The House of the Seven Gables

Hepzibah Pyncheon is a dignified but destitute woman residing in the House of the Seven Gables—a manor with a dark history, and her ancestral home. She lives with her brother Clifford, who has completed a thirty-year sentence for murder, and a lodger named Holgrave, who is writing a book about the history of her family. Long ago, Matthew Maule owned the land that the titular house was later built on; but the scheming Colonel Pyncheon, founder of the Pyncheon family, wrongfully seized the land from him, and Maule was accused of witchcraft and condemned to death.