University of Virginia Library

19. XIX.
ALICE'S POSIES.

Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest
person stirring in the neighborhood, the day after the
storm.

Pyncheon-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 centre 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, seemed more than negatively happy, in the
juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The Pyncheon-elm,
throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and
full of the morning sun and a sweetly-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 in perfect verdure, except a single
branch, that, by the earlier change with which the elm-tree
sometimes prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to
bright gold. It was like the golden branch, that gained
Æneas and the Sybil 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 his
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
fire-side 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, have 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 burdocks, 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 angle between the
two front gables. The old people used to give them the
name of Alice's Posies, in remembrance of fair Alice Pyncheon,
who was believed to have brought their seeds from
Italy. They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom,
to-day, 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 wheelbarrow 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 in prime order, on these eleemosynary contributions;
insomuch 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 Hepzibah Pyncheon's house-keeping 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 door-step of the seven gables.

“I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,” said the
patriarch to himself. “She must have had a dinner yesterday,
— no question of that! She always has one, now-a-days.
So where 's the pot-liquor and potato-skins, I ask?
Shall I knock, and see if she 's stirring yet? No, no, —
't won't do! If little Phœbe was about the house, I should
not mind knocking; but Miss Hepzibah, likely as not,
would scowl 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 daguerreotypist,
leaning out of the window. “Do you hear nobody
stirring?”

“Not a soul,” said the man of patches. “But that 's no
wonder. 'T is 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 was nobody alive in it. The front of the house looks
a good deal cheerier; and Alice's Posies 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

Pyncheons were running riot in the lower rooms, especially
in Miss Hepzibah's part of the house. But it is very
quiet now.”

“Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself,
after being disturbed, all night, with the racket,” said Uncle
Venner. “But it would be odd, now, would n'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.

“O, along in the forenoon,” said the old man. “Well,
well! I must go my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow.
But I 'll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig likes a
dinner as well as a breakfast. No meal-time, 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 Phœbe comes back.”

“I have heard,” said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in
his head, “that the water of Maule'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 visiter, except
a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front door-step, threw
down one of his newspapers; for Hepzibah, 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 and
hissed, 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 Pyncheon!” muttered the
irascible housewife. “Think of her pretending to set up a
cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! These are what
she calls gentlefolk's airs, 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 obstreperously, 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 her window, and addressed
the impatient applicant.

“You 'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.”

“But I must and will find somebody here!” cried Mrs.
Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. “I want a
half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders, for Mr.
Gubbins's breakfast; and, lady or not, Old Maid Pyncheon
shall get up and serve me with it!”

“But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!” responded the lady
opposite. “She, and her brother, too, have both gone to
their cousin, Judge Pyncheon's, at his country-seat. There's
not a soul in the house, but that young daguerreotype-man,
that sleeps in the north gable. I saw old Hepzibah and
Clifford go away yesterday; and a queer couple of ducks
they were, paddling through the mud-puddles! They 're
gone, I 'll assure you.”

“And how do you know they 're gone to the judge's?”
asked Mrs. Gubbins. “He 's a rich man; and there 's been
a quarrel between him and Hepzibah, this many a day,
because he won't give her a living. That 's the main reason
of her setting up a cent-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 could n'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. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over
with hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. 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 cent, 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 agains, with the inexorable
pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important 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 Pyncheon!” screamed the child, rapping 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
naughty 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 Hepzibah, or Phœbe, 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. 'T is very strange,
Dixey,” added he to his companion, “what 's become of all
these Pyncheons! Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me
Judge Pyncheon 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 o' nights.”

“O, he 'll turn up safe enough!” said Dixey. “And as
for Old Maid Pyncheon, 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 could n't
stand it!”

“I never thought she 'd make it go,” remarked his friend.
“This business of cent-shops is overdone among the womenfolks.
My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!”

“Poor business!” said Dixey, shaking his head. “Poor
business!”

In the course of the morning, there were various other
attempts to open a communication with the supposed inhabitants

of this silent and impenetrable mansion. The man
of root-beer came, in his neatly-painted wagon, with a
couple of dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty ones;
the baker, with a lot of crackers which Hepzibah had ordered
for her retail custom; the butcher, with a nice titbit 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;
— whirling 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 sweetbread
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 Pyncheon-street,
I 've 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 elephantine appetite
had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed,
as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open.
However it might have happened, it was the fact. Through
the passage-way 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 stalwart 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
piqued the man of flesh that he determined to withdraw.

“So,” thought he, “there sits Old Maid Pyncheon's bloody
brother, while I 've been giving myself all this trouble!
Why, if a hog had n't more manners, I 'd stick him! I 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 titbit 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 centre 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,
capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the
shadow of the Pyncheon-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 Phœbe — 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 hog-weed and burdock),

stationed himself on the door-step 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
cent; 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 door-step; and one
squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile, the locust kept
singing in the great old Pyncheon-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 sidelong 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 Phœbe's sunny aspect. Neither could he be
willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose
sensibility, like Phœbe'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 a 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, caring nothing for the music, but
a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had. “Let
him play as long as he likes! If there 's nobody to pay him,
that 's his own look-out!”

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 Mammon, 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 door-step. It would be
an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon (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 swarthily-white
visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away! Was ever
before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where nobody
was in the cue 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 trill and echo of the world's
gayety 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 door-step, and go somewhere
else with your nonsense! The Pyncheon family live
there; and they are in great trouble, just about this time.
They don't feel musical to-day. It is reported, all over
town, that Judge Pyncheon, 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
door-step 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 Pyncheon's, with
certain pencilled 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 programme. 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, Dixey!” cried the man. “This has something
to do with Judge Pyncheon. See! — here 's his
name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his
hand-writing.”

“Let 's go to the city marshal with it!” said Dixey. “It
may give him just the clue he wants. After all,” whispered
he in 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.
And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in debt by the
cent-shop, — and the judge's pocket-book being well filled,
— and 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 marshal.”

“Yes, yes!” said Dixey. “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 scampered 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 shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a
gloom diffused about it, which no brightness of the sunshine

could dispel. An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook
her finger at them, from several windows at the same moment.
An imaginary Clifford — for (and it would have
deeply wounded him to know it) he had always been a
horror to these small people — stood behind the unreal Hepzibah,
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 hardihood 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 Pyncheon-elm; the cabman took a trunk, a canvas-bag,
and a band-box, from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them
on the door-step 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 Phœbe! 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-eyed, in token 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 Phœbe, 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 Pyncheon, 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.

Phœbe 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 betook 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 Hepzibah
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 whence it proceeded, Phœbe 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, Phœbe!” he screamed. “Don't you go in!
There 's something wicked there! Don't — don't — don't
go in!”

But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach
near enough to explain himself, Phœbe concluded

that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the
shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; 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, Phœbe made her way into the garden,
where, on so warm and bright a day as the present, she had
little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hepzibah 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 Grimalkin,
which 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 bestrewn 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 Phœbe's absence, and the long-continued
rain, to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.
Maule's well had overflowed its stone border,
and made a pool of formidable breadth, 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 Phœbe'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
expected, the door was drawn open, by a considerable
exertion of some unseen person's strength, not widely, but
far enough to afford her a side-long entrance. As Hepzibah,
in order not to expose herself to inspection from without,
invariably opened a door in this manner, Phœbe 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.