invisible Clifford, all three, together with the whole world besides,
              into his immense heart, and gives them a warm bath in its flood of
              affection.

              "You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!" said he, first kindly
              offering her his hand, and then drawing on his glove preparatory to
              departure.  "Very great wrong! But I forgive it, and will study to make
              you think better of me.  Of course, our poor Clifford being in so
              unhappy a state of mind, I cannot think of urging an interview at
              present.  But I shall watch over his welfare as if he were my own
              beloved brother; nor do I at all despair, my dear cousin, of
              constraining both him and you to acknowledge your injustice.  When that
              shall happen, I desire no other revenge than your acceptance of the
              best offices in my power to do you."

              With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal benevolence in his
              parting nod to Phoebe, the Judge left the shop, and went smiling along
              the street.  As is customary with the rich, when they aim at the honors
              of a republic, he apologized, as it were, to the people, for his
              wealth, prosperity, and elevated station, by a free and hearty manner
              towards those who knew him; putting off the more of his dignity in due
              proportion with the humbleness of the man whom he saluted, and thereby
              proving a haughty consciousness of his advantages as irrefragably as if
              he had marched forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the way.
              On this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of Judge
              Pyncheon's kindly aspect, that (such, at least, was the rumor about
                      town) an extra passage of the water-carts was found essential, in order
              to lay the dust occasioned by so much extra sunshine!

              No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly white, and,
              staggering towards Phoebe, let her head fall on the young girl's
              shoulder.

              "O Phoebe!" murmured she, "that man has been the horror of my life!
              Shall I never, never have the courage,--will my voice never cease from
              trembling long enough to let me tell him what he is?"

              "Is he so very wicked?" asked Phoebe.  "Yet his offers were surely
              kind!"

              "Do not speak of them,--he has a heart of iron!" rejoined Hepzibah.
              "Go, now, and talk to Clifford! Amuse and keep him quiet! It would
              disturb him wretchedly to see me so agitated as I am.  There, go, dear
              child, and I will try to look after the shop."

              Phoebe went accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile, with queries
              as to the purport of the scene which she had just witnessed, and also
              whether judges, clergymen, and other characters of that eminent stamp
              and respectability, could really, in any single instance, be otherwise
              than just and upright men.   A doubt of this nature has a most
              disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with fearful
              and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, and limit-loving
              class, in which we find our little country-girl.  Dispositions more
              boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery,
              since there must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to
              grasp his share of it as a low one.  A wider scope of view, and a
              deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved
              illusory, so far as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not
              feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into chaos.  But
              Phoebe, in order to keep the universe in its old place, was fain to
              smother, in some degree, her own intuitions as to Judge Pyncheon's
              character.  And as for her cousin's testimony in disparagement of it,
              she concluded that Hepzibah's judgment was embittered by one of those
              family feuds which render hatred the more deadly by the dead and
              corrupted love that they intermingle with its native poison.

 In the morning, Phoebe tenderly helps the nervous and uneasy Hepzibah to prepare an unusually fine breakfast for Clifford, who finally appears in a faded damask gown. This soft, gray-white man is ravenously hungry and is sensually delighted with the food and the flowers which Phoebe presents to him. Since Hepzibah's grief for Clifford has made her seem dark and scowling to his beauty-hungry eyes, Clifford clearly prefers young Phoebe to Hepzibah. He demands that they cover the grim portrait of their ancestral Colonel, and he says that the shop bell is offensive to him, until his sister explains that they must now earn their living, unless they wish to accept charity from "a certain offensive hand" . The prison-ruined man bursts into tears and then falls asleep. Hepzibah gazes at him fondly, and then she hastens away. Phoebe learns about the relationship between Hepzibah and Clifford when young Ned Higgins comes for another cookie and identifies the guest as the old woman's brother. Next, Judge Pyncheon enters, with his gold-headed cane, gurgling voice, and sultry smile. He is dressed in a black suit, and he is carrying a gold-headed cane of rare, Oriental wood; the latter adds to the high respectability of his presence, as do his snow-white cravat and the conscientious polish of his boots. He has a dark, square face with almost shaggy eyebrows, but he has tried to mitigate the harsh effect by wearing a smile of exceeding good-humor and benevolence. An acute observer would probably suggest that the smile on the Judge's face is a good deal like the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him and his bootblack, respectively, a good deal of hard work to bring out and preserve. As the Judge enters Hepzibah's little shop, his smile grows, and upon encountering Phoebe, "a young rosebud of a girl," and learning that she is his relative, he tries to give her a cousinly kiss. Involuntarily, she draws back. Then she sees his smile darken, then brighten, then become almost too intense for her. After Phoebe backs away from this man's attempted kiss, she sees an uncanny resemblance between the heavily sensual man and their colonial ancestor whose portrait so frightened Clifford. On learning that Clifford is now in the house, the Judge pushes past Phoebe to go see him, but Hepzibah bars his progress, refusing him admittance, even though he tries to bribe her with all kinds of luxuries from his country home. He storms, smiles, speaks hypocritically, and when Clifford cries for them to spare him from seeing the Judge, the Judge leaves. Hepzibah explains to Phoebe that the man is an absolute horror, and the girl sadly begins to believe that evil can "roost" in high places.

