forth to greet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he
has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation
which cask it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he
is so much behindhand, I will give him a remembrancer myself!"

Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding-boots as
might of itself have been audible in the remotest of the seven
gables, he advanced to the door, which the servant pointed out,
and made its new panels reecho with a loud, free knock. Then,
looking round, with a smile, to the spectators, he awaited a
response. As none came, however, he knocked again, but with the
same unsatisfactory result as at first. And now, being a trifle
choleric in his temperament, the lieutenant-governor uplifted the
heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith he so beat and banged upon the
door, that, as some of the bystanders whispered, the racket might
have disturbed the dead. Be that as it might, it seemed to produce
no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon. When the sound subsided,
the silence through the house was deep, dreary, and oppressive,
notwithstanding that the tongues of many of the guests had already
been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits.

"Strange, forsooth!--very strange!" cried the lieutenant-governor,
whose smile was changed to a frown. "But seeing that our host
sets us the good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise
throw it aside, and make free to intrude on his privacy."

He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide
open by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh,
from the outermost portal through all the passages and apartments
of the new house. It rustled the silken garments of the ladies,