the reader -- went no deeper than his station, habits of
life, and external circumstances. One perceived him to be
a personage of marked influence and authority; and,
especially, you could feel just as certain that he was op-
ulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or as if you
had seen him touching the twigs of the Pyncheon Elm,
and, Midas-like, transmuting them to gold.

In his youth, he had probably been considered a hand-
some man; at his present age, his brow was too heavy,
his temples too bare, his remaining hair too gray, his eye
too cold, his lips too closely compressed, to bear any re-
lation to mere personal beauty. He would have made a
good and massive portrait; better now, perhaps, than at
any previous period of his life, although his look might
grow positively harsh in the process of being fixed upon the
canvas. The artist would have found it desirable to
study his face, and prove its capacity for varied expres-
sion; to darken it with a frown, --to kindle it up with
a smile.

While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Pyn-
cheon House, both the frown and the smile passed succes-
sively over his countenance. His eye rested on the shop-
window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowed spectacles,
which he held in his hand, he minutely surveyed
Hepzibah's little arrangement of toys and commodities.
At first it seemed not to please him, -- nay, to cause him
exceeding displeasure, -- and yet, the very next moment,
he smiled. While the latter expression was yet on his lips,
he caught a glimpse of Hepzibah, who had involuntarily
bent forward to the window; and then the smile changed
from acrid and disagreeable to the sunniest complacency
and benevolence. He bowed, with a happy mixture of

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