death--for so it was adjudged--of one member of the family by
the criminal act of another. Certain circumstances attending
this fatal occurrence had brought the deed irresistibly home to
a nephew of the deceased Pyncheon. The young man was tried and
convicted of the crime; but either the circumstantial nature of
the evidence, and possibly some lurking doubts in the breast of
the executive, or, lastly--an argument of greater weight in a
republic than it could have been under a monarchy,--the high
respectability and political influence of the criminal's connections,
had availed to mitigate his doom from death to perpetual imprisonment.
This sad affair had chanced about thirty years before the action
of our story commences. Latterly, there were rumors (which few
believed, and only one or two felt greatly interested in) that
this long-buried man was likely, for some reason or other, to be
summoned forth from his living tomb.

It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim of this
now almost forgotten murder. He was an old bachelor, and possessed
of great wealth, in addition to the house and real estate which
constituted what remained of the ancient Pyncheon property.
Being of an eccentric and melancholy turn of mind, and greatly given
to rummaging old records and hearkening to old traditions, he had
brought himself, it is averred, to the conclusion that Matthew Maule,
the wizard, had been foully wronged out of his homestead, if not out
of his life. Such being the case, and he, the old bachelor, in
possession of the ill-gotten spoil,--with the black stain of blood
sunken deep into it, and still to be scented by conscientious nostrils,
--the question occurred, whether it were not imperative upon him,
even at this late hour, to make restitution to Maule's posterity.
To a man living so much in the past, and so little in the present,