The Departure

The medical opinion with regard to his own recent
and regretted decease had almost entirely obviated the idea that a
murder was committed in the former case. Yet, as the record showed,
there were circumstances irrefragably indicating that some person had
gained access to old Jaffrey Pyncheon's private apartments, at or near
the moment of his death. His desk and private drawers, in a room
contiguous to his bedchamber, had been ransacked; money and valuable
articles were missing; there was a bloody hand-print on the old man's
linen; and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive evidence, the
guilt of the robbery and apparent murder had been fixed on Clifford,
then residing with his uncle in the House of the Seven Gables.

Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook so to
account for these circumstances as to exclude the idea of Clifford's
agency. Many persons affirmed that the history and elucidation of the
facts, long so mysterious, had been obtained by the daguerreotypist
from one of those mesmerical seers who, nowadays, so strangely perplex
the aspect of human affairs, and put everybody's natural vision to the
blush, by the marvels which they see with their eyes shut.

According to this version of the story, Judge Pyncheon, exemplary as we
have portrayed him in our narrative, was, in his youth, an apparently
irreclaimable scapegrace. The brutish, the animal instincts, as is
often the case, had been developed earlier than the intellectual
qualities, and the force of character, for which he was afterwards
remarkable. He had shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low
pleasures, little short of ruffianly in his propensities, and
recklessly expensive, with no other resources than the bounty of his
uncle. This course of conduct had alienated the old bachelor's
affection, once strongly fixed upon him. Now it is averred,--but
whether on authority available in a court of justice, we do not pretend
to have investigated,--that the young man was tempted by the devil, one
night, to search his uncle's private drawers, to which he had
unsuspected means of access. While thus criminally occupied, he was
startled by the opening of the chamber-door. There stood old Jaffrey
Pyncheon, in his nightclothes! The surprise of such a discovery, his
agitation, alarm, and horror, brought on the crisis of a disorder to
which the old bachelor had an hereditary liability; he seemed to choke
with blood, and fell upon the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow
against the corner of a table. What was to be done? The old man was
surely dead! Assistance would come too late! What a misfortune, indeed,
should it come too soon, since his reviving consciousness would bring
the recollection of the ignominious offence which he had beheld his
nephew in the very act of committing!