Chapter: SEVERAL days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough.
In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one
        inauspicious circumstance of Phoebe's departure), an easterly storm had
set in, and indefatigably apply itself to the task of making the black
roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before.
Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the interior.  Poor
Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his scanty resources of
enjoyment.  Phoebe was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the
floor.  The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping
foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at.  Nothing
flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the
brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the
shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been
suffering from drought, in the angle between the two front gables.

As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind,
   but to be, in her very person, only another phase of this gray and
   sullen spell of weather; the East-Wind itself, grim and disconsolate,
   in a rusty black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its
   head.  The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad that
   she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities, by scowling
   on them.  It is, perhaps, true that the public had something reasonably
   to complain of in her deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither
   ill-tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had
   it been possible to make it reach him.  The inutility of her best
   efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman.   She could do
   little else than sit silently in a corner of the room, when the wet
   pear-tree branches, sweeping across the small windows, created a
   noonday dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her woe-begone
   aspect.  It was no fault of Hepzibah's.  Everything--even the old
   chairs and tables, that had known what weather was for three or four
   such lifetimes as her own--looked as damp and chill as if the present
   were their worst experience.  The picture of the Puritan Colonel
   shivered on the wall.  The house itself shivered, from every attic of
   its seven gables down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all
   the better as an emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built
   for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.

   Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlor.  But the
   storm demon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove
   the smoke back again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own
   breath.  Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm,
   Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary
   chair.  On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he
   responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a
   determination not to leave his bed.  His sister made no attempt to
   change his purpose.  In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could
   hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty--so impracticable by her
   few and rigid faculties--of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but
   ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.  It
   was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might
   sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and
   unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow
   sufferer.

   But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below
   stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement.  In
   the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which
   (there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven
    Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.  She
   was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste
   for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice.  It was
   difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to
   which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the
   sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now
   stole upon her ear.  Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent
   instrument should be capable of so much melody.  Hepzibah involuntarily
   thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family,
   which were attributed to the legendary Alice.  But it was, perhaps,
   proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few
   touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations,
   and the music ceased.

   But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the
   easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to
   poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought
   the humming-birds along with it.  The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's
   performance (or Clifford's, if his we must consider it) were driven
   away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell.
   A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat
   ponderously stepping on the floor.  Hepzibah delayed a moment, while
   muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor
   in a forty years' warfare against the east wind.  A characteristic
   sound, however,--neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and
   reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious depth of chest;--impelled
   her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so
   common to women in cases of perilous emergency.  Few of her sex, on
   such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling
   Hepzibah.  But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him,
   stood up his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of
   composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance
   had excited.

   Hepzibah's presentiment had not deceived her.  It was no other than
   Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying the front door, had now
   effected his entrance into the shop.

   "How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?--and how does this most inclement
   weather affect our poor Clifford?" began the Judge; and wonderful it
   seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at
   any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile.
   "I could not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in
   any manner promote his comfort, or your own."

   "You can do nothing," said Hepzibah, controlling her agitation as well
   as she could.  "I devote myself to Clifford.  He has every comfort
   which his situation admits of."

   "But allow me to suggest, dear cousin," rejoined the Judge, "you
   err,--in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with the very best
   intentions,--but you do err, nevertheless, in keeping your brother so
   secluded.  Why insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness?
   Clifford, alas! has had too much of solitude.  Now let him try
   society,--the society, that is to say, of kindred and old friends.  Let
   me, for instance, but see Clifford, and I will answer for the good
   effect of the interview."

   "You cannot see him," answered Hepzibah.  "Clifford has kept his bed
   since yesterday."

   "What! How! Is he ill?" exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, starting with what
   seemed to be angry alarm; for the very frown of the old Puritan
   darkened through the room as he spoke.  "Nay, then, I must and will see
   him! What if he should die?"

   "He is in no danger of death," said Hepzibah,--and added, with
   bitterness that she could repress no longer, "none; unless he shall be
   persecuted to death, now, by the same man who long ago attempted it!"

   "Cousin Hepzibah," said the Judge, with an impressive earnestness of
   manner, which grew even to tearful pathos as he proceeded, "is it
   possible that you do not perceive how unjust, how unkind, how
   unchristian, is this constant, this long-continued bitterness against
   me, for a part which I was constrained by duty and conscience, by the
   force of law, and at my own peril, to act? What did I do, in detriment
   to Clifford, which it was possible to leave undone?  How could you, his
   sister,--if, for your never-ending sorrow, as it has been for mine, you
   had known what I did,--have, shown greater tenderness? And do you
   think, cousin, that it has cost me no pang?--that it has left no
   anguish in my bosom, from that day to this, amidst all the prosperity
   with which Heaven has blessed me?--or that I do not now rejoice, when
   it is deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and the welfare
   of society that this dear kinsman, this early friend, this nature so
   delicately and beautifully constituted,--so unfortunate, let us
   pronounce him, and forbear to say, so guilty,--that our own Clifford,
   in fine, should be given back to life, and its possibilities of
   enjoyment? Ah, you little know me, Cousin Hepzibah! You little know
   this heart! It now throbs at the thought of meeting him! There lives
   not the human being (except yourself,--and you not more than I) who has
   shed so many tears for Clifford's calamity.  You behold some of them
   now.  There is none who would so delight to promote his happiness!  Try
   me, Hepzibah!--try me, Cousin!--try the man whom you have treated as
   your enemy and Clifford's!--try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find
   him true, to the heart's core!"

   "In the name of Heaven," cried Hepzibah, provoked only to intenser
   indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern
   nature,--"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could
   almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without
   palsying your tongue,--give over, I beseech you, this loathsome
   pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a
   man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in
   your heart! Speak it out, at once!--or, if you hope so to promote it
   better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! But never speak
   again of your love for my poor brother.  I cannot bear it! It will
   drive me beyond a woman's decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear! Not
   another word!  It will make me spurn you!"

   For once, Hepzibah's wrath had given her courage.  She had spoken.
   But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon's
   integrity, and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in
   the ring of human sympathies,--were they founded in any just perception
   of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable
   prejudice, deduced from nothing?

   The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent respectability.
   The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it.  It was denied
   by nobody.  In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him,
   whether in his public or private capacities, there was not an
   individual--except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like the
   daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents--who would
   have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable
   place in the world's regard.  Nor (we must do him the further justice
           to say) did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or very
   frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his
   deserts.  His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest
   witness to a man's integrity,--his conscience, unless it might be for
   the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and
   then, some black day in the whole year's circle,--his conscience bore
   an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice.  And yet,
   strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our
   own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting
   world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice
   was wrong.  Hidden from mankind,--forgotten by himself, or buried so
   deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds
   that his daily life could take no note of it,--there may have lurked
   some evil and unsightly thing.  Nay, we could almost venture to say,
   further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually
   renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of
   a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.

   Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of
   the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into mistakes of this
   kind.  They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount
   importance.  Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of
   life.  They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and
   appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as
   gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors.
   With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the
   public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall
   and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately
   in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man
   himself.  Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls and suites of
   spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles;
   its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through
   the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and
   its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome--through which, from
   the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no
   obstructing medium between--surmounts the whole.  With what fairer and
   nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah!
   but in some low and obscure nook,--some narrow closet on the
   ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, and the key flung away,--or
   beneath the marble pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the
   richest pattern of mosaic-work above,--may lie a corpse, half decayed,
   and still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the
   palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it has long
   been his daily breath!  Neither will the visitors, for they smell only
   the rich odors which the master sedulously scatters through the palace,
   and the incense which they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now
   and then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the
   whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the hidden nook, the
   bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door, or
   the deadly hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within.
   Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and
   of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life.  And,
   beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant water, foul
   with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged with blood,--that secret
   abomination, above which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without
   remembering it,--is this man's miserable soul!

   To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Pyncheon.
   We might say (without in the least imputing crime to a personage of his
           eminent respectability) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in
   his life to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience
   than the Judge was ever troubled with.  The purity of his judicial
   character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of his public service
   in subsequent capacities; his devotedness to his party, and the rigid
   consistency with which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all
   events, kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as
   president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer
   of a widow's and orphan's fund; his benefits to horticulture, by
   producing two much esteemed varieties of the pear and to agriculture,
   through the agency of the famous Pyncheon bull; the cleanliness of his
   moral deportment, for a great many years past; the severity with which
   he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated
   son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of
   the young man's life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces
   at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his
   confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal
   glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the
   polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the
   square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material,
   and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the
   scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a
   bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and
   sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad
   benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole
   world,--what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a
   portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he
   beheld in the looking-glass.  This admirably arranged life was what he
   was conscious of in the progress of every day.  Then might not he claim
   to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, "Behold
   Judge Pyncheon there"?

   And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless
   youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the
   inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one
   questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least,
   blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary
   deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair
   aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a
   thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which
   were heaped into the other scale! This scale and balance system is a
   favorite one with people of Judge Pyncheon's brotherhood. A hard, cold
   man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and
   resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his
   image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive
   at true self-knowledge, except through loss of property and reputation.
   Sickness will not always help him do it; not always the death-hour!

   But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood confronting the
   fierce outbreak of Hepzibah's wrath.  Without premeditation, to her own
   surprise, and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to the
   inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty
   years.

   Thus far the Judge's countenance had expressed mild forbearance,--grave
   and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin's unbecoming
   violence,--free and Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted
   by her words.  But when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look
   assumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and
   this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if
   the iron man had stood there from the first, and the meek man not at
   all.  The effect was as when the light, vapory clouds, with their soft
   coloring, suddenly vanish from the stony brow of a precipitous
   mountain, and leave there the frown which you at once feel to be
   eternal.  Hepzibah almost adopted the insane belief that it was her old
   Puritan ancestor, and not the modern Judge, on whom she had just been
   wreaking the bitterness of her heart.  Never did a man show stronger
   proof of the lineage attributed to him than Judge Pyncheon, at this
   crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance to the picture in the inner
   room.

   "Cousin Hepzibah," said he very calmly, "it is time to have done with
   this."

   "With all my heart!" answered she.  "Then, why do you persecute us any
   longer? Leave poor Clifford and me in peace.  Neither of us desires
   anything better!"

   "It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this house," continued
   the Judge.  "Do not act like a madwoman, Hepzibah! I am his only
   friend, and an all-powerful one.  Has it never occurred to you,--are
   you so blind as not to have seen,--that, without not merely my consent,
   but my efforts, my representations, the exertion of my whole influence,
   political, official, personal, Clifford would never have been what you
   call free? Did you think his release a triumph over me? Not so, my good
   cousin; not so, by any means!  The furthest possible from that! No; but
   it was the accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on my part.  I
   set him free!"

   "You!" answered Hepzibah.  "I never will believe it! He owed his
   dungeon to you; his freedom to God's providence!"

   "I set him free!" reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the calmest
   composure.  "And I came hither now to decide whether he shall retain
   his freedom.  It will depend upon himself.  For this purpose, I must
   see him."

   "Never!--it would drive him mad!" exclaimed Hepzibah, but with an
   irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to the keen eye of the Judge;
   for, without the slightest faith in his good intentions, she knew not
   whether there was most to dread in yielding or resistance. "And why
   should you wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains hardly a
   fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that from an eye which
   has no love in it?"

   "He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!" said the Judge,
   with well-grounded confidence in the benignity of his aspect.  "But,
   Cousin Hepzibah, you confess a great deal, and very much to the
   purpose.  Now, listen, and I will frankly explain my reasons for
   insisting on this interview.  At the death, thirty years since, of our
   uncle Jaffrey, it was found,--I know not whether the circumstance ever
   attracted much of your attention, among the sadder interests that
   clustered round that event,--but it was found that his visible estate,
   of every kind, fell far short of any estimate ever made of it.  He was
   supposed to be immensely rich.  Nobody doubted that he stood among the
   weightiest men of his day.  It was one of his eccentricities,
   however,--and not altogether a folly, neither,--to conceal the amount
   of his property by making distant and foreign investments, perhaps
   under other names than his own, and by various means, familiar enough
   to capitalists, but unnecessary here to be specified.  By Uncle
   Jaffrey's last will and testament, as you are aware, his entire
   property was bequeathed to me, with the single exception of a life
   interest to yourself in this old family mansion, and the strip of
   patrimonial estate remaining attached to it."

   "And do you seek to deprive us of that?" asked Hepzibah, unable to
   restrain her bitter contempt.  "Is this your price for ceasing to
   persecute poor Clifford?"

   "Certainly not, my dear cousin!" answered the Judge, smiling
   benevolently.  "On the contrary, as you must do me the justice to own,
   I have constantly expressed my readiness to double or treble your
   resources, whenever you should make up your mind to accept any kindness
   of that nature at the hands of your kinsman.  No, no!  But here lies
   the gist of the matter.  Of my uncle's unquestionably great estate, as
   I have said, not the half--no, not one third, as I am fully
   convinced--was apparent after his death.  Now, I have the best possible
   reasons for believing that your brother Clifford can give me a clew to
   the recovery of the remainder."

   "Clifford!--Clifford know of any hidden wealth? Clifford have it in his
   power to make you rich?" cried the old gentlewoman, affected with a
   sense of something like ridicule at the idea.   "Impossible!  You
   deceive yourself! It is really a thing to laugh at!"

   "It is as certain as that I stand here!" said Judge Pyncheon, striking
   his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at the same time stamping his
   foot, as if to express his conviction the more forcibly by the whole
   emphasis of his substantial person.  "Clifford told me so himself!"

   "No, no!" exclaimed Hepzibah incredulously.  "You are dreaming, Cousin
   Jaffrey."

   "I do not belong to the dreaming class of men," said the Judge quietly.
   "Some months before my uncle's death, Clifford boasted to me of the
   possession of the secret of incalculable wealth.  His purpose was to
   taunt me, and excite my curiosity.  I know it well.  But, from a pretty
   distinct recollection of the particulars of our conversation, I am
   thoroughly convinced that there was truth in what he said.  Clifford,
   at this moment, if he chooses,--and choose he must!--can inform me
   where to find the schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever
   shape they exist, of the vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey's missing
   property.  He has the secret.  His boast was no idle word.  It had a
   directness, an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a backbone of
   solid meaning within the mystery of his expression."

   "But what could have been Clifford's object," asked Hepzibah, "in
   concealing it so long?"

   "It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature," replied the
   Judge, turning up his eyes.  "He looked upon me as his enemy.  He
   considered me as the cause of his overwhelming disgrace, his imminent
   peril of death, his irretrievable ruin.  There was no great
   probability, therefore, of his volunteering information, out of his
   dungeon, that should elevate me still higher on the ladder of
   prosperity.  But the moment has now come when he must give up his
   secret."

   "And what if he should refuse?" inquired Hepzibah.  "Or,--as I
   steadfastly believe,--what if he has no knowledge of this wealth?"

   "My dear cousin," said Judge Pyncheon, with a quietude which he had the
   power of making more formidable than any violence, "since your
   brother's return, I have taken the precaution (a highly proper one in
           the near kinsman and natural guardian of an individual so situated) to
   have his deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked.
   Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has passed in the
   garden.  The butcher, the baker, the fish-monger, some of the customers
   of your shop, and many a prying old woman, have told me several of the
   secrets of your interior.  A still larger circle--I myself, among the
   rest--can testify to his extravagances at the arched window.  Thousands
   beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence
   into the street.  From all this testimony, I am led to
   apprehend--reluctantly, and with deep grief--that Clifford's
   misfortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong, that he
   cannot safely remain at large.  The alternative, you must be
   aware,--and its adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I
   am now about to make,--the alternative is his confinement, probably for
   the remainder of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his
   unfortunate state of mind."

   "You cannot mean it!" shrieked Hepzibah.

   "Should my cousin Clifford," continued Judge Pyncheon, wholly
   undisturbed, "from mere malice, and hatred of one whose interests ought
   naturally to be dear to him,--a mode of passion that, as often as any
   other, indicates mental disease,--should he refuse me the information
   so important to myself, and which he assuredly possesses, I shall
   consider it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his
   insanity.  And, once sure of the course pointed out by conscience, you
   know me too well, Cousin Hepzibah, to entertain a doubt that I shall
   pursue it."

   "O Jaffrey,--Cousin Jaffrey,"  cried Hepzibah mournfully, not
   passionately, "it is you that are diseased in mind, not Clifford!  You
   have forgotten that a woman was your mother!--that you have had
   sisters, brothers, children of your own!--or that there ever was
   affection between man and man, or pity from one man to another, in this
   miserable world! Else, how could you have dreamed of this? You are not
   young, Cousin Jaffrey!--no, nor middle-aged,--but already an old man!
   The hair is white upon your head! How many years have you to live? Are
   you not rich enough for that little time? Shall you be hungry,--shall
   you lack clothes, or a roof to shelter you,--between this point and the
   grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess, you could revel
   in costly food and wines, and build a house twice as splendid as you
   now inhabit, and make a far greater show to the world,--and yet leave
   riches to your only son, to make him bless the hour of your death!
   Then, why should you do this cruel, cruel thing?--so mad a thing, that
   I know not whether to call it wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this hard
   and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two hundred years.  You
   are but doing over again, in another shape, what your ancestor before
   you did, and sending down to your posterity the curse inherited from
   him!"

   "Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven's sake!" exclaimed the Judge, with
   the impatience natural to a reasonable man, on hearing anything so
   utterly absurd as the above, in a discussion about matters of business.
   "I have told you my determination.  I am not apt to change.  Clifford
   must give up his secret, or take the consequences.  And let him decide
   quickly; for I have several affairs to attend to this morning, and an
   important dinner engagement with some political friends."

   "Clifford has no secret!" answered Hepzibah.  "And God will not let you
   do the thing you meditate!"

   "We shall see," said the unmoved Judge.  "Meanwhile, choose whether you
   will summon Clifford, and allow this business to be amicably settled by
   an interview between two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures,
   which I should be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding.  The
   responsibility is altogether on your part."

   "You are stronger than I," said Hepzibah, after a brief consideration;
   "and you have no pity in your strength! Clifford is not now insane; but
   the interview which you insist upon may go far to make him so.
   Nevertheless, knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to
   allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his
   possessing any valuable secret.  I will call Clifford.  Be merciful in
   your dealings with him!--be far more merciful than your heart bids you
   be!--for God is looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!"

   The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the foregoing
   conversation had passed, into the parlor, and flung himself heavily
   into the great ancestral chair.  Many a former Pyncheon had found
   repose in its capacious arms:  rosy children, after their sports; young
   men, dreamy with love; grown men, weary with cares; old men, burdened
   with winters,--they had mused, and slumbered, and departed to a yet
   profounder sleep.  It had been a long tradition, though a doubtful one,
   that this was the very chair, seated in which the earliest of the
   Judge's New England forefathers--he whose picture still hung upon the
   wall--had given a dead man's silent and stern reception to the throng
   of distinguished guests.  From that hour of evil omen until the
   present, it may be,--though we know not the secret of his heart,--but
   it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk into the chair
   than this same Judge Pyncheon, whom we have just beheld so immitigably
   hard and resolute.  Surely, it must have been at no slight cost that he
   had thus fortified his soul with iron.  Such calmness is a mightier
   effort than the violence of weaker men.  And there was yet a heavy task
   for him to do.  Was it a little matter--a trifle to be prepared for in
   a single moment, and to be rested from in another moment,--that he must
   now, after thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen from a living tomb,
   and wrench a secret from him, or else consign him to a living tomb
   again?

   "Did you speak?" asked Hepzibah, looking in from the threshold of the
   parlor; for she imagined that the Judge had uttered some sound which
   she was anxious to interpret as a relenting impulse.  "I thought you
   called me back."

   "No, no" gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon with a harsh frown, while his
   brow grew almost a black purple, in the shadow of the room.  "Why
   should I call you back? Time flies! Bid Clifford come to me!"

   The Judge had taken his watch from his vest pocket and now held it in
   his hand, measuring the interval which was to ensue before the
   appearance of Clifford.

 The Scowl and Smile The house of the seven gables becomes a dreary place after Phoebe leaves; it is made even more so by the arrival of a storm that lingers for several days. Clifford becomes more and more dour, eventually refusing to get out of bed. Hepzibah feels helpless and does not know how to help her brother. That same day, the shop bell rings. Judge Pyncheon has come to pay his two cousins another visit. Hepzibah responds to the Judge as before, with an anger that borders on hatred, and demands to know why the Judge continues to bother them. The Judge at first appeals to her emotional side, delivering a long and tearful speech about his own love for her and for Clifford, and informs Hepzibah that he only desires to help his cousins out of the sheer goodness of his heart. We are told that Judge is widely regarded as a wise and kindly man, and that he himself is so enamored of his station in life that he has come to believe he has no stains on his conscience. His one or two harsh deeds, the Judge thinks, are a necessary evil, balanced out by his various pious activities--among them his work with a Bible group and his leadership of a temperance movement dedicated to encouraging sobriety. Hepzibah is not fooled by the Judge's kind words and continues to refuse to summon Clifford. The Judge then becomes angry. The narrator embarks on a lengthy and descriptive exploration of the theory that the Judge nurses a terrible secret. The narrator suggests that despite the Judge's wholesome and pleasant exterior, he may well have been corrupted by an awful, buried truth, which has come to infect every part of him, like a corpse rotting in the nook of a giant, beautiful palace. The irate Judge tells Hepzibah that he absolutely must speak with Clifford, because, shortly before Clifford was taken away and incarcerated, he had told the Judge about documentation that revealed the whereabouts of a good portion of their Uncle Jaffrey's legacy. The Judge desperately wants this piece of evidence, and he will stop at nothing to get it. Hepzibah refuses to believe that her brother could really have such knowledge, but the Judge continues to insist that she fetch Clifford so the Judge can talk to him. Finally, the Judge threatens to have Clifford locked up in an asylum if he does not divulge the secret. Hepzibah believes that a conversation with the Judge will destroy Clifford, but this threat means she no longer has a choice. She walks upstairs to retrieve Clifford, while the Judge waits below

