egan to talk about the
daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly
young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up
his residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr.
Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest
companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen
blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments;
reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking
philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed,
who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent
of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare. As
for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the
other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and
disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates.
For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal
magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt
to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome
chamber.

"But, dear cousin," said Phoebe, "if the young man is so dangerous, why
do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on
fire!"

"Why, sometimes," answered Hepzibah, "I have seriously made it a
question, whether I ought not to send him away. But, with all his
oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking
hold of one's mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don't know
enough of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him
entirely. A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so
much alone as I do."

"But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!" remonstrated Phoebe, a part
of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.

"Oh!" said Hepzibah carelessly,--for, formal as she was, still, in her
life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law,--"I
suppose he has a law of his own!"

VI Maule's Well

AFTER an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into the garden.
The enclosure had formerly been very extensive, but was now contracted
within small compass, and hemmed about, partly by high wooden fences,
and partly by the outbuildings of houses that stood on another street.
In its centre was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little structure,
which showed just enough of its original des