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!...

Yonder leaden 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 Pyncheon'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 grimalkin, outside of the window, where he appears to have posted
himself for a deliberate watch. This grimalkin 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 has 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. Blest, blest radiance! The day-beam--even what little
of it finds its way into this always dusky parlor--seems part of the
universal benediction, annulling evil, and rendering all goodness
possible and happiness attainable. Will Judge Pyncheon now rise up
from his chair? Will he go forth, and receive the early sunbeams on
his brow? Will he begin this new day--which God has smiled upon, and
blest, 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?...

The morning sunshine glimmers through the foliage, and, beautiful and
holy as it is, shuns no