as the secluded and antiquarian old bachelor, a century and a
half seemed not so vast a period as to obviate the propriety of
substituting right for wrong. It was the belief of those who knew
him best, that he would positively have taken the very singular
step of giving up the House of the Seven Gables to the representative
of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeakable tumult which a suspicion
of the old gentleman's project awakened among his Pyncheon relatives.
Their exertions had the effect of suspending his purpose; but it
was feared that he would perform, after death, by the operation of
his last will, what he had so hardly been prevented from doing in
his proper lifetime. But there is no one thing which men so
rarely do, whatever the provocation or inducement, as to bequeath
patrimonial property away from their own blood. They may love other
individuals far better than their relatives,--they may even cherish
dislike, or positive hatred, to the latter; but yet, in view of death,
the strong prejudice of propinquity revives, and impels the testator
to send down his estate in the line marked out by custom so immemorial
that it looks like nature. In all the Pyncheons, this feeling had the
energy of disease. It was too powerful for the conscientious scruples
of the old bachelor; at whose death, accordingly, the mansion-house,
together with most of his other riches, passed into the possession of
his next legal representative.

This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young man who
had been convicted of the uncle's murder. The new heir, up to
the period of his accession, was reckoned rather a dissipated youth,
but had at once reformed, and made himself an exceedingly respectable
member of society. In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality,
and had won higher eminence in the world, than any of his race since
the time of the original Puritan. Applying himself in earlier manhood