The morning is gloriously sunny. The once old and dark Pyncheon house now seems alive and happy, and Alice Pyncheon's posies glow red in a corner of one of the upper mossy eaves. Uncle Venner tries to obtain some leftover vegetables for his pigs, but no one answers his knock at the Pyncheon house, although Holgrave yells a greeting to him. Various neighbors and potential customers of the shop gossip that Hepzibah and her brother must have gone to Judge Pyncheon's country estate. The passing butcher is also annoyed when Hepzibah fails to emerge and buy some choice cuts from him. The young Italian hurdy-gurdy player and his monkey give a performance, but even they fail to elicit any response from the house. A rumor then erupts that the Judge has been murdered, and thus the city marshal is consulted. Crowds suddenly begin to avoid the house, but a few daring young boys race each other past its gloomy confines.
Soon Phoebe returns from the country; observing the untidy garden, she too senses a change. As she tries a door near the garden, it opens, oddly, from the inside. Holgrave then gently leads the anxious girl to a big, empty room, where he asks for her wisdom and strength as he shows her a recent picture which he just made of Judge Pyncheon, sitting in death. Worried about Hepzibah and Clifford, Holgrave explains that for certain reasons, Clifford will probably be associated with these events. It is possible, Holgrave explains, that the Colonel, the uncle, and now the Judge all died because of a similar hereditary weakness. He adds that, in his opinion, the natural death of the bachelor Pyncheon uncle was staged by the Judge to look like murder, a murder for which Clifford was unjustly imprisoned. For a brief moment, Holgrave and Phoebe forget the presence of death and exchange tender vows of love, in spite of her brief objection that she is too simple for his pathless ways.
