His pleasant intimacy with the Peabodys went on; the dawn of his new epoch broadened, and he began to see in Miss Sophia Peabody the figure upon which his hopes, his plans for the future converged. Her father's house stood on the edge of the Charter Street Burying-Ground, oldest of the Salem cemeteries. "A three-story wooden house"--thus he has described it--"perhaps a century old, low-studded, with a square front, standing right upon the street, and a small enclosed porch, containing the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and down the street through an oval window on each side: its characteristic was decent respectability, not sinking below the level of the genteel." In his "Note-Books" (July 4, 1837) he speaks of the old graveyard. "A slate gravestone round the borders, to the memory of 'Col. John Hathorne Esq.,' who died in 1717. This was the witch-judge. The stone is sunk deep into the earth, and leans forward, and the grass grows very long around it.... Other Hathornes lie buried in a range with him on either side.... It gives strange ideas, to think how convenient to Dr. P----'s family this burial-ground is,--the monuments standing almost within arm's reach of the side-windows of the parlor--and there being a little gate from the back-yard through which we step forth upon those old graves aforesaid. And the tomb of the P---- family is right in front, and close to the gate." Among the other Hathornes interred there are Captain Daniel, the privateersman, and a Mr. John Hathorne, "grandson of the Hon. John Hathorne," who died in 1758. The specification of his grandfather's name, with the prefix, shows that the relentless condemner of witches was still held in honor at Salem, in the middle of the eighteenth century. Dr. Peabody's house and this adjoining burial-ground form the scene of the unfinished "Dolliver Romance," and also supply the setting for the first part of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." In the latter we find it pictured with a Rembrandtesque depth of tone:--