In its simplest aspect the narrative concerns the persecution of an unfortunate and weak representative of the Pyncheon family by a powerful and unscrupulous representative. At intervals through the centuries the spirit of the great Puritan ancestor made its appearance in the flesh, as if the Colonel ‘had been gifted with a sort of intermittent immortality.’ Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon stands as a modern reincarnation of the old persecutor of witches. Clifford, his cousin, is a victim of the law at one of those moments when the law seems to operate almost automatically. Suspected of murder, he might have been cleared had Jaffrey but told what he knew, the real manner of their uncle’s death. This were to disclose certain of his own moral delinquencies, and Jaffrey keeps silent. And thus it happens that, both being in their young manhood, the one is incarcerated and the other enters on a path leading to influence, wealth, and good repute. To the ‘somber dignity of an inherited curse’ the Pyncheons added yet another dignity in the form of a shadowy claim to an almost princely tract of land in the North. The connecting link, some parchment signed with Indian hieroglyphics, had been lost when the Colonel died; but the poorest of his race felt an accession of pride as he contemplated that possible inheritance. And the richest of modern Pyncheons, the Judge, was not proof against ambitious dreams excited by the same thought. Affecting to believe that Clifford knows where the lost document is hidden, the Judge tries to force himself on his victim, who, made almost an imbecile by long imprisonment, is now, after his release, harbored in the House of the Seven Gables and cared for by his aged sister Hepzibah and his fair young cousin Phœbe. And while the Judge is waiting, watch in hand, for the terror-stricken Clifford to come to him, Death comes instead. Maule’s curse is fulfilled in yet another generation. The suspicion that would have fallen anew on Clifford is averted by Holgrave. But Holgrave, as he chooses to call himself, is the last living representative of the family of Maule the wizard. And it was for one of the persecuted race to save the unhappiest member of the family by which his own had suffered. Holgrave marries Phœbe Pyncheon and the blood of the two families is united. Holgrave’s sole inheritance from his wizard ancestor, as he laughingly explained, was a knowledge of the hiding-place of the now worthless Indian deed. For this secret a Pyncheon had bartered his daughter’s life and happiness in former years.