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Far down beneath it, in a depression amongst the heath-clad undulations, a fire glowed red in the gloom. And on the further side of this solitude, amidst groves and plantations, the moonlight shone on the roofs and gables of half-hidden houses. Over everything hung a deep silence. "A wild and lonely scene!" she said. Neale raised his stick again and began to point.
Pyncheon's message, the carpenter merely tarried to finish a small job, which he happened to have in hand, and then took his way towards the House of the Seven Gables. This noted edifice, though its style might be getting a little out of fashion, was still as respectable a family residence as that of any gentleman in town.
They knew all the spots their mother had loved so well in her girlhood at old Green Gables the long Lover's Lane, that was pink-hedged in wild-rose time, the always neat yard, with its willows and poplars, the Dryad's Bubble, lucent and lovely as of yore, the Lake of Shining Waters, and Willowmere.
The new homes of the nobility, erected during Elizabeth's reign, were marked by a beauty and luxury in keeping with the new ideas of their owners. The eye still rests with admiration on the numberless gables, the quaint chimneys, the oriel windows, the fretted parapets of the Tudor building.
If it be true of the others that the pure, natural quality of the imaginative strain is their great merit, this is at least as true of The House of the Seven Gables, the charm of which is in a peculiar degree of the kind that we fail to reduce to its grounds like that of the sweetness of a piece of music, or the softness of fine September weather.
The east end and the transept end are both flanked by towers, with double gables crowned by curious little pinnacles, copied by Scott from one still remaining. The east gable has three graduated windows, that to the transept aisle a quatrefoil within a dog-toothed circle.
The first was built by one John Churchman, Sheriff in the year 1385; the next in the reign of Queen Elizabeth it was furnished with high-pitched gables and a water gate, this was burned down in the Great Fire. Wren built the third, which was burned down in 1718; one Ripley built the fourth, which was also burned down in 1814.
This excellent example of the Pennsylvania farmhouse type was built by Dirck Jansen, one of the original settlers of Germantown, for his son John Johnson at the time of his marriage to Rachael Livezey. The work was begun in 1765 and completed in 1768, as indicated by a date stone in the peak of one of the gables.
The "Life" refers moreover to the saint's pastoral staff and his bell but these have disappeared for centuries. The "Oratory" is simply a primitive church of the usual sixth century type: it stands 13' 4" x 8' 9" in the clear, and has, or had, the usual high-pitched gables and square-headed west doorway with inclining jambs.
I would almost overlook the total lack of drainage which seems to go along with these carved eaves and gables, touched in with their blues and browns and yellows. This must be Bonnevine we are coming to. We change horses here."
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