efinite 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 bandbox, from the top of his vehicle, and
deposited them on the doorstep 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 Phoebe! 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 Phoebe, 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 vigi