CHAPTER XVI
BEHIND THE PICTURE
The hall of the Huntington home has a spaciousness and breadth consonant with the dignity of its owners, so gravely maintained until this last heir came to upset it. At the further end of the scrupulously waxed floors, stands a giant clock, a century old and more, with purple and red and yellow festoons of flowers and fruit decorating its imperturbable face. On days when the air is still and all the doors are open, its tongue can be heard in the great cupola, which surmounts the broad square roof, overlooking the town, and commanding a view of harbour and sea for many miles.
Now, up to this sixth of September there had been a legend in the family that the long black hands had never once stopped their visible march around the dial. Six generations of Huntingtons had in turn religiously attended to the rite of its winding, on the sacred eighth day; and each head of the line, rather incongruously, when his hour of abdication came and he had the least concern with Time, had solemnly handed on the brass key like some sacred torch of his race. Neglect of this duty would have been held as disgraceful by the beruffed figures in the gilt frames on the wall as embezzlement, or infraction of any statute on the books of the good Bay State.
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