The House of the Seven Gables | Page 7

build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too
remote from what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of
the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by
this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a
prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to
the proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on the
strength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, the claimant,
as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was
characterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on the
other hand, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of
what he considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded in
protecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had
hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead.
No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Our
acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition. It
would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisive
opinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at least a
matter of doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon's claim were not unduly
stretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and bounds of
Matthew Maule. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the fact
that this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists --at a period,
moreover, laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more
weight than now--remained for years undecided, and came to a close
only with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode
of his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what it
did a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange
horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem
almost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his
habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men.
Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of

witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which
should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and
those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully
liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest
mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen,--the wisest, calmest, holiest
persons of their day stood in the inner circle round about the gallows,
loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves
miserably deceived. If any one part of their proceedings can be said to
deserve less blame than another, it was the singular indiscrimination
with which they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in former
judicial massacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals, brethren,
and wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is not strange that
a man of inconsiderable note, like Maule, should have trodden the
martyr's path to the hill of execution almost unremarked in the throng
of his fellow sufferers. But, in after days, when the frenzy of that
hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly Colonel
Pyncheon had joined in the general cry, to purge the land from
witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was an invidious
acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought the condemnation of
Matthew Maule. It was well known that the victim had recognized the
bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor's conduct towards him,
and that he declared himself hunted to death for his spoil. At the
moment of execution--with the halter about his neck, and while
Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback, grimly gazing at the scene Maule
had addressed him from the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, of which
history, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very words.
"God," said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly look, at
the undismayed countenance of his enemy, --"God will give him blood
to drink!" After the reputed wizard's death, his humble homestead had
fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon's grasp. When it was
understood, however, that the Colonel intended to erect a family
mansion-spacious, ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated
to endure for many generations of his posterity over the spot first
covered by the log-built hut of Matthew Maule, there was much
shaking of the head among the village gossips. Without absolutely
expressing a doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of
conscience and integrity throughout the proceedings which have been

sketched, they, nevertheless, hinted that he was about to build his house
over an unquiet