fearful secret hidden within the house, it would have affected him with a singular shape and modification of horror, to see the current of human life making this small eddy hereabouts, — whirling sticks, straws and all such trifles, round and round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!

The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that he tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables, and at length came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found admittance.

“It’s a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at it,” said he to himself. “She can’t be gone away! In fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon Street, I’ve never known her to be away