proceedings against the witches had proved far less ac-
ceptable to the Beneficent Father than to that very Arch
Enemy whom they were intended to distress and utterly
overwhelm. It is not the less certain, however, that awe
and terror brooded over the memories of those who died
for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their graves, in the
crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be incapable of re-
taining the occupants who had been so hastily thrust into
them. Old Matthew Maule, especially, was known to
have as little hesitation or difficulty in rising out of his
grave as an ordinary man in getting out of bed, and was
as often seen at midnight as living people at noonday.
This pestilent wizard (in whom his just punishment
seemed to have wrought no manner of amendment) had
an inveterate habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled
the House of the Seven Gables, against the owner of
which he pretended to hold an unsettled claim for ground-
rent. The ghost, it appears, -- with the pertinacity
which was one of his distinguishing characteristics while
alive, -- insisted that he was the rightful proprietor of
the site upon which the house stood. His terms were,
that either the aforesaid ground-rent, from the day when
the cellar began to be dug, should be paid down, or the
mansion itself given up; else he, the ghostly creditor,
would have his finger in all the affairs of the Pyncheons,
and make everything go wrong with them, though it
should be a thousand years after his death. It was a
wild story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incred-
ible to those who could remember what an inflexibly ob-
stinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been.

Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule
of our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited

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