 CHAPTER XVIII. GOVERNOR PINCHON. Judge Pinshawne, while his two relatives had fled away with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old parlor, keeping house, as the familiar phrase is, in the absence of his ordinary occupants. To him, and to the venerable house of the seven gables, does our story now betake itself, like an owl, bewildered in the daylight, and hastening back to its hollow tree. The judge has not shifted his position for a long while now. He has not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his eyes so much as a hare's breath from their fixed gaze towards the corner of the room, since the footsteps of Hepsiba and Clifford creaked along the passage, and the outer door was closed cautiously behind their exit. He holds his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a manner that you cannot see the dial plate. How profound a fit of meditation! Or supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, in that wholesome order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dream-talk, trumpet-blast through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity of breath. You must hold your own breath to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is quite inaudible. You hear the ticking of his watch. His breath you do not hear. A most refreshing slumber doubtless. And yet the judge cannot be asleep. His eyes are open. A veteran politician, such as he, would never fall asleep with wide open eyes, lest some enemy or mischief-maker, taking him thus at unawares, should peep through these windows into his consciousness, who make strange discoveries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has here to foreshared with nobody. A cautious man is proverbly said to sleep with one eye open. That may be wisdom, but not with both, for this were heedlessness. No, no, Judge Pinchon cannot be asleep. It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with engagements, and noted too for punctuality, should linger thus in an old lonely mansion which he has never seemed very fond of visiting. The oaken chair, to be sure, may tempt him with its roominess. It is indeed a spacious and, allowing for the rude age that fashioned it, a moderately easy seat, with capacity enough at all events, in offering no restraint to the judge's breadth of beam. A bigger man might find ample accommodation in it. His ancestor, now pictured upon the wall, with all his English beef about him, used hardly to present a front extending from elbow to elbow of this chair, or a base that would cover its whole cushion. But there are better chairs than this, mahogany, black walnut, rosewood, spring-seeded and damask cushioned, with varied slopes, and innumerable artifices to make them easy, and obviate the irksomeness of two tamonies. A score of such might be at Judge Pinchon's service. Yes, in a score of drawing rooms he would be more than welcome. Mama would advance to meet him without stretched hand. The virgin daughter, elderly as he has now got to be, an old widower, as he smilingly describes himself, would shake up the cushion for the judge, and do her pretty utmost to make him comfortable. For the judge is a prosperous man. He cherishes his schemes moreover like other people, and reasonably brighter than most others. Or did so, at least, as he lay a bed this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse, planning the business of the day, and speculating on the probabilities of the next fifteen years, with his firm health and the little in-road that age has made upon him, fifteen years, or twenty? Yes, or perhaps five and twenty, are no more than he may fairly call his own. Five and twenty years for the enjoyment of this real estate in town and country, his railroad, bank, and insurance shares, his United States stock, his wealth in short, however invested, now in possession, or soon to be acquired. Neither were the public honors that have fallen upon him, and the weightier ones that are yet to fall. It is good, it is excellent, it is enough. Still lingering in the old chair, if the judge has a little time to throw away, why does he not visit the insurance office, as is his frequent custom, and sit awhile in one of their leather-cushioned arm-chairs, listening to the gossip of the day, and dropping some deeply designed chance word, which will be certain to become the gossip of tomorrow? And have not the bank director some meeting, at which it was the judge's purpose to be present, and his office to preside? Indeed, they have, and the hour is noted on a card, which is, or ought to be, in Judge Pinchon's right vest pocket. Let him go thither in lullities upon his money-bags. He is lounged long enough in the old chair. This was to have been such a busy day. In the first place, the interview with Clifford, half an hour by the judge's reckoning, was too suffice for that, it would probably be less, but taking into consideration that Hepsiba was first to be dealt with, and that these women are apt to make many words where a few would do much better, it might be safest to allow half an hour. Why, Judge, it is already two hours by your own, undeviatingly, accurate chronometer. Clance your eye down at it, and see. Ah! He will not give himself the trouble either to bend his head, or elevate his hand, so as to bring the faithful timekeeper within his range of vision. Time, all at once, appears to have become a matter of no moment with the judge. And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda? Clifford's affair arranged. He was to meet a State Street broker, who was undertaken to procure a heavy percentage, and the best of paper, for a few loose thousands which the judge happens to have by him, uninvested. The wrinkled note-shaver will have taken his railroad trip in vain. Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be an auction of real estate, including a portion of the old Pinchon property, originally belonging to Maul's garden-ground. It has been alienated from the Pinchons these four score years, but the judge had kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on re-annexing it to the small domain still left around the Seven Gables. And now, during this odd fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen and transferred our ancient patrimony to some alien possessor. Possibly indeed the sale may have been postponed till fairer weather. If so, will the judge make it convenient to be present, and favor the auctioneer with his bid, on the proximate occasion? The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving, the one here to for his favorite stumbled, this very morning, on the road to town, and must be at once discarded. Judge Pinchon's neck is too precious to be risked on such a contingency as a stumbling steed. Should all the above business be seasonably got through with, he might attend the meeting of a charitable society. The very name of which, however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite forgotten, so that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and no great harm done. And if he have time amid the press of more urgent matters, he must take measures for the renewal of Mrs. Pinchon's tombstone, which the sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face and is cracked quite entwined. She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thanks to the judge, in spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy with, and her foolish behavior about the coffee, and as she took her departure so seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone. It is better at least than if she had never needed any. The next item on his list was to give orders for some fruit trees of a rare variety to be deliverable at his country seat in the ensuing autumn. Yes, by them, by all means, and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge Pinchon. After this comes something more important. A committee of his political party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars, in addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the fall campaign. The judge is a patriot, the fate of the country is staked on the November election, and besides, as will be shadowed forth in another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same great game. He will do what the committee asks, nay, he will be liberal beyond their expectations, they shall have a check for five hundred dollars, and more a non, if it be needed. What next? A decayed widow, whose husband was Judge Pinchon's early friend, has laid her case of destitution before him in a very moving letter. She and her fair daughter have scarcely bred to eat. He partly intends to call on her to-day. Perhaps so, perhaps not, accordingly as he may happen to have leisure, or a small bank note. Another business which, however, he puts no great weight on. It is well, you know, to be heedful, but not over-anxious, as respects one's personal health. Another business, then, was to consult his family physician. About what, for heaven's sake? Why, it is rather difficult to describe the symptoms. A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of brain, was it? Or disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or bubbling in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say? Or was it a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather creditable to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not been left out of the Judge's physical contrivance? No matter what it was, the doctor probably would smile at the statement of such trifles to his professional ear. The Judge would smile in his turn, and meeting one another's eyes they would enjoy a hearty laugh together. But a fig for medical advice, the Judge will never need it. Pray, pray, Judge Pinchon, look at your watch, now! What, not a glance! It is within ten minutes of the dinner hour. It surely cannot have slipped your memory that the dinner of today is to be the most important in its consequences of all the dinners you ever ate. Yes, precisely the most important, although in the course of your somewhat eminent career, you have been placed high towards the head of the table at splendid banquets, and have poured out your festive eloquence to ears yet echoing with Webster's mighty organ tones. No public dinner this, however, it is merely a gathering of some dozen or so of friends from several districts of the state. Men have distinguished character and influence, assembling almost casually at the house of a common friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them welcome to a little better than his ordinary fare. Nothing in the way of French cookery but an excellent dinner, nevertheless. Real turtle, we understand, and salmon, totog, canvas-backs, pig, foolish mutton, good roast beef, or dandies of that serious kind, fit for substantial country gentlemen as these honourable persons mostly are. The delicacies of the season, in short, and flavour by a brand of Old Madeira which had been the pride of many seasons. It is the Juno brand, a glorious wine, fragrant and full of gentle might, a bottled-up happiness put by for use, a golden liquid worth more than liquid gold, so rare and admirable that veteran wine-bibbers counted among their epics to have tasted it. It drives away the heartache, and substitutes no headache. Could the judge but quaff a glass it might enable him to shake off the unaccountable lethargy which, for the ten intervening minutes and five to boot, are already past, has made him such a laggard at this momentous dinner. It would all but revive a dead man. Would you like to sip it now, Judge Pinchon? Alas, this dinner! Have you really forgotten its true object? Then let us whisper it, that you may start it once out of the oaken chair which really seems to be enchanted like the one in Comus, or that in which Maul pitcher imprisoned your own grandfather. But ambition is a talisman more powerful than witchcraft. Start up, then, and hurrying through the streets burst in upon the company that they may begin before the fish is spoiled. They wait for you, and it is little for your interest that they should wait. These gentlemen need you be told it, have assembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of the state. They are practiced politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people without its knowledge the power of choosing its own rulers. The popular voice at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall speak under their breath at your friend's festive board. They meet to decide upon their candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers will control the convention, and through it dictate to the party, and what worthier candidate, more wise and learned, more noted for philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by public trusts, more spotless in private character, with a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper grounded by hereditary dissent, in the faith and practice of the Puritans, what man can be presented for the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to the chief rulership as Judge Pinchon here before us. Make haste, then, do your part. The mead for which you have toiled and fought and climbed and crept is ready for your grasp. Be present at this dinner. Drink a glass or two of that noble wine. Make your pledges in as low a whisper as you will, and you will rise up from table virtually Governor of the glorious Old State, Governor Pinchon of Massachusetts. And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you sit there so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log, but in these jostling times one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief magistracy. Well, it is absolutely too late for dinner. Turtle, salmon, toe-tog, woodcock, boiled turkey, south-down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished or exist only in fragments with lukewarm potatoes and gravies crusted over with cold fat. The judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. It was he, you know, of whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like appetite, that his creator made him a great animal, but that the dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large sensual endowments must claim indulgence at their feeding-time. But for once the judge is entirely too late for dinner. Too late, we fear, even to join the party at their wine. The guests are warm and merry. They have given up the judge. And concluding that the free-soilers have him, they will fix upon another candidate. Were our friend now to stalk in among them with that wide-open stare at once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer. Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pinchon, generally so scrupulous in his attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon his shirt bosom. By the by, how came it there? It is an ugly sight at any rate, and the wisest way is for the judge to button his coat closely over his breast, and taking his horse and shez from the livery stable, to make all speed to his own house. There, after a glass of brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling through his veins. Up, therefore, Judge Pinchon, up! You have lost a day! But tomorrow will be here anon. Will you rise betimes to make the most of it? Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! We that are alive may rise betimes to-morrow. As for him that has died today, his morrow will be the Resurrection morn. Meanwhile, the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite. Then spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without, it is brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The judge's face, indeed, rigid and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray, but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window, neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer. Any phrase of light would express something far brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it yet vanished? No? Yes. Not quite. And there is still the swarthy whiteness. We shall venture to marry these ill-agreing words, the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pinchon's face. The features are all gone. There is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now? There is no window. There is no face. An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight. Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us, and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind that goes sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world. Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one. It is the ticking of the judge's watch, which, ever since Hepsiba left the room in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand. Be the cause what it may, this little quiet, never ceasing throb of time's pulse, repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Pinchon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not find in any other accompaniment of the scene. But listen! That puff of the breeze was louder. It had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which had us beenmoaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy for five days past. The wind is veered about. It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and, taking hold of the aged framework of the seven gables, gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist. Another and another sturdy tussle with a blast. The old house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat. The big flu, we mean, of its wide chimney. Partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived beforehand what wonderful wind instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with the strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing and sigh and sob and shriek, and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but ponderous, in some distant chamber, and to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks miraculously stiff. Whenever the gale catches the house with a window open and gets fairly into it, would that we were not an attendant spirit here, it is too awful. This clamor of the wind through the lonely house, the judge's quietude as he sits invisible, and that pertinacious ticking of his watch. As regards Judge Pinchon's invisibility, however, that matter will soon be remedied. The north-west wind has swept the sky clear. The window is distinctly seen. Through its pains, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep of the dark clustering foliage outside, fluttering with a constant irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight, now here, now there. Oftener than any other object, these glimpses illuminate the judge's face. But here comes more effectual light. Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branches of the pear-tree, and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while, with their shifting intricacies, the moon-beams fall a slant into the room. They play over the judge's figure and show that he is not stirred throughout the hours of darkness. They follow the shadows in changeful sport across his unchanging features. They gleam upon his watch. His grasp conceals the dial-plate. But we know that the faithful hands have met, for one of the city clocks tells midnight. A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pinshan, cares no more for twelve o'clock at night than for the corresponding hour of noon. However, just the parallel drawn in some of the preceding pages, between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it fails then this point, the Pinshan of two centuries ago, in common with most of his contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual administrations, although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character. The Pinshan of tonight, who sits in yonder armchair, believes in no such nonsense. Such at least was his creed, some few hours since. His hair will not bristle, therefore, at the stories which, in times when chimney corners had benches in them, where old people sat poking into the ashes of the past, and raking out traditions like live coals, used to be told about this very room of his ancestral house. In fact, these tales are too absurd to bristle even childhoods hair. What sense, meaning or moral, for example, such as even ghost stories should be susceptible of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend that at midnight all the dead Pinshans are bound to assemble in this parlor, and pray, for what? Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor still keeps its place upon the wall in compliance with his testamentary directions. Is it worthwhile to come out of their graves for that? We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea. Ghost stories are hardly to be treated seriously any longer. The family party of the defunct Pinshans, we presume, goes off in this wise. First comes the ancestor himself in his black coat, steeple hat, and trunk-breaches, girt about the waist with a leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted sword. He has a long staff in his hand, such as gentlemen in advanced life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as for the support to be derived from it. He looks up at the portrait, a thing of no substance gazing at its own painted image. All is safe. The picture is still there. The purpose of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after the man himself has sprouted up in graveyard grass. See, he lifts his ineffectual hand and tries the frame. All safe. But is that a smile? Is it not rather a frown of deadly import that darkens over the shadow of his features? The stout colonel is dissatisfied. So decided is his look of discontent as to impart additional distinctness to his features, through which nevertheless the moonlight passes and flickers on the wall beyond. Something has strangely vexed the ancestor. With a grim shake of the head he turns away. Here comes other pinchons, the whole tribe in their half a dozen generations jostling and elbowing one another to reach the picture. We behold aged men and grundhams, a clergyman with the puritanic stiffness still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated officer of the old French war. And there comes the shopkeeping pinchon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned back from his wrists, and there the periwigged and brokered gentleman of the artist's legend, with a beautiful impensive Alice, who brings no pride out of her virgin grave. I'll try the picture frame. What do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts her child that his little hands may touch it. There is evidently a mystery about the picture that perplexes these poor pinchons when they ought to be at rest. In a corner, meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly man in a leathered jerkin and breeches, with a carpenter's rule sticking out of his side pocket. He points his finger at the bearded colonel and his descendants, nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into obstreperous, though inaudible, laughter. Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the power of restraint and guidance. We distinguished an unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene. Among those ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very fashion of today. He wears a dark frock coat, almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gator boots of patent leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and a little silver-headed whale-bone stick in his hand. Were we to meet this figure at noon-day we should greet him as young Jeffrey Pinshawn, the judge's only surviving child, who has been spending the last two years in foreign travel. If still in life, how comes his shadow hither? If dead, what a misfortune! The old Pinshawn property, together with the great estate acquired by the young man's father, would devolve on whom? One poor, foolish Clifford, God-Hepsiba, and rustic little Phoebe. But another and a greater marvel greets us. Can we believe our eyes? A stout, elderly gentleman has made his appearance. He has an aspect of eminent respectability. Where's a black coat in pantaloons, of roomy width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his attire, but for a broad crimson stain across his snowy neckloth and down his shirt bosom? Is it the judge or no? How can it be Judge Pinshawn? We discern his figure, as plainly as the flickering moonbeams can show us anything, still seated in the oaken chair. Be the apparition whose it may, it advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, tries to peep behind it, and turns away with the frown as black as the ancestral one. The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be considered as forming an actual portion of our story. We were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver of the moonbeams. They dance hand in hand with shadows, and are reflected in the looking-glass, which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the spiritual world. We needed relief, moreover, from our too long and exclusive contemplation of that figure in the chair. This wild wind, too, has tossed our thoughts into strange confusion, but without tearing them away from their one determined center. Yonder ledden judge sits immovably upon our soul. Will he never stir again? We shall go mad unless he stirs. You may the better estimate his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its hind legs in a streak of moonlight, close by Judge Pinchon's foot, and seems to meditate a journey of exploration over this great black bulk. Ha! What has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage of Grimulkin, outside of the window, where he appears to have posted himself for a deliberate watch. This Grimulkin has a very ugly look. Is it a cat watching for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul? Would we could scare him from the window? Thank heaven! The night is well nigh past. The moonbeams have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so strongly with the blackness of the shadows among which they fall. They are paler now. The shadows look gray, not black. The boisterous wind is hushed. What is the hour? Ah! The watch has at last ceased to tick, for the judge's forgetful fingers neglected to wind it up, as usual, at ten o'clock, being half an hour or so before his ordinary bedtime, and it is run down for the first time in five years. But the great world-clock of time still keeps its beat. The dreary night. For oh, how dreary seems its haunted waste behind us. Gives place to a fresh, transparent, cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The day-beam, even what little of it finds its way into this always dusky parlor, seems part of the universal benediction, a nulling evil and rendering all goodness possible and happiness attainable. Will Judge Pinchon now rise up from his chair? Will he go forth and receive the early sun-beams on his brow? Will he begin this new day, which God has smiled upon and blessed and given to mankind? Will he begin it with better purposes than the many that have been spent amiss? Or are all the deep-laid schemes of yesterday as stubborn in his heart and as busy in his brain as ever? In this latter case there is much to do. Will the Judge still insist with Hepsiba on the interview with Clifford? Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman's horse? Will he persuade the purchaser of the old Pinchon property to relinquish the bargain in his favour? Will he see his family physician and obtain a medicine that shall preserve him to be an honour and blessing to his race until the utmost term of patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Pinchon, above all, make due apologies to that company of honourable friends and satisfy them that his absence from the festive board was unavoidable and so fully retrieve himself in their good opinion that he shall yet be Governor of Massachusetts? And all these great purposes accomplished? Will he walk the streets again with that dog-day smile of elaborate benevolence, sultry enough to tempt flies to come and buzz in it? Or will he, after the tomb-like seclusion of the past day and night, go forth a humbled and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from worldly honour, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow man, and to do him what good he may? Will he bear about with him no odious grin of feigned dignity, insolent in its pretense and loathsome in its falsehood, but the tender sadness of a contrite heart, broken at last beneath its own weight of sin? For it is our belief, whatever show of honour he may have piled upon it, that there was heavy sin at the base of this man's being. Rise up, Judge Pinchon! The morning sunshine glimmers through the foliage and beautiful and holy as it is, shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, though they bring the life-blood with them. The avenger is upon thee. Rise up before it be too late. What? Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not a jot. And there we see a fly, one of your common house flies, such as are always buzzing on the window-pane, which is smelt out, Governor Pinchon, and a lights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now heaven help us, is creeping over the bridge of his nose, towards the would-be chief magistrate's wide-open eyes. Can't thou not brush the fly away? Aren't thou too sluggish? Thou man that had so many busy projects yesterday? Aren't thou too weak that was so powerful? Not brush away a fly. Day then we give thee up. And hark! The shop bell rings. After hours like these latter ones, through which we have borne our heavy tale, it is good to be made sensible that there is a living world and that even this old, lonely mansion retains some manner of connection with it. We breathe more freely, emerging from Judge Pinchon's presence into the street before the Seven Gables. CHAPTER XIX Uncle Venner, trundling a wheel-barrow, was the earliest person stirring in the neighborhood the day after the storm. Pinchon Street, in front of the house of the Seven Gables, was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane confined by shabby fences and bordered with wooden dwellings of the meaner class could reasonably be expected to present. Nature made sweet amends that morning, for the five unkindly days which had preceded it. It would have been enough to live for merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between the houses, genial once more with sunshine. Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the breadth or examined more minutely. Such for example were the well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk, even the sky reflecting pools in the center of the street, and the grass, now freshly verdant, that crept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens. Vegetable productions of whatever kind seem more than negatively heavy in the juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The pinch on Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive and full of the morning sun and a sweet tempered little breeze, which lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a whispering all at once. This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale. It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of leaves, and the whole and perfect verdure, except a single branch, that, by the earlier change with which the elm tree sometimes prophesized the autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold, it was like the golden branch that gained a neus and the cybil admittance into Hades. This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the seven gables, so nigh the ground that any passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked it off. Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of its right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the secrets of the house. So little faith is due to external appearance, that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable edifice, conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous and happy one, and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale. Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight. The lines and tufts of green moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood with nature, as if this human dwelling-place, being of such old date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, had acquired a gracious right to be. A person of imaginative temperament, while passing by the house, would turn once and again, and peruse it well, its many peaks consenting together in the clustered chimney, the deep projection over its basement-story, the arched window imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the broken portal over which it opened, the luxuriance of gigantic bird oaks near the threshold, he would note all these characteristics and be conscious of something deeper than he saw. He would conceive the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and solid happiness of his descendants to this day. One object above all others would take root in the imaginative observer's memory. It was the great tuft of flowers, weeds you would have called them only a week ago, the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers in the ankle between the two front gables. The old people used to give them the name of Alice's posies in remembrance of Fair Alice Penchan, who was believed to have brought their seeds from Italy. They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom today, and seemed, as it were, a mystic expression that something within the house was consummated. It was but little after sunrise when Uncle Venner made his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheel-barrow along the street. He was going his matutinal rounds to collect cabbage leaves, turnip tops, potato skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside as fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner's pig was fed entirely, and kept him prime-water on these alimocinary contributions, in so much that the patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake of the joints and spare ribs which they had helped to fatten. Miss Hepsiva Penchan's housekeeping had so greatly improved, since Clifford became a member of the family, that her share of the banquet would have been no lean one, and Uncle Venner, accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large earthen pan full of fragmentary eatables that ordinarily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the seven gables. "'I never knew Miss Hepsiva so forgetful before,' said the patriarch to himself. "'She must have had a dinner yesterday. No question of that. She always has one nowadays. So where's the pot liquor and potato skins, I ask? Shall I knock, and see if she's stirring yet?' No, no, it won't do. If little Phoebe was about the house, I should not buy knocking. But Miss Hepsiva, likely as not, would scow down at me out of the window and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly. So I'll come back at noon.' With these reflections the old man was shutting the gate of the little back yard, creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and door about the premises. The sound reached the ears of the occupant of the northern gable, one of the windows of which had a side view towards the gate. "'Good morning, Uncle Venner,' said the daguerretypist, leaning out of the window. "'Did you hear nobody stirring?' "'Not a soul,' said the man of patches. "'But that's no wonder. "'Tis barely half an hour past sunrise yet. But I'm really glad to see you, Mr. Holgrave. There's a strange lonesome look about this side of the house, so that my heart misgave me somehow or other. And I felt as if there were nobody alive in it. The front of the house looks a good deal cheerier, and Alice's noses are blooming there beautifully. And if I were a young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart should have one of those flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it. Well, and did the wind keep you awake last night?' "'It did indeed,' answered the artist, smiling. "'If I were a believer in ghosts, and I don't quite know whether I am or not, I should have concluded that all the old pinch-ons were running riot in the lower rooms, especially in Miss Hepsaba's part of the house. But it is very quiet now.' "'Yes, Miss Hepsaba will be apt to oversleep herself, after being disturbed all night with the racket,' said Uncle Venner. "'But it would be odd now, wouldn't it, if the judge had taken both his cousins into the country, along with him. I saw him go into the shop yesterday.' "'At what hour?' inquired Holgrave. "'Oh, along in the forenoon,' said the old man. "'Well, well, I must go my rounds, and so must my wheel-barrow. But I'll be back here at dinner-time, for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast. No mealtime and no sort of victuals ever seems to come amiss to my pig. "'Good morning to you. "'And Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young man like you, I'd get one of Alice's posies, and keep it in water till Phoebe comes back.' "'I have heard,' said the daguerreotypeist, as he drew in his head, that the water of Maul's well suits those flowers best. Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went on his way. For half an hour longer nothing disturbed the repose of the seven gables, nor was there any visitor, except a carrier boy, who as he passed the front door-step threw down one of his newspapers, for Hepsiba of late had regularly taken it in. After a while there came a fat woman, making prodigious speed and stumbling as she ran up the steps of the shop door. Her face glowed with fire-heat, and, it being a pretty warm morning, she bubbled in hisst, as it were, as if all a fry with chimney warmth, and summer warmth, and the warmth of her own corpulent velocity. She tried the shop door. It was fast. She tried it again, with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her. "'The deuce-take-old maid Pinchon,' muttered the irascible housewife, think of her pretending to set up a scent-shop, and then lying a bed till noon. These are what she calls jettles, folks heirs, I suppose, but I'll either start her ladyship, or break the door down.' She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper of its own, rang up streperously, making its remonstrances heard, not indeed by the ears for which they were intended, but by a good lady on the opposite side of the street. She opened the window, and addressed the impatient applicant. "'You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gobbins.' "'But I must and will find somebody here,' cried Mrs. Gobbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. "'I want half a pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Gobbins's breakfast, and lady or not, old maid Pinchon shall get up and serve me with it.' "'But do hear reason, Mrs. Gobbins,' responded the lady opposite. "'She and her brother, too, have both gone to their cousins, Judge Pinchon's, at his country's seat. There's not a soul in the house but that young daguerreotype man that sleeps in the North Gable. I saw old Hephseba and Clifford go away yesterday, and a queer couple of ducks they were, peddling through the mud puddles. They're gone, I'll assure you.' "'And how do you know they're gone to the judges?' asked Mrs. Gobbins. "'He's a rich man, and there's been a quarrel between him and Hephseba this many a day, because he won't give her a living. That's the main reason of her setting up a scent shop.' "'I know that well enough,' said the neighbor. "'But they're gone. That's one thing certain. And who but a blood relation that couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that awful tempered old maid and that dreadful Clifford. That's it, you may be sure.' Mrs. Gobbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot wrath against the absent Hephseba. For another half-hour, or perhaps considerably more, there was almost as much quiet on the outside of the house as within. The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible. A swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow and became specks of light whenever they darted into the sunshine. A locust sang once or twice in some inscrutable seclusion of the tree, and a solitary little bird with plumage of pale gold came and hovered about Alice's posies. At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street on his way to school, and happening for the first time in a fortnight to be the possessor of a scent, he could by no means get past the shop-door of the seven gables. But it would not open. Again and again, however, and half a dozen other aghens, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon sub-object imported to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance. He had doubtless set his heart upon an elephant, or possibly with hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile. In response to his more violent attacks the bell gave, now and then, a moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength. Holding by the door-handle he peeped through a crevice of the curtain, and saw that the inner door, communicating with the passage towards the parlor, was closed. Miss Pitchon! screamed the child, wrapping on the window-pane. I want an elephant! There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began to grow impatient, and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a knotty purpose to fling it through the window, at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man, one of two who happened to be passing by, caught the urchin's arm. What's the trouble, old gentleman? he asked. I want old Hepsiba, or Phoebe, or any of them, answered Ned, sobbing. They won't open the door, and I can't get my elephant. Go to school, you little scamp, said the man. There's another cent shop round the corner. It is very strange, Dixie. Added he to his companion, what's become of all these Pinschons? Smith, the livery's stablekeeper, tells me Judge Pinschon put his horse up yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet. And one of the judge's hired men has been in this morning to make inquiry about him. He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out at nights. Oh, he'll turn up safe enough, said Dixie. And as for old maid Pinschon, take my word for it, she has run in debt and gone off from her creditors. I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away customers, they couldn't stand it. I never thought she'd make it a go, remarked his friend. This business of cent shops is overdone among the women folks. My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay. Poor business, said Dixie, shaking his head. Poor business. In the course of the morning there were various other attempts to open a communication with this supposed inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion. The man of Rootbeer came, in his neatly painted wagon, with a couple dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty ones. The baker, with a lot of crackers which Hepsba had ordered for her retail custom. The butcher, with a nice tit-bit which he fancied, she would be eager to secure for Clifford. Had any observer of these proceedings been aware of the fearful secret hidden within the house, it would have affected him with a singular shape and modification of horror, to see the current of human life making this small eddy hereabouts. Everything sticks, straws, and all such trifles, round and round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen. The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweet bread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that he tried every accessible door of the seven gables, and at length came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found admittance. It's a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at it. Said he to himself. She can't be gone away. In fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pinchon Street, I have never known her to be away from home, though often enough to be sure, a man might knock all day without bringing her to the door. But that was when she'd only herself to provide for. Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before, the urchin of elefantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed as the child had seen it, but a jar, and almost wide open. However it might have happened, it was the fact. Through the passageway there was a dark vista into the lighter, but still obscure interior of the parlor. It appeared to the butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the stoward legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sitting in a large oaken chair, the back of which concealed all the remainder of his figure. This contemptuous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of the house, in response to the butcher's indefatigable efforts to attract notice, so peaked the man of flesh that he determined to withdraw. So, thought he, there sits old maid Pinchon's bloody brother, while I've been giving myself all this trouble. Why, if a hog had more manners, I'd stick him. I'd call it demeaning a man's business to trade with such people, and from this time forth, if they want a sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart for it. He tossed the tip bit angrily into his cart, and drove off in a pet. Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the corner and approaching down the street, with several intervals of silence, and then a renewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound, which appeared to proceed from the center of the throng, so that they were loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony, and drawn along captive, with ever and anon, an accession of some little fellow in an apron and straw hat, arriving under the shadow of the Pinchon Elm, it proved to be the Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of puppets, had once before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window. The pleasant face of Phoebe, and doubtless too the liberal recompense which she had flung him, still dwelt in his remembrance. His expressive features kindled up as he recognized the spot where this trifling incident of his erratic life had chanced. He entered the neglected yard, now wilder than ever, with its growth of hogweed and burdock, stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, and opening his show-box began to play. Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to work, according to his or her proper vocation, the monkey, taking off his highland bonnet, bowed and scraped to the bystanders most obsequiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray scent, and the young foreigner himself, as he turned the crank of his machine, glanced upward to the arched window, expectant of a presence that would make his music the livelier and sweeter. The throng of children stood near, some on the sidewalk, some within the yard, two or three establishing themselves on the very doorstep, and one squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old pinch on Elm. I don't hear anybody in the house, said one of the children to another. The monkey won't pick up anything here. There is somebody at home, affirmed the urchin on the threshold. I heard a step. Still the young Italian's eye turned side-long upward, and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight and almost playful, emotion communicated a juicier sweetness to the dry mechanical process of his minstrelsy. These wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness, be it no more than a smile or a word itself not understood, but only a warmth in it which befalls them on the roadside of life. They remember these things because they are the little enchantments which, for the instant, for the space that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble, build up a home about them. Therefore the Italian boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence with which the old house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument. He persisted in his melodious appeals, he still looked upward, trusting that his dark alien countenance would soon be brightened by Phoebe's sunny aspect. Neither could he be willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose sensibility, like Phoebe's smile, had talked a kind of heart's language to the foreigner. He repeated all his music over and over again until his auditors were getting weary. So were the little wooden people in his show-box and the monkey most of all. There was no response, save the singing of the locust. No children live in this house, said his schoolboy at last. Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old man. You'll get nothing here, why don't you go along? You fool you, why do you tell him? whispered a shrewd little Yankee, carrying nothing for the music, but a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had. Let him play as he likes. If there's nobody to pay him, that's his own lookout. Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of melodies. To the common observer, who could understand nothing of the case, except the music and the sunshine on the hither side of the door, it might have been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street performer. Will he succeed at last? Will that stubborn door be suddenly flung open? Will a group of joyous children, the young ones of the house, come dancing, shouting, laughing into the open air, and cluster round the show-box, looking with eager merriment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper for long-tailed memmon the monkey to pick up? But to us, who know the inner heart of the seven gables as well as its exterior face? There is a ghastly effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its doorstep. It would be an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pinchon, who would not have cared a fig for Paganini's fiddle in his most harmonious mood, should make his appearance at the door with a bloody shirt bosom and a grim frown on his swarthly white visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away. Was ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes where nobody was in the queue to dance? Yes, very often. This contrast or intermingling of tragedy with mirth happens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and desolate old house, deserted of life, and with awful death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the emblem of many a human heart, which nevertheless is compelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world's gaiety around it. Before the conclusion of the Italian's performance a couple of men happened to be passing on their way to dinner. I say, you young French fellow, called out one of them, come away from that doorstep and go somewhere else with your nonsense. The Pinchon family live there, and they are in great trouble just about this time. They don't feel musical today. It is reported all over town that Judge Pinchon, who owns the house, has been murdered, and the City Marshal is going to look into the matter. So be off with you at once! As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a card which had been covered all the morning by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it, but was now shuffled into sight. He picked it up, and perceiving something written in pencil, gave it to the man to read. In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pinchon's with certain penciled memoranda on the back, referring to various businesses which it had been his purpose to transact during the preceding day. It formed a prospective epitome of the day's history, only that affairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the program. The card must have been lost from the judge's vest pocket in his preliminary attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the house. Though well-soaked with rain, it was still partially legible. Look here, Dixie! cried the man. This has something to do with Judge Pinchon. See? Here's his name printed on it, and here I suppose is some of his handwriting. Let's go to the city-martial with it, said Dixie. It may give him just the clue he wants. After all, whispered he and his companion's ear, it would be no wonder if the judge has gone into that door and never come out again. A certain cousin of his may have been at his old tricks. An old-made Pinchon having got herself in debt by the scent-shop, and the judge's pocket-book being well-filled in bad blood amongst them already. Put all these things together and see what they make. Hush! Hush! whispered the other. It seems like a sin to be the first to speak of such a thing. But I think with you that we had better go to the city-martial. Yes, yes, said Dixie. Well, I always said there was something devilish in that woman's scowl. The men wheeled about accordingly and retraced their steps up the street. The Italian also made the best of his way off with a parting glance up at the arched window. As for the children, they took to their heels with one accord and skeppered as if some giant or ogre were in pursuit, until, at a good distance from the house, they stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out. Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they had overheard. Looking back at the grotesque peaks and the shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a gloom diffused about it, which no brightness of the sunshine could dispel. An imaginary hepsaba scowled and shook her finger at them from several windows at the same moment. An imaginary Clifford, for it would have deeply wounded him to know it, he had always been a horror to these small people, stood behind the unreal hepsaba making awful gestures in a faded dressing-gown. Children are even more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch the contagion of a panic terror. For the rest of the day the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake of avoiding the seven gables, while the bolder signalized their hardyhood by challenging their comrades to race past the mansion at full speed. It could not have been more than half an hour after the disappearance of the Italian boy, with his unseasonable melodies, when a cab drove down the street. It stopped beneath the pinch on Elm, the cab men took a trunk, a canvas bag, and a bandbox from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the doorstep of the old house. A straw bonnet, and then the pretty figure of a young girl, came into view from the interior of the cab. It was Phoebe, though not altogether so blooming as when she first tripped into our story, for, in the few intervening weeks, her experiences had made her graver more womanly and deeper entoken of a heart that had begun to suspect its depths. Still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her. Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real rather than fantastic within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a questionable venture, even for Phoebe at this juncture, to cross the threshold of the seven gables. Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous, and sinful phantoms that have gained admittance there since her departure? Or will she likewise fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be only another pallid phantom to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs, and affright children as she pauses at the window? At least we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance to receive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pinchon, who, wretched spectacle that he is, and frightful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil with him, still keeps his place in the oaken chair. Phoebe first tried the shop door. It did not yield to her hand, and the white curtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door, struck her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual. Without making another effort to enter here, she overtook herself to the great portal under the arched window. Finding it fastened, she knocked. A reverberation came from the emptiness within. She knocked again, and a third time, and listening intently, fancied that the floor creaked, as if Hepsibo were coming, with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to admit her. But so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound, that she began to question whether she might not have mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself with its exterior. Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice at some distance. It appeared to call her name. Looking in the direction once it proceeded, Phoebe saw little Ned Higgins a good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head violently, making deprecatory gestures with both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech. No, no, Phoebe! he screamed. Don't you go in! There's something wicked there. Don't, don't go in! But as the little personage could not be induced to approach near enough to explain himself, Phoebe concluded that he had been frightened on some of his visits to the shop by her cousin Hepsibo, for the good lady's manifestations in truth ran about an equal chance of scaring children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become. As her next resort, Phoebe made her way into the garden, whereon so warm and bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hepsibo also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor. Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of Hens half ran, half flew to meet her, while a strange gremolkin, who was prowling under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily over the fence, and vanished. The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench were still damp, and bestrew with twigs and the disarray of the past storm. The growth of the garden seemed to have got quite out of bounds. The weeds had taken advantage of Phoebe's absence, and the long continued rain to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen vegetables. Mal's well had overflowed its stone border, and made a pool of formidable breath in that corner of the garden. The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human foot had left its print for many preceding days, probably not since Phoebe's departure, for she saw a side comb of her own under the table of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she and Clifford sat there. The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house, as they appeared now to have done. Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings of something amiss, and apprehensions to which she could not give shape, she approached the door that formed the customary communication between the house and garden. It was secured within, like the two which she had already tried. She knocked, however, and immediately, as if the application had been inspected, the door was drawn open by a considerable exertion of some unseen person's strength, not wide but far enough to afford her a side-long entrance. As Hepsiba, in order not to expose herself to inspection from without, invariably opened a door in this manner, Phoebe necessarily concluded that it was her cousin who now admitted her. Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and had no sooner entered than the door closed behind her. CHAPTER XX. THE FLOWER OF EDEN Phoebe, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old house. She was not at first aware by whom she had been admitted. Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment. She felt herself drawn along, not towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables. The sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and fell upon the dusty floor, so that Phoebe now clearly saw, what indeed had been no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with hers, that it was not Hepsiba nor Clifford, but Holgrave, to whom she owed her reception. The subtle, intuitive communication, or rather, the vague and formless impression of something to be told, had made her yield unresistingly to his impulse. Without taking away her hand, she looked eerily in his face, not quick to forebode evil, but unavoidably conscious that the state of the family had changed since her departure, and therefore anxious for an explanation. The artist looked paler than ordinary, there was a thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead, tracing a deep vertical line between the eyebrows. His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression that Phoebe had ever witnessed, shining out of the New England Reserve, with which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart. It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful object in a dreary forest or in limitable desert, would recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to home, and the gentle current of everyday affairs. And yet, as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the smile disappeared. I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phoebe, said he. We meet at a strange moment. What has happened? She exclaimed, Why is the house so deserted? Where are Hepsyba and Clifford? Gone. I cannot imagine where they are, answered Holgrave. We are alone in the house. Hepsyba and Clifford gone? Cried Phoebe. It is not possible. And why have you brought me into this room, instead of the parlor? Ah, something terrible has happened. I must run and see. No, no, Phoebe, said Holgrave, holding her back. It is as I have told you. They are gone, and I know not with her. A terrible event has indeed happened, but not to them. Nor, as I undoubtedly believe, through any agency of theirs. If I read your character rightly, Phoebe, he continued, fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety, intermixed with tenderness. Gentle as you are, and seeming to have your sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable strength. You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, when tested, will prove itself capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary rule. Oh, no, I am very weak, replied Phoebe, trembling. But tell me what has happened. You are strong, persisted Holgrave. You must be both strong and wise, for I am all astray and need your counsel. It may be you can suggest the one right thing to do. Tell me, tell me, said Phoebe, all in a tremble. It oppresses. It terrifies me of this mystery. Anything else I can bear. The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing power with which Phoebe impressed him, it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to her knowledge. It was like dragging a hideous shape of death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire. Where it would present all the uglier aspect amid the decorousness of everything about it. Yet it could not be concealed from her. She must needs know it. Phoebe, said he, Do you remember this? He put into her hand a daguerreotype, the same that he had shown her at their first interview in the garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless traits of the original. What has this to do with Hepsba and Clifford? Asked Phoebe, with impatient surprise, that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a moment. It is Judge Pinshawn. You have shown it to me before. But here is the same face taken within this half hour, said the artist, presenting her with another miniature. I had just finished it when I heard you at the door. This is death, shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale. Judge Pinshawn dead. Such as there represented, said Holgrave. He sits in the next room. The judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepsba have vanished. I know no more. All beyond is conjecture. On returning to my solitary chamber last evening I noticed no light, either in the parlor or Hepsba's room or Clifford's. No stern or footstep about the house. This morning there was the same death-like quiet. From my window I overheard the testimony of a neighbor that your relatives were seen leaving the house in the midst of yesterday's storm. A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pinshawn being missed. A feeling which I cannot describe, an indefinite sense of some catastrophe or consummation, impelled me to make my way into this part of the house, where I discovered what you see. As a point of evidence that may be useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial valuable to myself. For, Phoebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with that man's fate. I used the means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Pinshawn's death. Even in her agitation Phoebe could not help remarking the calmness of whole Graves demeanor. He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost have been prophesied. Why have you not thrown open the doors and called in witnesses? inquired she, with a painful shutter. It is terrible to be here alone. But Clifford, suggested the artist, Clifford and Hepsiba, we must consider what is best to be done in their behalf. It is a wretched fatality that they should have disappeared. Their flight will throw the worst colouring over this event of which it is susceptible. Yet how easy is the explanation to those who know them? Bewildered and terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one, which was attended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford, they have had no idea but of removing themselves from the scene. How miserably unfortunate! Had Hepsiba but shrieked aloud, had Clifford flung wide the door and proclaimed Judge Pinshawn's death, it would have been, however awful in itself, an event fruitful of good consequences to them. As I view it, it would have gone far towards obliterating the black stain on Clifford's character. And how, asked Phoebe, could any good come from what is so very dreadful? Because, said the artist, if the matter can be fairly considered and candidly interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Pinshawn could not have come unfairly to his end. This mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family for generations past. Not often occurring, indeed, but when it does occur, usually attacking individuals about the Judge's time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental crisis, or perhaps in an excess of wrath. Old Mall's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical predisposition in the Pinshawn race. Now there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances connected with the death that occurred yesterday, and those recorded of the death of Clifford's uncle thirty years ago. It is true, there was a certain arrangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it possible, nay, as men look at these things, probable, or even certain, that old Jeffrey Pinshawn came to a violent death and by Clifford's hands. Whence came those circumstances? exclaimed Phoebe. He being innocent as we know him to be. They were arranged, said Holgrave. At least such as long been my conviction, they were arranged after the uncle's death and before it was made public by the man who sits in Yonder Parlor. His own death, so like that former one, yet attended by none of those suspicious circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him at once a punishment for his wickedness and making plain the innocence of Clifford. But this flight, it distorts everything. He may be in concealment near at hand. Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the judge's death the evil might be rectified. We must not hide this thing a moment longer, said Phoebe. It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts. Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest. Let us throw open the doors and call all the neighborhood to see the truth. You are right, Phoebe. Rejoined, Holgrave. Doubtless you are right. Yet the artist did not feel the horror which was proper to Phoebe's sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue with society, and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules. Neither was he in haste, like her, to be take himself within the precincts of common life. On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment, as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot and blossoming in the wind, such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present position. It separated Phoebe and himself from the world, and bound them to each other by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pinchon's mysterious death and the counsel which they were forced to hold, respecting it. The secret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean. Once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standing on its widely-sundered shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together. They were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another's side through a shadow haunted passage. The image of awful death which filled the house held them united by his stiffened grasp. These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise have flowered so. Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave's purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs. Why do we delay so? asked Phoebe. This secret takes away my breath. Let us throw open the doors. In all our lives there can never come another moment like this, said Holgrave. Phoebe, is it all terror? Nothing but terror. Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life worth living for? It seems a sin, replied Phoebe, trembling, to think of joy at such a time. Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me the hour before you came? exclaimed the artist. A dark, cold, miserable hour. The presence of yonder dead man through a great black shadow over everything. He made the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt. The sense of it took away my youth. I never hoped to feel young again. The world looks strange, wild, evil, hostile. My past life so lonesome and dreary. My future, a shapeless gloom which I must mold into gloomy shapes. But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold, and hope, warmth, and joy came in with you. The black moment became at once a blissful one. It must not pass without the spoken word. I love you. How can you love a simple girl like me? asked Phoebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak. You have many, many thoughts with which I should try in vain to sympathize. And I—I, too—I have tendencies with which you would sympathize as little. That is less matter, but I have not scope enough to make you happy. You are my only possibility of happiness, answered Holgrave. I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me. And then I am afraid, continued Phoebe, shrinking towards Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected her. You will lead me out of my own quiet path. You will make me strive to follow you where it is pathless. I cannot do so. It is not my nature. I shall sink down in perish. Ah, Phoebe, exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile that was burdened with thought. It will be far otherwise than as you forbode. The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. I have a presentment that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences, perhaps even in due time to build a house for another generation. In a word, to conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society, your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine. I would not have it so, said Phoebe earnestly. Do you love me? asked Holgrave. If we love one another, the moment has room for nothing more. Let us pause upon it and be satisfied. Do you love me, Phoebe? You look into my heart, said she, letting her eyes drop. You know I love you. And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle was wrought, without which every human existence is a blank. The bliss which makes all things true, beautiful and holy, shown around this youth and maiden, they were conscious of nothing sad nor old. They transfigured the earth and made it Eden again, and themselves the two first dwellers in it. The dead man, so close beside them, was forgotten. At such a crisis there is no death, for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere. But how soon the heavy earth dream settled down again? Whispered Phoebe, somebody is at the street door. Now let us meet the world, said Holgrave. No doubt the rumor of Judge Pinchon's visit to this house and the flight of Hepsiba and Clifford is about to lead to the investigation of the premises. We have no way but to meet it. Let us open the door at once. But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door, even before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had passed, they heard footsteps in the farther passage. The door, therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked, which Holgrave indeed had seen to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to enter, must have been open from without. The sound of footsteps was not harsh, bold, decided and intrusive, as the gate of strangers would naturally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwelcome. It was feeble. As of persons either weak or weary, there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the listeners. "'Can it be?' whispered Holgrave. "'It is they,' answered Phoebe. "'Thank God! Thank God!' And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe's whispered ejaculation, they heard Hepsiba's voice more distinctly. "'Thank God! My brother, we are at home!' "'Well, yes, thank God!' responded Clifford. "'A dreary home, Hepsiba! But you have done well to bring me hither. Stay! That parlor door is open. I cannot pass by it. Let me go and rest me in the arbor where I used. Oh, very long ago it seems to me, after what has befallen us, where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe.' But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it. They had not made many steps. In truth they were lingering in the entry, with the listlessness of an accomplished purpose, unsurgeoned what to do next, when Phoebe ran to meet them. Unbeholding her, Hepsiba burst into tears. With all her might she had staggered onward beneath the burden of grief and responsibility, until now that it was safe to fling it down. Indeed she had not energy to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered it to press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the stronger of the two. It is our own little Phoebe, ha-ha, and whole-grave with her, exclaimed he with a glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile beautiful, kind, but melancholy. I thought of you both as we came down the street, and beheld Alice's posies in full bloom, and so the flower of Eden has bloomed likewise in this old darksome house today.