"God," said the dying man,
pointing his finger at the countenance of his enemy, "God will give him
blood to drink!"

When it was understood that Colonel Pyncheon intended to erect a
spacious family mansion on the spot first covered by the log-built hut
of Matthew Maule the village gossips shook their heads, and hinted that
he was about to build his house over an unquiet grave.

But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to be turned aside
from his scheme by dread of the reputed wizzard's ghost. He dug his
cellar, and laid deep the foundations of his mansion; and the
head-carpenter of the House of the Seven Gables was no other than Thomas
Maule, the son of the dead man from whom the right to the soil had been
wrested.

On the day the house was finished Colonel Pyncheon bade all the town to
be his guests, and Maude's Lane--or Pyncheon Street, as it was now
called--was thronged at the appointed hour as with a congregation on its
way to church.

But the founder of the stately mansion did not stand in his own hall to
welcome the eminent persons who presented themselves in honour of the
solemn festival, and the principal domestic had to explain that his
master still remained in his study, which he had entered an hour before.

The lieutenant-governor took the matter into his hands, and knocked
boldly at the door of the colonel's private apartment, and, getting no
answer, he tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide
open by a sudden gust of wind.

The company thronged to the now open door, pressing the
lieutenant-governor into the room before them.

A large map and a portrait of Colonel Pyncheon were conspicuous on the
walls, and beneath the portrait sat the colonel himself in an elbow
chair, with a pen in his hand.

A little boy, the colonel's grandchild, now made his way among the
guests, and ran towards the seated figure; then, pausing halfway, he
began to shriek with terror. The company drew nearer, and perceived that
there was blood on the colonel's cuff and on his beard, and an unnatural
distortion in his fixed stare. It was too late to render assistance. The
iron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and
strong-willed man, was dead! Dead in his new house!

Colonel Pyncheon's sudden and mysterious end made a vast deal of noise
in its day. There were many rumours, and a great dispute of doctors over
the dead body. But the coroner's jury sat upon the corpse, and,