Incomparable as _The Scarlet Letter_ undoubtedly is, there are admirers of Hawthorne’s genius who have pronounced _The House of the Seven Gables_ the better story of the two. The judgment may be erroneous, it is at least not eccentric. In handling the genealogical details of the first chapter, Hawthorne showed a deft touch. The descendants of the proud old Colonel Pyncheon are as clearly defined as if the name and station of each had been enumerated. With no less ease does one follow the fortunes of the humble house of Matthew Maule. This progenitor of an obscure race had been executed for witchcraft. All of his descendants bore the stamp of this event. They were ‘marked out from other men.’ In spite of an exterior of good fellowship, there was a circle about the Maules, and no man had ever stepped foot inside of it. Unfortunate in its early history, this family was never other than unfortunate. It had an inheritance of sombre recollections, which it brooded upon, though unresentfully. Its life was linked with that of the proud house whose visible mansion was founded on property wrested from the old martyr to superstition. For Colonel Pyncheon had shown acrimonious zeal in the witchcraft persecutions, and unbecoming speed in seizing on the wizard’s little plot of ground with its spring of soft and pleasant water. Inseparable as substance and shadow, wherever there was a Pyncheon there was also a Maule. An endless chain of dark events depended from that crime of witchcraft days. On the scaffold the condemned wizard prophesied concerning his accuser: ‘God will give him blood to drink.’ Men shook their heads when Colonel Pyncheon built the House of the Seven Gables, on the site of Matthew Maule’s hut. They had not long to wait for the fulfilment of the prophecy. The spring became bitter, and on the day when the stately dwelling was first opened to guests Colonel Pyncheon was found dead in his study, with blood-bedabbled ruff and beard. Against this tragedy of old colonial days as a background Hawthorne projects the later story of _The House of the Seven Gables_.