said Hepzibah, after a brief consideration; “and you have no pity in your strength! Clifford is not now insane; but the interview which you insist upon may go far to make him so. Nevertheless, knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his possessing any valuable secret.

I will call Clifford. Be merciful in your dealings with him! — be far more merciful than your heart bids you be! — for God is looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!”

The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the foregoing conversation had passed, into the parlor, and flung himself heavily in to the great ancestral chair. Many a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious arms: rosy children, after their sports;