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 Pyncheon's invisibility, however, that matter will
soon be remedied. The northwest wind has swept the sky clear. The
window is distinctly seen. Through its panes, 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,
through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into the
room. They play over the Judge's figure and show that he has 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 Pyncheon, 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 in this point. The
Pyncheon of two centuries ago, in common with most of his
contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations,
although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character. The Pyncheon
of to-night, who sits in yonder arm-chair, 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