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-agreeing words,--the swarthy whiteness of Judge
Pyncheon'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 go 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 Hepzibah 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
Pyncheon'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 has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all
mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past. The wind has
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 the blast! The old house creaks again, and
makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty
throat (the big flue, 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, before-hand, what wonderful
wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with
the strangest noises, which immediately begin to