Chapter: 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.

 The Pyncheon of To-day The shop bell that so startled Clifford turns out to have announced the arrival of a new customer. This new arrival is the small boy who bought gingerbread from Hepzibah before. As the boy leaves the shop, in walks a portly man with a very noble bearing and a wide and endearing smile. This is no ordinary smile, for it seems to draw in anyone who sees it. Phoebe meets him, and the stranger at first mistakes her for a new assistant hired by Hepzibah. Once the stranger finds out who Phoebe is, however, he introduces himself as her cousin, Judge Pyncheon. As a way of greeting Phoebe, the Judge leans forward to kiss her, but Phoebe instinctively pulls back in spite of herself. This revulsion briefly annoys the Judge, and a shadow seems to pass over his face. His bright smile is suddenly replaced by a great frown, and in this frown Phoebe thinks she sees the Judge's true nature, albeit only for a moment. Phoebe also realizes that this Judge Pyncheon is the same man as the smiling but unforgiving figure portrayed in the daguerreotype that Holgrave showed her. Phoebe recalls Holgrave's claim that daguerreotypes, when developed in the sunlight, reveal truths about people that portraits do not. Phoebe is amazed at how similar Judge Pyncheon is to the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon: the Judge seems to be simply an updated version of the old Pyncheon patriarch. The narrator interjects at this point, remarking on the many similarities between these two personages, including a certain greediness and an ability to hide a rather ruthless nature beneath a friendly exterior. The narrator also notes that, in most respects, Judge Pyncheon is a weaker, less potent version of his ancestor. In addition to the physical similarities, Phoebe notices a more sinister connection to the past when the Judge makes a small noise in his throat, gurgling slightly as he does so. The noise makes Phoebe suddenly recall Matthew Maule's curse on Colonel Pyncheon--"God will give him blood to drink"--and the whispered rumors that the blood can supposedly be heard to gurgle in the throats of Pyncheons. Judge Pyncheon asks to speak to Hepzibah and guesses that Clifford has arrived. He suggests that Phoebe may be scared of Clifford, something she is surprised to hear and against which she protests. Judge Pyncheon cryptically implies to her, however, that Clifford has done something terrible, but that it is best she think well of him and so remain ignorant of what he has done. The Judge says he wants to have a word with Clifford. As the Judge moves past Phoebe toward the kitchen, Hepzibah appears and resolutely blocks his way. In an effort to soften her, Judge Pyncheon makes a kindly offer to support Hepzibah and Clifford financially, but Hepzibah refuses, her eyes glowing with bitterness and maybe even hatred. From the kitchen, Clifford, who is now awake, begs Hepzibah to make the Judge go away, but his entreaties are more pitiable than strong. When the Judge hears the sound of Clifford's voice, however, the narrator tells us that "a red fire kindled in  eyes; and he made a quick pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim, darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole man. Hepzibah stands strong, however, and manages to prevent the Judge from entering the house. The Judge quickly calms himself and returns to his usual congeniality, adding that he hopes to visit the house later, when Clifford and Hepzibah are in a better mood. He leaves beaming his great false smile. Hepzibah collapses after the encounter and asks Phoebe to entertain Clifford for the morning. Phoebe goes to speak with the old man, deciding that there must be some old feud between Judge Pyncheon and his cousins.

