prompt:
Chapter: SEVERAL days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough.
In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one
        inauspicious circumstance of Phoebe's departure), an easterly storm had
set in, and indefatigably apply itself to the task of making the black
roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before.
Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the interior.  Poor
Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his scanty resources of
enjoyment.  Phoebe was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the
floor.  The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping
foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at.  Nothing
flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the
brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the
shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been
suffering from drought, in the angle between the two front gables.

As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind,
   but to be, in her very person, only another phase of this gray and
   sullen spell of weather; the East-Wind itself, grim and disconsolate,
   in a rusty black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its
   head.  The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad that
   she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities, by scowling
   on them.  It is, perhaps, true that the public had something reasonably
   to complain of in her deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither
   ill-tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had
   it been possible to make it reach him.  The inutility of her best
   efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman.   She could do
   little else than sit silently in a corner of the room, when the wet
   pear-tree branches, sweeping across the small windows, created a
   noonday dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her woe-begone
   aspect.  It was no fault of Hepzibah's.  Everything--even the old
   chairs and tables, that had known what weather was for three or four
   such lifetimes as her own--looked as damp and chill as if the present
   were their worst experience.  The picture of the Puritan Colonel
   shivered on the wall.  The house itself shivered, from every attic of
   its seven gables down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all
   the better as an emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built
   for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.

   Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlor.  But the
   storm demon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove
   the smoke back again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own
   breath.  Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm,
   Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary
   chair.  On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he
   responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a
   determination not to leave his bed.  His sister made no attempt to
   change his purpose.  In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could
   hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty--so impracticable by her
   few and rigid faculties--of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but
   ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.  It
   was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might
   sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and
   unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow
   sufferer.

   But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below
   stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement.  In
   the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which
   (there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven
    Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.  She
   was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste
   for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice.  It was
   difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to
   which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the
   sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now
   stole upon her ear.  Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent
   instrument should be capable of so much melody.  Hepzibah involuntarily
   thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family,
   which were attributed to the legendary Alice.  But it was, perhaps,
   proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few
   touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations,
   and the music ceased.

   But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the
   easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to
   poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought
   the humming-birds along with it.  The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's
   performance (or Clifford's, if his we must consider it) were driven
   away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell.
   A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat
   ponderously stepping on the floor.  Hepzibah delayed a moment, while
   muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor
   in a forty years' warfare against the east wind.  A characteristic
   sound, however,--neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and
   reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious depth of chest;--impelled
   her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so
   common to women in cases of perilous emergency.  Few of her sex, on
   such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling
   Hepzibah.  But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him,
   stood up his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of
   composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance
   had excited.

   Hepzibah's presentiment had not deceived her.  It was no other than
   Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying the front door, had now
   effected his entrance into the shop.

   "How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?--and how does this most inclement
   weather affect our poor Clifford?" began the Judge; and wonderful it
   seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at
   any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile.
   "I could not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in
   any manner promote his comfort, or your own."

   "You can do nothing," said Hepzibah, controlling her agitation as well
   as she could.  "I devote myself to Clifford.  He has every comfort
   which his situation admits of."

   "But allow me to suggest, dear cousin," rejoined the Judge, "you
   err,--in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with the very best
   intentions,--but you do err, nevertheless, in keeping your brother so
   secluded.  Why insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness?
   Clifford, alas! has had too much of solitude.  Now let him try
   society,--the society, that is to say, of kindred and old friends.  Let
   me, for instance, but see Clifford, and I will answer for the good
   effect of the interview."

   "You cannot see him," answered Hepzibah.  "Clifford has kept his bed
   since yesterday."

   "What! How! Is he ill?" exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, starting with what
   seemed to be angry alarm; for the very frown of the old Puritan
   darkened through the room as he spoke.  "Nay, then, I must and will see
   him! What if he should die?"

   "He is in no danger of death," said Hepzibah,--and added, with
   bitterness that she could repress no longer, "none; unless he shall be
   persecuted to death, now, by the same man who long ago attempted it!"

   "Cousin Hepzibah," said the Judge, with an impressive earnestness of
   manner, which grew even to tearful pathos as he proceeded, "is it
   possible that you do not perceive how unjust, how unkind, how
   unchristian, is this constant, this long-continued bitterness against
   me, for a part which I was constrained by duty and conscience, by the
   force of law, and at my own peril, to act? What did I do, in detriment
   to Clifford, which it was possible to leave undone?  How could you, his
   sister,--if, for your never-ending sorrow, as it has been for mine, you
   had known what I did,--have, shown greater tenderness? And do you
   think, cousin, that it has cost me no pang?--that it has left no
   anguish in my bosom, from that day to this, amidst all the prosperity
   with which Heaven has blessed me?--or that I do not now rejoice, when
   it is deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and the welfare
   of society that this dear kinsman, this early friend, this nature so
   delicately and beautifully constituted,--so unfortunate, let us
   pronounce him, and forbear to say, so guilty,--that our own Clifford,
   in fine, should be given back to life, and its possibilities of
   enjoyment? Ah, you little know me, Cousin Hepzibah! You little know
   this heart! It now throbs at the thought of meeting him! There lives
   not the human being (except yourself,--and you not more than I) who has
   shed so many tears for Clifford's calamity.  You behold some of them
   now.  There is none who would so delight to promote his happiness!  Try
   me, Hepzibah!--try me, Cousin!--try the man whom you have treated as
   your enemy and Clifford's!--try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find
   him true, to the heart's core!"

   "In the name of Heaven," cried Hepzibah, provoked only to intenser
   indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern
   nature,--"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could
   almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without
   palsying your tongue,--give over, I beseech you, this loathsome
   pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a
   man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in
   your heart! Speak it out, at once!--or, if you hope so to promote it
   better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! But never speak
   again of your love for my poor brother.  I cannot bear it! It will
   drive me beyond a woman's decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear! Not
   another word!  It will make me spurn you!"

   For once, Hepzibah's wrath had given her courage.  She had spoken.
   But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon's
   integrity, and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in
   the ring of human sympathies,--were they founded in any just perception
   of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable
   prejudice, deduced from nothing?

   The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent respectability.
   The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it.  It was denied
   by nobody.  In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him,
   whether in his public or private capacities, there was not an
   individual--except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like the
   daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents--who would
   have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable
   place in the world's regard.  Nor (we must do him the further justice
           to say) did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or very
   frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his
   deserts.  His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest
   witness to a man's integrity,--his conscience, unless it might be for
   the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and
   then, some black day in the whole year's circle,--his conscience bore
   an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice.  And yet,
   strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our
   own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting
   world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice
   was wrong.  Hidden from mankind,--forgotten by himself, or buried so
   deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds
   that his daily life could take no note of it,--there may have lurked
   some evil and unsightly thing.  Nay, we could almost venture to say,
   further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually
   renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of
   a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.

   Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of
   the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into mistakes of this
   kind.  They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount
   importance.  Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of
   life.  They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and
   appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as
   gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors.
   With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the
   public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall
   and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately
   in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man
   himself.  Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls and suites of
   spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles;
   its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through
   the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and
   its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome--through which, from
   the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no
   obstructing medium between--surmounts the whole.  With what fairer and
   nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah!
   but in some low and obscure nook,--some narrow closet on the
   ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, and the key flung away,--or
   beneath the marble pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the
   richest pattern of mosaic-work above,--may lie a corpse, half decayed,
   and still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the
   palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it has long
   been his daily breath!  Neither will the visitors, for they smell only
   the rich odors which the master sedulously scatters through the palace,
   and the incense which they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now
   and then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the
   whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the hidden nook, the
   bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door, or
   the deadly hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within.
   Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and
   of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life.  And,
   beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant water, foul
   with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged with blood,--that secret
   abomination, above which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without
   remembering it,--is this man's miserable soul!

   To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Pyncheon.
   We might say (without in the least imputing crime to a personage of his
           eminent respectability) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in
   his life to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience
   than the Judge was ever troubled with.  The purity of his judicial
   character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of his public service
   in subsequent capacities; his devotedness to his party, and the rigid
   consistency with which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all
   events, kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as
   president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer
   of a widow's and orphan's fund; his benefits to horticulture, by
   producing two much esteemed varieties of the pear and to agriculture,
   through the agency of the famous Pyncheon bull; the cleanliness of his
   moral deportment, for a great many years past; the severity with which
   he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated
   son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of
   the young man's life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces
   at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his
   confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal
   glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the
   polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the
   square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material,
   and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the
   scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a
   bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and
   sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad
   benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole
   world,--what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a
   portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he
   beheld in the looking-glass.  This admirably arranged life was what he
   was conscious of in the progress of every day.  Then might not he claim
   to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, "Behold
   Judge Pyncheon there"?

   And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless
   youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the
   inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one
   questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least,
   blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary
   deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair
   aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a
   thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which
   were heaped into the other scale! This scale and balance system is a
   favorite one with people of Judge Pyncheon's brotherhood. A hard, cold
   man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and
   resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his
   image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive
   at true self-knowledge, except through loss of property and reputation.
   Sickness will not always help him do it; not always the death-hour!

   But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood confronting the
   fierce outbreak of Hepzibah's wrath.  Without premeditation, to her own
   surprise, and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to the
   inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty
   years.

   Thus far the Judge's countenance had expressed mild forbearance,--grave
   and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin's unbecoming
   violence,--free and Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted
   by her words.  But when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look
   assumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and
   this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if
   the iron man had stood there from the first, and the meek man not at
   all.  The effect was as when the light, vapory clouds, with their soft
   coloring, suddenly vanish from the stony brow of a precipitous
   mountain, and leave there the frown which you at once feel to be
   eternal.  Hepzibah almost adopted the insane belief that it was her old
   Puritan ancestor, and not the modern Judge, on whom she had just been
   wreaking the bitterness of her heart.  Never did a man show stronger
   proof of the lineage attributed to him than Judge Pyncheon, at this
   crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance to the picture in the inner
   room.

   "Cousin Hepzibah," said he very calmly, "it is time to have done with
   this."

   "With all my heart!" answered she.  "Then, why do you persecute us any
   longer? Leave poor Clifford and me in peace.  Neither of us desires
   anything better!"

   "It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this house," continued
   the Judge.  "Do not act like a madwoman, Hepzibah! I am his only
   friend, and an all-powerful one.  Has it never occurred to you,--are
   you so blind as not to have seen,--that, without not merely my consent,
   but my efforts, my representations, the exertion of my whole influence,
   political, official, personal, Clifford would never have been what you
   call free? Did you think his release a triumph over me? Not so, my good
   cousin; not so, by any means!  The furthest possible from that! No; but
   it was the accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on my part.  I
   set him free!"

   "You!" answered Hepzibah.  "I never will believe it! He owed his
   dungeon to you; his freedom to God's providence!"

   "I set him free!" reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the calmest
   composure.  "And I came hither now to decide whether he shall retain
   his freedom.  It will depend upon himself.  For this purpose, I must
   see him."

   "Never!--it would drive him mad!" exclaimed Hepzibah, but with an
   irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to the keen eye of the Judge;
   for, without the slightest faith in his good intentions, she knew not
   whether there was most to dread in yielding or resistance. "And why
   should you wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains hardly a
   fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that from an eye which
   has no love in it?"

   "He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!" said the Judge,
   with well-grounded confidence in the benignity of his aspect.  "But,
   Cousin Hepzibah, you confess a great deal, and very much to the
   purpose.  Now, listen, and I will frankly explain my reasons for
   insisting on this interview.  At the death, thirty years since, of our
   uncle Jaffrey, it was found,--I know not whether the circumstance ever
   attracted much of your attention, among the sadder interests that
   clustered round that event,--but it was found that his visible estate,
   of every kind, fell far short of any estimate ever made of it.  He was
   supposed to be immensely rich.  Nobody doubted that he stood among the
   weightiest men of his day.  It was one of his eccentricities,
   however,--and not altogether a folly, neither,--to conceal the amount
   of his property by making distant and foreign investments, perhaps
   under other names than his own, and by various means, familiar enough
   to capitalists, but unnecessary here to be specified.  By Uncle
   Jaffrey's last will and testament, as you are aware, his entire
   property was bequeathed to me, with the single exception of a life
   interest to yourself in this old family mansion, and the strip of
   patrimonial estate remaining attached to it."

   "And do you seek to deprive us of that?" asked Hepzibah, unable to
   restrain her bitter contempt.  "Is this your price for ceasing to
   persecute poor Clifford?"

   "Certainly not, my dear cousin!" answered the Judge, smiling
   benevolently.  "On the contrary, as you must do me the justice to own,
   I have constantly expressed my readiness to double or treble your
   resources, whenever you should make up your mind to accept any kindness
   of that nature at the hands of your kinsman.  No, no!  But here lies
   the gist of the matter.  Of my uncle's unquestionably great estate, as
   I have said, not the half--no, not one third, as I am fully
   convinced--was apparent after his death.  Now, I have the best possible
   reasons for believing that your brother Clifford can give me a clew to
   the recovery of the remainder."

   "Clifford!--Clifford know of any hidden wealth? Clifford have it in his
   power to make you rich?" cried the old gentlewoman, affected with a
   sense of something like ridicule at the idea.   "Impossible!  You
   deceive yourself! It is really a thing to laugh at!"

   "It is as certain as that I stand here!" said Judge Pyncheon, striking
   his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at the same time stamping his
   foot, as if to express his conviction the more forcibly by the whole
   emphasis of his substantial person.  "Clifford told me so himself!"

   "No, no!" exclaimed Hepzibah incredulously.  "You are dreaming, Cousin
   Jaffrey."

   "I do not belong to the dreaming class of men," said the Judge quietly.
   "Some months before my uncle's death, Clifford boasted to me of the
   possession of the secret of incalculable wealth.  His purpose was to
   taunt me, and excite my curiosity.  I know it well.  But, from a pretty
   distinct recollection of the particulars of our conversation, I am
   thoroughly convinced that there was truth in what he said.  Clifford,
   at this moment, if he chooses,--and choose he must!--can inform me
   where to find the schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever
   shape they exist, of the vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey's missing
   property.  He has the secret.  His boast was no idle word.  It had a
   directness, an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a backbone of
   solid meaning within the mystery of his expression."

   "But what could have been Clifford's object," asked Hepzibah, "in
   concealing it so long?"

   "It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature," replied the
   Judge, turning up his eyes.  "He looked upon me as his enemy.  He
   considered me as the cause of his overwhelming disgrace, his imminent
   peril of death, his irretrievable ruin.  There was no great
   probability, therefore, of his volunteering information, out of his
   dungeon, that should elevate me still higher on the ladder of
   prosperity.  But the moment has now come when he must give up his
   secret."

   "And what if he should refuse?" inquired Hepzibah.  "Or,--as I
   steadfastly believe,--what if he has no knowledge of this wealth?"

   "My dear cousin," said Judge Pyncheon, with a quietude which he had the
   power of making more formidable than any violence, "since your
   brother's return, I have taken the precaution (a highly proper one in
           the near kinsman and natural guardian of an individual so situated) to
   have his deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked.
   Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has passed in the
   garden.  The butcher, the baker, the fish-monger, some of the customers
   of your shop, and many a prying old woman, have told me several of the
   secrets of your interior.  A still larger circle--I myself, among the
   rest--can testify to his extravagances at the arched window.  Thousands
   beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence
   into the street.  From all this testimony, I am led to
   apprehend--reluctantly, and with deep grief--that Clifford's
   misfortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong, that he
   cannot safely remain at large.  The alternative, you must be
   aware,--and its adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I
   am now about to make,--the alternative is his confinement, probably for
   the remainder of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his
   unfortunate state of mind."

   "You cannot mean it!" shrieked Hepzibah.

   "Should my cousin Clifford," continued Judge Pyncheon, wholly
   undisturbed, "from mere malice, and hatred of one whose interests ought
   naturally to be dear to him,--a mode of passion that, as often as any
   other, indicates mental disease,--should he refuse me the information
   so important to myself, and which he assuredly possesses, I shall
   consider it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his
   insanity.  And, once sure of the course pointed out by conscience, you
   know me too well, Cousin Hepzibah, to entertain a doubt that I shall
   pursue it."

   "O Jaffrey,--Cousin Jaffrey,"  cried Hepzibah mournfully, not
   passionately, "it is you that are diseased in mind, not Clifford!  You
   have forgotten that a woman was your mother!--that you have had
   sisters, brothers, children of your own!--or that there ever was
   affection between man and man, or pity from one man to another, in this
   miserable world! Else, how could you have dreamed of this? You are not
   young, Cousin Jaffrey!--no, nor middle-aged,--but already an old man!
   The hair is white upon your head! How many years have you to live? Are
   you not rich enough for that little time? Shall you be hungry,--shall
   you lack clothes, or a roof to shelter you,--between this point and the
   grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess, you could revel
   in costly food and wines, and build a house twice as splendid as you
   now inhabit, and make a far greater show to the world,--and yet leave
   riches to your only son, to make him bless the hour of your death!
   Then, why should you do this cruel, cruel thing?--so mad a thing, that
   I know not whether to call it wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this hard
   and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two hundred years.  You
   are but doing over again, in another shape, what your ancestor before
   you did, and sending down to your posterity the curse inherited from
   him!"

   "Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven's sake!" exclaimed the Judge, with
   the impatience natural to a reasonable man, on hearing anything so
   utterly absurd as the above, in a discussion about matters of business.
   "I have told you my determination.  I am not apt to change.  Clifford
   must give up his secret, or take the consequences.  And let him decide
   quickly; for I have several affairs to attend to this morning, and an
   important dinner engagement with some political friends."

   "Clifford has no secret!" answered Hepzibah.  "And God will not let you
   do the thing you meditate!"

   "We shall see," said the unmoved Judge.  "Meanwhile, choose whether you
   will summon Clifford, and allow this business to be amicably settled by
   an interview between two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures,
   which I should be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding.  The
   responsibility is altogether on your part."

   "You are stronger than I," said Hepzibah, after a brief consideration;
   "and you have no pity in your strength! Clifford is not now insane; but
   the interview which you insist upon may go far to make him so.
   Nevertheless, knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to
   allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his
   possessing any valuable secret.  I will call Clifford.  Be merciful in
   your dealings with him!--be far more merciful than your heart bids you
   be!--for God is looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!"

   The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the foregoing
   conversation had passed, into the parlor, and flung himself heavily
   into the great ancestral chair.  Many a former Pyncheon had found
   repose in its capacious arms:  rosy children, after their sports; young
   men, dreamy with love; grown men, weary with cares; old men, burdened
   with winters,--they had mused, and slumbered, and departed to a yet
   profounder sleep.  It had been a long tradition, though a doubtful one,
   that this was the very chair, seated in which the earliest of the
   Judge's New England forefathers--he whose picture still hung upon the
   wall--had given a dead man's silent and stern reception to the throng
   of distinguished guests.  From that hour of evil omen until the
   present, it may be,--though we know not the secret of his heart,--but
   it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk into the chair
   than this same Judge Pyncheon, whom we have just beheld so immitigably
   hard and resolute.  Surely, it must have been at no slight cost that he
   had thus fortified his soul with iron.  Such calmness is a mightier
   effort than the violence of weaker men.  And there was yet a heavy task
   for him to do.  Was it a little matter--a trifle to be prepared for in
   a single moment, and to be rested from in another moment,--that he must
   now, after thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen from a living tomb,
   and wrench a secret from him, or else consign him to a living tomb
   again?

   "Did you speak?" asked Hepzibah, looking in from the threshold of the
   parlor; for she imagined that the Judge had uttered some sound which
   she was anxious to interpret as a relenting impulse.  "I thought you
   called me back."

   "No, no" gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon with a harsh frown, while his
   brow grew almost a black purple, in the shadow of the room.  "Why
   should I call you back? Time flies! Bid Clifford come to me!"

   The Judge had taken his watch from his vest pocket and now held it in
   his hand, measuring the interval which was to ensue before the
   appearance of Clifford.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Clifford and Hepzibah start moping around the House of the Seven Gables. The weather is cold and stormy. Hepzibah is exhausted trying to keep up the house by herself. On the fifth day of this, Clifford refuses to get up in the morning. Frankly, Hepzibah is relieved to be alone for a bit. Clifford taps out a few notes on the harpsichord before the strings snap. Then they hear the sound of the shop bell. It's Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. Judge Pyncheon asks why Hepzibah keeps Clifford so secluded - surely it would do Clifford good to see an old friend? Hepzibah replies that it's impossible: Clifford has been in bed for the past day. Judge Pyncheon seems really upset at the idea that Clifford might be dying. He insists on seeing Clifford as soon as possible to heal up the bitterness between them. Hepzibah tells him to cut the crap: she knows he has something terrible in mind for Clifford. Judge Pyncheon tells Hepzibah sternly to knock it off. He insists on seeing Clifford, and he won't leave the house without doing so. Judge Pyncheon claims that, without his efforts, Clifford would never have gotten out of prison at all. Hepzibah says Pyncheon is the one who sent Clifford there in the first place. Hepzibah doesn't understand what Judge Pyncheon wants from Clifford. The sight of him would probably drive Clifford insane. Judge Pyncheon finally gets down to business: when their Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon died, the lawyers found that he had much less money than expected. Everyone thought he was one of the wealthiest men of his day. Judge Pyncheon is sure that Jaffrey hid some of his property. Judge Pyncheon also points out that all of Jaffrey's estate was left to Judge Pyncheon except for the House of the Seven Gables . Judge Pyncheon is certain that Clifford has the key to the rest of Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon's estate. Hepzibah tells Judge Pyncheon he's nuts. Judge Pyncheon informs Hepzibah that, some months before Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon's death, Clifford bragged to Judge Pyncheon that he knew a "secret of incalculable wealth" . Judge Pyncheon wants that secret. Judge Pyncheon thinks Clifford is hiding the secret out of personal spite for Judge Pyncheon. Hepzibah asks what will happen if Clifford doesn't tell the location of this supposed wealth. Judge Pyncheon promises he will have Clifford locked up in an asylum for the rest of his life. Hepzibah tells Judge Pyncheon that he's the one who is insane, not Clifford. Judge Pyncheon has all the money he could possibly need to live out the remainder of his days - why does he keep grasping after more? Judge Pyncheon demands that Clifford make his decision this afternoon. Hepzibah begs Judge Pyncheon to be kind to Clifford, because "God is looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!" . Judge Pyncheon sits down in the parlor to wait for Clifford. Hepzibah thinks Judge Pyncheon has said something to call her back. But no, Judge Pyncheon demands that Hepzibah bring Clifford to him.


prompt:
Chapter: NEVER had the old house appeared so dismal to poor Hepzibah as when she
departed on that wretched errand.  There was a strange aspect in it.
As she trode along the foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door
after another, and ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wistfully
and fearfully around.  It would have been no marvel, to her excited
mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the rustle of dead
people's garments, or pale visages awaiting her on the landing-place
above.  Her nerves were set all ajar by the scene of passion and terror
through which she had just struggled.  Her colloquy with Judge
Pyncheon, who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of the
founder of the family, had called back the dreary past.  It weighed
upon her heart.  Whatever she had heard, from legendary aunts and
grandmothers, concerning the good or evil fortunes of the
Pyncheons,--stories which had heretofore been kept warm in her
remembrance by the chimney-corner glow that was associated with
them,--now recurred to her, sombre, ghastly, cold, like most passages
of family history, when brooded over in melancholy mood.  The whole
seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing itself in
successive generations, with one general hue, and varying in little,
           save the outline.  But Hepzibah now felt as if the Judge, and Clifford,
           and herself,--they three together,--were on the point of adding another
           incident to the annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and
           sorrow, which would cause it to stand out from all the rest.  Thus it
           is that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an
           individuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined to lose
           after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue common to the
           grave or glad events of many years ago.  It is but for a moment,
           comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling,--a truth that
           has the bitter and the sweet in it.

           But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of something
           unprecedented at that instant passing and soon to be accomplished.  Her
           nerves were in a shake.  Instinctively she paused before the arched
           window, and looked out upon the street, in order to seize its permanent
           objects with her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the reel
           and vibration which affected her more immediate sphere.  It brought her
           up, as we may say, with a kind of shock, when she beheld everything
           under the same appearance as the day before, and numberless preceding
           days, except for the difference between sunshine and sullen storm.  Her
           eyes travelled along the street, from doorstep to doorstep, noting the
           wet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in hollows that had been
           imperceptible until filled with water.  She screwed her dim optics to
           their acutest point, in the hope of making out, with greater
           distinctness, a certain window, where she half saw, half guessed, that
           a tailor's seamstress was sitting at her work.   Hepzibah flung herself
           upon that unknown woman's companionship, even thus far off.  Then she
           was attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched its moist and
           glistening top, and its splashing wheels, until it had turned the
           corner, and refused to carry any further her idly trifling, because
           appalled and overburdened, mind.  When the vehicle had disappeared, she
           allowed herself still another loitering moment; for the patched figure
           of good Uncle Venner was now visible, coming slowly from the head of
           the street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the east wind had
           got into his joints.  Hepzibah wished that he would pass yet more
           slowly, and befriend her shivering solitude a little longer.  Anything
           that would take her out of the grievous present, and interpose human
           beings betwixt herself and what was nearest to her,--whatever would
           defer for an instant the inevitable errand on which she was bound,--all
           such impediments were welcome.  Next to the lightest heart, the
           heaviest is apt to be most playful.

           Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper pain, and far less for
           what she must inflict on Clifford.  Of so slight a nature, and so
           shattered by his previous calamities, it could not well be short of
           utter ruin to bring him face to face with the hard, relentless man who
           had been his evil destiny through life.  Even had there been no bitter
           recollections, nor any hostile interest now at stake between them, the
           mere natural repugnance of the more sensitive system to the massive,
           weighty, and unimpressible one, must, in itself, have been disastrous
           to the former.  It would be like flinging a porcelain vase, with
           already a crack in it, against a granite column.  Never before had
           Hepzibah so adequately estimated the powerful character of her cousin
           Jaffrey,--powerful by intellect, energy of will, the long habit of
           acting among men, and, as she believed, by his unscrupulous pursuit of
           selfish ends through evil means.  It did but increase the difficulty
           that Judge Pyncheon was under a delusion as to the secret which he
           supposed Clifford to possess.  Men of his strength of purpose and
           customary sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in
           practical matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known to be
           true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult
           than pulling up an oak.  Thus, as the Judge required an impossibility
           of Clifford, the latter, as he could not perform it, must needs perish.
           For what, in the grasp of a man like this, was to become of Clifford's
           soft poetic nature, that never should have had a task more stubborn
           than to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and rhythm of
           musical cadences! Indeed, what had become of it already? Broken!
           Blighted! All but annihilated! Soon to be wholly so!

           For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah's mind, whether Clifford
           might not really have such knowledge of their deceased uncle's vanished
           estate as the Judge imputed to him.  She remembered some vague
           intimations, on her brother's part, which--if the supposition were not
           essentially preposterous--might have been so interpreted.  There had
           been schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams of brilliant
           life at home, and splendid castles in the air, which it would have
           required boundless wealth to build and realize.  Had this wealth been
           in her power, how gladly would Hepzibah have bestowed it all upon her
           iron-hearted kinsman, to buy for Clifford the freedom and seclusion of
           the desolate old house!  But she believed that her brother's schemes
           were as destitute of actual substance and purpose as a child's pictures
           of its future life, while sitting in a little chair by its mother's
           knee.  Clifford had none but shadowy gold at his command; and it was
           not the stuff to satisfy Judge Pyncheon!

           Was there no help in their extremity? It seemed strange that there
           should be none, with a city round about her.  It would be so easy to
           throw up the window, and send forth a shriek, at the strange agony of
           which everybody would come hastening to the rescue, well understanding
           it to be the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But how
           wild, how almost laughable, the fatality,--and yet how continually it
           comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull delirium of a
           world,--that whosoever, and with however kindly a purpose, should come
           to help, they would be sure to help the strongest side! Might and wrong
           combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible
           attraction.  There would be Judge Pyncheon,--a person eminent in the
           public view, of high station and great wealth, a philanthropist, a
           member of Congress and of the church, and intimately associated with
           whatever else bestows good name,--so imposing, in these advantageous
           lights, that Hepzibah herself could hardly help shrinking from her own
           conclusions as to his hollow integrity.  The Judge, on one side! And
           who, on the other? The guilty Clifford! Once a byword! Now, an
           indistinctly remembered ignominy!

           Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the Judge would draw all
           human aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah was so unaccustomed to act for
           herself, that the least word of counsel would have swayed her to any
           mode of action. Little Phoebe Pyncheon would at once have lighted up
           the whole scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet simply by the
           warm vivacity of her character. The idea of the artist occurred to
           Hepzibah. Young and unknown, mere vagrant adventurer as he was, she had
           been conscious of a force in Holgrave which might well adapt him to be
           the champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind, she unbolted a
           door, cobwebbed and long disused, but which had served as a former
           medium of communication between her own part of the house and the gable
           where the wandering daguerreotypist had now established his temporary
           home. He was not there. A book, face downward, on the table, a roll of
           manuscript, a half-written sheet, a newspaper, some tools of his
           present occupation, and several rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed an
           impression as if he were close at hand. But, at this period of the day,
           as Hepzibah might have anticipated, the artist was at his public rooms.
           With an impulse of idle curiosity, that flickered among her heavy
           thoughts, she looked at one of the daguerreotypes, and beheld Judge
           Pyncheon frowning at her. Fate stared her in the face. She turned back
           from her fruitless quest, with a heartsinking sense of disappointment.
           In all her years of seclusion, she had never felt, as now, what it was
           to be alone. It seemed as if the house stood in a desert, or, by some
           spell, was made invisible to those who dwelt around, or passed beside
           it; so that any mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime might
           happen in it without the possibility of aid.  In her grief and wounded
           pride, Hepzibah had spent her life in divesting herself of friends; she
           had wilfully cast off the support which God has ordained his creatures
           to need from one another; and it was now her punishment, that Clifford
           and herself would fall the easier victims to their kindred enemy.

           Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes,--scowling, poor,
           dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of Heaven!--and strove hard to send
           up a prayer through the dense gray pavement of clouds.  Those mists had
           gathered, as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble,
           doubt, confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the better
           regions.  Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy to be thus
           uplifted.  It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her heart.  It smote her
           with the wretched conviction that Providence intermeddled not in these
           petty wrongs of one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for
           these little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its
           mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once.  Its
           vastness made it nothing.  But Hepzibah did not see that, just as there
           comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of
           God's care and pity for every separate need.

           At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she
           was to inflict on Clifford,--her reluctance to which was the true cause
           of her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her
           abortive prayer,--dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge
           Pyncheon from below stairs, chiding her delay,--she crept slowly, a
           pale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost
           torpid limbs, slowly to her brother's door, and knocked!

           There was no reply.

           And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous with the shrinking
           purpose which directed it, had smitten so feebly against the door that
           the sound could hardly have gone inward.  She knocked again.  Still no
           response! Nor was it to be wondered at.  She had struck with the entire
           force of her heart's vibration, communicating, by some subtile
           magnetism, her own terror to the summons.  Clifford would turn his face
           to the pillow, and cover his head beneath the bedclothes, like a
           startled child at midnight.  She knocked a third time, three regular
           strokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for,
           modulate it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help
           playing some tune of what we feel upon the senseless wood.

           Clifford returned no answer.

           "Clifford! Dear brother!"  said Hepzibah.  "Shall I come in?"

           A silence.

           Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his name, without
           result; till, thinking her brother's sleep unwontedly profound, she
           undid the door, and entering, found the chamber vacant.  How could he
           have come forth, and when, without her knowledge?  Was it possible
           that, in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomeness
           within doors he had betaken himself to his customary haunt in the
           garden, and was now shivering under the cheerless shelter of the
           summer-house? She hastily threw up a window, thrust forth her turbaned
           head and the half of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden
           through, as completely as her dim vision would allow.  She could see
           the interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat, kept moist by
           the droppings of the roof.  It had no occupant.  Clifford was not
           thereabouts; unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a
                   moment, Hepzibah fancied might be the case) into a great, wet mass of
           tangled and broad-leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clambering
           tumultuously upon an old wooden framework, set casually aslant against
           the fence.  This could not be, however; he was not there; for, while
           Hepzibah was looking, a strange grimalkin stole forth from the very
           spot, and picked his way across the garden.  Twice he paused to snuff
           the air, and then anew directed his course towards the parlor window.
           Whether it was only on account of the stealthy, prying manner common to
           the race, or that this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischief
           in his thoughts, the old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity,
           felt an impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down a
           window stick.  The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief or
           murderer, and, the next instant, took to flight.  No other living
           creature was visible in the garden.  Chanticleer and his family had
           either not left their roost, disheartened by the interminable rain, or
           had done the next wisest thing, by seasonably returning to it.
           Hepzibah closed the window.

           But where was Clifford? Could it be that, aware of the presence of his
           Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down the staircase, while the Judge
           and Hepzibah stood talking in the shop, and had softly undone the
           fastenings of the outer door, and made his escape into the street?
           With that thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet
           childlike aspect, in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about the
           house; a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to be, with the
           world's eye upon him, in a troubled dream.  This figure of her wretched
           brother would go wandering through the city, attracting all eyes, and
           everybody's wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be
           shuddered at because visible at noontide.  To incur the ridicule of the
           younger crowd, that knew him not,--the harsher scorn and indignation of
           a few old men, who might recall his once familiar features! To be the
           sport of boys, who, when old enough to run about the streets, have no
           more reverence for what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is
           sad,--no more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape in
           which it embodies itself,--than if Satan were the father of them all!
           Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill cries, and cruel
           laughter,--insulted by the filth of the public ways, which they would
           fling upon him,--or, as it might well be, distracted by the mere
           strangeness of his situation, though nobody should afflict him with so
           much as a thoughtless word,--what wonder if Clifford were to break into
           some wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy?
           Thus Judge Pyncheon's fiendish scheme would be ready accomplished to
           his hands!

           Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost completely
           water-girdled.  The wharves stretched out towards the centre of the
           harbor, and, in this inclement weather, were deserted by the ordinary
           throng of merchants, laborers, and sea-faring men; each wharf a
           solitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, along its misty
           length.  Should her brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and
           he but bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not
           bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, and
           that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance of his body, he
           might be forever beyond his kinsman's gripe? Oh, the temptation! To
           make of his ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden
           weight upon him, and never rise again!

           The horror of this last conception was too much for Hepzibah.  Even
           Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her now She hastened down the staircase,
           shrieking as she went.

           "Clifford is gone!" she cried.  "I cannot find my brother.  Help,
           Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm will happen to him!"

           She threw open the parlor-door.  But, what with the shade of branches
           across the windows, and the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark
           oak-panelling of the walls, there was hardly so much daylight in the
           room that Hepzibah's imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the
           Judge's figure.  She was certain, however, that she saw him sitting in
           the ancestral arm-chair, near the centre of the floor, with his face
           somewhat averted, and looking towards a window.  So firm and quiet is
           the nervous system of such men as Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhaps
           stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the hard
           composure of his temperament, retained the position into which accident
           had thrown him.

           "I tell you, Jaffrey," cried Hepzibah impatiently, as she turned from
           the parlor-door to search other rooms, "my brother is not in his
           chamber! You must help me seek him!"

           But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be startled from an
           easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either the dignity of his character
           or his broad personal basis, by the alarm of an hysteric woman.  Yet,
           considering his own interest in the matter, he might have bestirred
           himself with a little more alacrity.

           "Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?" screamed Hepzibah, as she again
           approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual search elsewhere.
           "Clifford is gone."

           At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging from within,
           appeared Clifford himself! His face was preternaturally pale; so deadly
           white, indeed, that, through all the glimmering indistinctness of the
           passageway, Hepzibah could discern his features, as if a light fell on
           them alone.  Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient
           to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery,
           coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture.   As Clifford
           stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he pointed his finger
           within the parlor, and shook it slowly as though he would have
           summoned, not Hepzibah alone, but the whole world, to gaze at some
           object inconceivably ridiculous.   This action, so ill-timed and
           extravagant,--accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy
           than any other kind of excitement,--compelled Hepzibah to dread that
           her stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven her poor brother to
           absolute insanity.  Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge's
           quiescent mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, while
           Clifford developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.

           "Be quiet, Clifford!" whispered his sister, raising her hand to impress
           caution.  "Oh, for Heaven's sake, be quiet!"

           "Let him be quiet! What can he do better?" answered Clifford, with a
           still wilder gesture, pointing into the room which he had just quitted.
           "As for us, Hepzibah, we can dance now!--we can sing, laugh, play, do
           what we will! The weight is gone, Hepzibah!  It is gone off this weary
           old world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Phoebe herself."

           And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh, still pointing
           his finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah, within the parlor.
           She was seized with a sudden intuition of some horrible thing.  She
           thrust herself past Clifford, and disappeared into the room; but almost
           immediately returned, with a cry choking in her throat.  Gazing at her
           brother with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld him all in a
           tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while, amid these commoted
           elements of passion or alarm, still flickered his gusty mirth.

           "My God! what is to become of us?" gasped Hepzibah.

           "Come!" said Clifford in a tone of brief decision, most unlike what was
           usual with him.  "We stay here too long! Let us leave the old house to
           our cousin Jaffrey! He will take good care of it!"

           Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak,--a garment of long
           ago,--in which he had constantly muffled himself during these days of
           easterly storm.  He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far as
           she could comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together from
           the house.  There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, in the lives
           of persons who lack real force of character,--moments of test, in which
           courage would most assert itself,--but where these individuals, if left
           to themselves, stagger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever
           guidance may befall them, even if it be a child's.  No matter how
           preposterous or insane, a purpose is a Godsend to them.   Hepzibah had
           reached this point.  Unaccustomed to action or responsibility,--full of
           horror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to
           imagine, how it had come to pass,--affrighted at the fatality which
           seemed to pursue her brother,--stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling
           atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and
           obliterated all definiteness of thought,--she yielded without a
           question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed.
           For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always
           sleeps.  Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of this faculty, had found
           it in the tension of the crisis.

           "Why do you delay so?" cried he sharply.  "Put on your cloak and hood,
           or whatever it pleases you to wear! No matter what; you cannot look
           beautiful nor brilliant, my poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, with money
           in it, and come along!"

           Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else were to be done
           or thought of.  She began to wonder, it is true, why she did not wake
           up, and at what still more intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her
           spirit would struggle out of the maze, and make her conscious that
           nothing of all this had actually happened.  Of course it was not real;
           no such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge Pyncheon
           had not talked with, her.  Clifford had not laughed, pointed, beckoned
           her away with him; but she had merely been afflicted--as lonely
           sleepers often are--with a great deal of unreasonable misery, in a
           morning dream!

           "Now--now--I shall certainly awake!" thought Hepzibah, as she went to
           and fro, making her little preparations.  "I can bear it no longer I
           must wake up now!"

           But it came not, that awakening moment! It came not, even when, just
           before they left the house, Clifford stole to the parlor-door, and made
           a parting obeisance to the sole occupant of the room.

           "What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!" whispered he to
           Hepzibah.  "Just when he fancied he had me completely under his thumb!
           Come, come; make haste! or he will start up, like Giant Despair in
           pursuit of Christian and Hopeful, and catch us yet!"

           As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hepzibah's attention
           to something on one of the posts of the front door.  It was merely the
           initials of his own name, which, with somewhat of his characteristic
           grace about the forms of the letters, he had cut there when a boy.  The
           brother and sister departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the old
           home of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and lumpish that we
           can liken him to nothing better than a defunct nightmare, which had
           perished in the midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on
           the breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might!

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Hepzibah goes back inside the House of the Seven Gables. She has a feeling that something new, something unprecedented in the Pyncheon family history, is about to take place. Hepzibah is sure that Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon will destroy Clifford. She is also sure that Clifford has no access to the secret Judge Pyncheon believes he holds. She has nowhere to turn for help. Who would side with Clifford against well-respected Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon? She thinks of going to Mr. Holgrave, but he's not there. She looks out the arched window at the sky and sends up a prayer, but she doesn't feel any response. At last Hepzibah goes to knock on Clifford's door. No one answers. Hepzibah asks if she can come in. She finds Clifford's room empty. Hepzibah looks down into the garden to see if Clifford has gone out somehow. She sees "a strange grimalkin" - meaning an old house cat - walking across the garden. Hepzibah throws a stick at it to frighten it away. But still, Hepzibah cannot see Clifford. She can't imagine that he would have run away - he would be treated so badly by the public! Hepzibah suddenly wonders whether Clifford might have decided to end it all and throw himself into the sea. Hepzibah is so frightened by the thought that she runs to Judge Pyncheon. She begs Judge Pyncheon to help her. She finds him sitting in that chair in the parlor - the same chair, supposedly, where Colonel Pyncheon was found dead 150 years before. Judge Pyncheon doesn't move, even when Hepzibah screams, "Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?" . Clifford walks into the parlor. He looks crazy. His face is filled with a wild expression of "scorn and mockery" . Clifford tells Hepzibah that they can dance now - they can do whatever they like. Hepzibah realizes that Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is dead. Clifford suggests that they leave the House of the Seven Gables. After all, Judge Pyncheon "will take good care of it!" . Hepzibah is in such a panic that she agrees without question. She grabs her cloak and follows Clifford. She keeps thinking that she will awake from this dream, but she never does. And so Clifford and Hepzibah leave the House of the Seven Gables. Inside, Judge Pyncheon's body is sitting by himself "in the old home of his forefathers" .


prompt:
Chapter: SUMMER as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzibah's few remaining teeth
chattering in her head, as she and Clifford faced it, on their way up
Pyncheon Street, and towards the centre of the town.  Not merely was it
the shiver which this pitiless blast brought to her frame (although her
        feet and hands, especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as now),
    but there was a moral sensation, mingling itself with the physical
    chill, and causing her to shake more in spirit than in body.  The
    world's broad, bleak atmosphere was all so comfortless! Such, indeed,
    is the impression which it makes on every new adventurer, even if he
    plunge into it while the warmest tide of life is bubbling through his
    veins.  What, then, must it have been to Hepzibah and Clifford,--so
    time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in their
    inexperience,--as they left the doorstep, and passed from beneath the
    wide shelter of the Pyncheon Elm! They were wandering all abroad, on
    precisely such a pilgrimage as a child often meditates, to the world's
    end, with perhaps a sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket.  In
    Hepzibah's mind, there was the wretched consciousness of being adrift.
    She had lost the faculty of self-guidance; but, in view of the
    difficulties around her, felt it hardly worth an effort to regain it,
    and was, moreover, incapable of making one.

    As they proceeded on their strange expedition, she now and then cast a
    look sidelong at Clifford, and could not but observe that he was
    possessed and swayed by a powerful excitement.  It was this, indeed,
    that gave him the control which he had at once, and so irresistibly,
    established over his movements.  It not a little resembled the
    exhilaration of wine.  Or, it might more fancifully be compared to a
    joyous piece of music, played with wild vivacity, but upon a disordered
    instrument.  As the cracked jarring note might always be heard, and as
    it jarred loudest amidst the loftiest exultation of the melody, so was
    there a continual quake through Clifford, causing him most to quiver
    while he wore a triumphant smile, and seemed almost under a necessity
    to skip in his gait.

    They met few people abroad, even on passing from the retired
    neighborhood of the House of the Seven Gables into what was ordinarily
    the more thronged and busier portion of the town.  Glistening
    sidewalks, with little pools of rain, here and there, along their
    unequal surface; umbrellas displayed ostentatiously in the
    shop-windows, as if the life of trade had concentrated itself in that
    one article; wet leaves of the horse-chestnut or elm-trees, torn off
    untimely by the blast and scattered along the public way; an unsightly,
    accumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which perversely grew
    the more unclean for its long and laborious washing,--these were the
    more definable points of a very sombre picture.  In the way of movement
    and human life, there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its
    driver protected by a waterproof cap over his head and shoulders; the
    forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out of some
    subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking the
    wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two,
    at the door of the post-office, together with an editor and a
    miscellaneous politician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of
    retired sea-captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out
    vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting
    at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip.  What a
    treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed
    the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them!
    But their two figures attracted hardly so much notice as that of a
    young girl, who passed at the same instant, and happened to raise her
    skirt a trifle too high above her ankles.  Had it been a sunny and
    cheerful day, they could hardly have gone through the streets without
    making themselves obnoxious to remark.  Now, probably, they were felt
    to be in keeping with the dismal and bitter weather, and therefore did
    not stand out in strong relief, as if the sun were shining on them, but
    melted into the gray gloom and were forgotten as soon as gone.

    Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this fact, it would have
    brought her some little comfort; for, to all her other
    troubles,--strange to say!--there was added the womanish and
    old-maiden-like misery arising from a sense of unseemliness in her
    attire.  Thus, she was fain to shrink deeper into herself, as it were,
    as if in the hope of making people suppose that here was only a cloak
    and hood, threadbare and woefully faded, taking an airing in the midst
    of the storm, without any wearer!

    As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and unreality kept dimly
    hovering round about her, and so diffusing itself into her system that
    one of her hands was hardly palpable to the touch of the other.  Any
    certainty would have been preferable to this.  She whispered to
    herself, again and again, "Am I awake?--Am I awake?" and sometimes
    exposed her face to the chill spatter of the wind, for the sake of its
    rude assurance that she was.  Whether it was Clifford's purpose, or
    only chance, had led them thither, they now found themselves passing
    beneath the arched entrance of a large structure of gray stone.
    Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy height from floor to
    roof, now partially filled with smoke and steam, which eddied
    voluminously upward and formed a mimic cloud-region over their heads.
    A train of cars was just ready for a start; the locomotive was fretting
    and fuming, like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and the bell
    rang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons which
    life vouchsafes to us in its hurried career.  Without question or
    delay,--with the irresistible decision, if not rather to be called
    recklessness, which had so strangely taken possession of him, and
    through him of Hepzibah,--Clifford impelled her towards the cars, and
    assisted her to enter.  The signal was given; the engine puffed forth
    its short, quick breaths; the train began its movement; and, along with
    a hundred other passengers, these two unwonted travellers sped onward
    like the wind.

    At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything that
    the world acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great current
    of human life, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate
    itself.

    Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents,
    inclusive of Judge Pyncheon's visit, could be real, the recluse of the
    Seven Gables murmured in her brother's ear,--

    "Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?"

    "A dream, Hepzibah!" repeated he, almost laughing in her face.  "On the
    contrary, I have never been awake before!"

    Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see the world racing
    past them.  At one moment, they were rattling through a solitude; the
    next, a village had grown up around them; a few breaths more, and it
    had vanished, as if swallowed by an earthquake.  The spires of
    meeting-houses seemed set adrift from their foundations; the
    broad-based hills glided away.  Everything was unfixed from its
    age-long rest, and moving at whirlwind speed in a direction opposite to
    their own.

    Within the car there was the usual interior life of the railroad,
    offering little to the observation of other passengers, but full of
    novelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised prisoners.  It was
    novelty enough, indeed, that there were fifty human beings in close
    relation with them, under one long and narrow roof, and drawn onward by
    the same mighty influence that had taken their two selves into its
    grasp.  It seemed marvellous how all these people could remain so
    quietly in their seats, while so much noisy strength was at work in
    their behalf.  Some, with tickets in their hats (long travellers these,
            before whom lay a hundred miles of railroad), had plunged into the
    English scenery and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping
    company with dukes and earls.  Others, whose briefer span forbade their
    devoting themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little tedium
    of the way with penny-papers.  A party of girls, and one young man, on
    opposite sides of the car, found huge amusement in a game of ball.
    They tossed it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might be
    measured by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly,
    the merry players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of their
    mirth afar behind, and ending their game under another sky than had
    witnessed its commencement.  Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and rolls
    of variously tinctured lozenges,--merchandise that reminded Hepzibah of
    her deserted shop,--appeared at each momentary stopping-place, doing up
    their business in a hurry, or breaking it short off, lest the market
    should ravish them away with it.  New people continually entered.  Old
    acquaintances--for such they soon grew to be, in this rapid current of
    affairs--continually departed.  Here and there, amid the rumble and the
    tumult, sat one asleep.  Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighter
    study; and the common and inevitable movement onward! It was life
    itself!

    Clifford's naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused.  He caught
    the color of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividly
    than he received it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and
    portentous hue.  Hepzibah, on the other hand, felt herself more apart
    from human kind than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted.

    "You are not happy, Hepzibah!" said Clifford apart, in a tone of
    approach.  "You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of Cousin
    Jaffrey"--here came the quake through him,--"and of Cousin Jaffrey
    sitting there, all by himself! Take my advice,--follow my example,--and
    let such things slip aside.  Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah!--in
    the midst of life!--in the throng of our fellow beings! Let you and I
    be happy! As happy as that youth and those pretty girls, at their game
    of ball!"

    "Happy--" thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at the word, of her
    dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in it,--"happy.  He is mad
    already; and, if I could once feel myself broad awake, I should go mad
    too!"

    If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote from it.  Fast
    and far as they had rattled and clattered along the iron track, they
    might just as well, as regarded Hepzibah's mental images, have been
    passing up and down Pyncheon Street.  With miles and miles of varied
    scenery between, there was no scene for her save the seven old
    gable-peaks, with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one of the
    angles, and the shop-window, and a customer shaking the door, and
    compelling the little bell to jingle fiercely, but without disturbing
    Judge Pyncheon! This one old house was everywhere! It transported its
    great, lumbering bulk with more than railroad speed, and set itself
    phlegmatically down on whatever spot she glanced at.  The quality of
    Hepzibah's mind was too unmalleable to take new impressions so readily
    as Clifford's.  He had a winged nature; she was rather of the vegetable
    kind, and could hardly be kept long alive, if drawn up by the roots.
    Thus it happened that the relation heretofore existing between her
    brother and herself was changed.  At home, she was his guardian; here,
    Clifford had become hers, and seemed to comprehend whatever belonged to
    their new position with a singular rapidity of intelligence.  He had
    been startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, at least, into a
    condition that resembled them, though it might be both diseased and
    transitory.

    The conductor now applied for their tickets; and Clifford, who had made
    himself the purse-bearer, put a bank-note into his hand, as he had
    observed others do.

    "For the lady and yourself?" asked the conductor.  "And how far?"

    "As far as that will carry us," said Clifford.  "It is no great matter.
    We are riding for pleasure merely."

    "You choose a strange day for it, sir!" remarked a gimlet-eyed old
    gentleman on the other side of the car, looking at Clifford and his
    companion, as if curious to make them out.  "The best chance of
    pleasure, in an easterly rain, I take it, is in a man's own house, with
    a nice little fire in the chimney."

    "I cannot precisely agree with you," said Clifford, courteously bowing
    to the old gentleman, and at once taking up the clew of conversation
    which the latter had proffered.  "It had just occurred to me, on the
    contrary, that this admirable invention of the railroad--with the vast
    and inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as to speed and
    convenience--is destined to do away with those stale ideas of home and
    fireside, and substitute something better."

    "In the name of common-sense," asked the old gentleman rather testily,
    "what can be better for a man than his own parlor and chimney-corner?"

    "These things have not the merit which many good people attribute to
    them," replied Clifford.  "They may be said, in few and pithy words, to
    have ill served a poor purpose.  My impression is, that our wonderfully
    increased and still increasing facilities of locomotion are destined to
    bring us around again to the nomadic state.  You are aware, my dear
    sir,--you must have observed it in your own experience,--that all human
    progress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautiful
    figure, in an ascending spiral curve.  While we fancy ourselves going
    straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new
    position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried
    and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, and
    perfected to its ideal.  The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy
    of the present and the future.  To apply this truth to the topic now
    under discussion.  In the early epochs of our race, men dwelt in
    temporary huts, of bowers of branches, as easily constructed as a
    bird's-nest, and which they built,--if it should be called building,
    when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather grew than were made
    with hands,--which Nature, we will say, assisted them to rear where
    fruit abounded, where fish and game were plentiful, or, most
    especially, where the sense of beauty was to be gratified by a lovelier
    shade than elsewhere, and a more exquisite arrangement of lake, wood,
    and hill.  This life possessed a charm which, ever since man quitted
    it, has vanished from existence.  And it typified something better than
    itself.  It had its drawbacks; such as hunger and thirst, inclement
    weather, hot sunshine, and weary and foot-blistering marches over
    barren and ugly tracts, that lay between the sites desirable for their
    fertility and beauty.  But in our ascending spiral, we escape all this.
    These railroads--could but the whistle be made musical, and the rumble
    and the jar got rid of--are positively the greatest blessing that the
    ages have wrought out for us.  They give us wings; they annihilate the
    toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being
    so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why,
    therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily
    be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life
    in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as
    easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,--in a better sense, wherever the
    fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?"

    Clifford's countenance glowed, as he divulged this theory; a youthful
    character shone out from within, converting the wrinkles and pallid
    duskiness of age into an almost transparent mask.  The merry girls let
    their ball drop upon the floor, and gazed at him.  They said to
    themselves, perhaps, that, before his hair was gray and the crow's-feet
    tracked his temples, this now decaying man must have stamped the
    impress of his features on many a woman's heart.  But, alas! no woman's
    eye had seen his face while it was beautiful.

    "I should scarcely call it an improved state of things," observed
    Clifford's new acquaintance, "to live everywhere and nowhere!"

    "Would you not?" exclaimed Clifford, with singular energy.  "It is as
    clear to me as sunshine,--were there any in the sky,--that the greatest
    possible stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness and
    improvement are these heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with
    mortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which men
    painfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home!
    The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it.  Morbid
    influences, in a thousand-fold variety, gather about hearths, and
    pollute the life of households.  There is no such unwholesome
    atmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunct
    forefathers and relatives.  I speak of what I know.  There is a certain
    house within my familiar recollection,--one of those peaked-gable
    (there are seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as you
    occasionally see in our older towns,--a rusty, crazy, creaky,
    dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an arched
    window over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great,
    melancholy elm before it!  Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this
    seven-gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I must needs
            mention it), immediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, of
    remarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead,
    stone-dead, with an ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but
    with open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it.  I could
    never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God meant me
    to do and enjoy."

    His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel itself up, and
    wither into age.

    "Never, sir!" he repeated.  "I could never draw cheerful breath there!"

    "I should think not," said the old gentleman, eyeing Clifford
    earnestly, and rather apprehensively.  "I should conceive not, sir,
    with that notion in your head!"

    "Surely not," continued Clifford; "and it were a relief to me if that
    house could be torn down, or burnt up, and so the earth be rid of it,
    and grass be sown abundantly over its foundation.  Not that I should
    ever visit its site again! for, sir, the farther I get away from it,
    the more does the joy, the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, the
    intellectual dance, the youth, in short,--yes, my youth, my youth!--the
    more does it come back to me.  No longer ago than this morning, I was
    old.  I remember looking in the glass, and wondering at my own gray
    hair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and the
    furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow's-feet
    about my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no
    right to come! I had not lived!  But now do I look old? If so, my
    aspect belies me strangely; for--a great weight being off my mind--I
    feel in the very heyday of my youth, with the world and my best days
    before me!"

    "I trust you may find it so," said the old gentleman, who seemed rather
    embarrassed, and desirous of avoiding the observation which Clifford's
    wild talk drew on them both.  "You have my best wishes for it."

    "For Heaven's sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!" whispered his sister.
    "They think you mad."

    "Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah!" returned her brother.  "No matter what
    they think! I am not mad.  For the first time in thirty years my
    thoughts gush up and find words ready for them.  I must talk, and I
    will!"

    He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed the conversation.

    "Yes, my dear sir," said he, "it is my firm belief and hope that these
    terms of roof and hearth-stone, which have so long been held to embody
    something sacred, are soon to pass out of men's daily use, and be
    forgotten.  Just imagine, for a moment, how much of human evil will
    crumble away, with this one change! What we call real estate--the solid
    ground to build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly all
    the guilt of this world rests.  A man will commit almost any wrong,--he
    will heap up an immense pile of wickedness, as hard as granite, and
    which will weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages,--only to
    build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, for himself to die in,
    and for his posterity to be miserable in.  He lays his own dead corpse
    beneath the underpinning, as one may say, and hangs his frowning
    picture on the wall, and, after thus converting himself into an evil
    destiny, expects his remotest great-grandchildren to be happy there.  I
    do not speak wildly.  I have just such a house in my mind's eye!"

    "Then, sir," said the old gentleman, getting anxious to drop the
    subject, "you are not to blame for leaving it."

    "Within the lifetime of the child already born," Clifford went on, "all
    this will be done away.  The world is growing too ethereal and
    spiritual to bear these enormities a great while longer.  To me,
    though, for a considerable period of time, I have lived chiefly in
    retirement, and know less of such things than most men,--even to me,
    the harbingers of a better era are unmistakable.  Mesmerism, now! Will
    that effect nothing, think you, towards purging away the grossness out
    of human life?"

    "All a humbug!" growled the old gentleman.

    "These rapping spirits, that little Phoebe told us of, the other day,"
    said Clifford,--"what are these but the messengers of the spiritual
    world, knocking at the door of substance? And it shall be flung wide
    open!"

    "A humbug, again!" cried the old gentleman, growing more and more testy
    at these glimpses of Clifford's metaphysics.  "I should like to rap
    with a good stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate such
    nonsense!"

    "Then there is electricity,--the demon, the angel, the mighty physical
    power, the all-pervading intelligence!" exclaimed Clifford.  "Is that a
    humbug, too?  Is it a fact--or have I dreamt it--that, by means of
    electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating
    thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round
    globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!  Or, shall
    we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the
    substance which we deemed it!"

    "If you mean the telegraph," said the old gentleman, glancing his eye
    toward its wire, alongside the rail-track, "it is an excellent
    thing,--that is, of course, if the speculators in cotton and politics
    don't get possession of it.  A great thing, indeed, sir, particularly
    as regards the detection of bank-robbers and murderers."

    "I don't quite like it, in that point of view," replied Clifford.  "A
    bank-robber, and what you call a murderer, likewise, has his rights,
    which men of enlightened humanity and conscience should regard in so
    much the more liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to
    controvert their existence.  An almost spiritual medium, like the
    electric telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and
    holy missions.  Lovers, day by, day--hour by hour, if so often moved to
    do it,--might send their heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some
    such words as these 'I love you forever!'--'My heart runs over with
    love!'--'I love you more than I can!' and, again, at the next message
    'I have lived an hour longer, and love you twice as much!' Or, when a
    good man has departed, his distant friend should be conscious of an
    electric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telling him 'Your
    dear friend is in bliss!' Or, to an absent husband, should come tidings
    thus 'An immortal being, of whom you are the father, has this moment
    come from God!' and immediately its little voice would seem to have
    reached so far, and to be echoing in his heart.  But for these poor
    rogues, the bank-robbers,--who, after all, are about as honest as nine
    people in ten, except that they disregard certain formalities, and
    prefer to transact business at midnight rather than 'Change-hours,--and
    for these murderers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable in the
    motives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among public
    benefactors, if we consider only its result,--for unfortunate
    individuals like these, I really cannot applaud the enlistment of an
    immaterial and miraculous power in the universal world-hunt at their
    heels!"

    "You can't, hey?" cried the old gentleman, with a hard look.

    "Positively, no!" answered Clifford.  "It puts them too miserably at
    disadvantage.  For example, sir, in a dark, low, cross-beamed, panelled
    room of an old house, let us suppose a dead man, sitting in an
    arm-chair, with a blood-stain on his shirt-bosom,--and let us add to
    our hypothesis another man, issuing from the house, which he feels to
    be over-filled with the dead man's presence,--and let us lastly imagine
    him fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by
    railroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant town, and
    find all the people babbling about that self-same dead man, whom he has
    fled so far to avoid the sight and thought of, will you not allow that
    his natural rights have been infringed? He has been deprived of his
    city of refuge, and, in my humble opinion, has suffered infinite wrong!"

    "You are a strange man; Sir!" said the old gentleman, bringing his
    gimlet-eye to a point on Clifford, as if determined to bore right into
    him.  "I can't see through you!"

    "No, I'll be bound you can't!" cried Clifford, laughing.  "And yet, my
    dear sir, I am as transparent as the water of Maule's well!  But come,
    Hepzibah! We have flown far enough for once.  Let us alight, as the
    birds do, and perch ourselves on the nearest twig, and consult wither
    we shall fly next!"

    Just then, as it happened, the train reached a solitary way-station.
    Taking advantage of the brief pause, Clifford left the car, and drew
    Hepzibah along with him.  A moment afterwards, the train--with all the
    life of its interior, amid which Clifford had made himself so
    conspicuous an object--was gliding away in the distance, and rapidly
    lessening to a point which, in another moment, vanished.  The world had
    fled away from these two wanderers.  They gazed drearily about them.
    At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a
    dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift
    through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the
    top of the square tower.  Farther off was a farm-house, in the old
    style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward
    from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground.  It
    seemed uninhabited.  There were the relics of a wood-pile, indeed, near
    the door, but with grass sprouting up among the chips and scattered
    logs.  The small rain-drops came down aslant; the wind was not
    turbulent, but sullen, and full of chilly moisture.

    Clifford shivered from head to foot.  The wild effervescence of his
    mood--which had so readily supplied thoughts, fantasies, and a strange
    aptitude of words, and impelled him to talk from the mere necessity of
    giving vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas had entirely subsided.  A
    powerful excitement had given him energy and vivacity.  Its operation
    over, he forthwith began to sink.

    "You must take the lead now, Hepzibah!" murmured he, with a torpid and
    reluctant utterance.  "Do with me as you will!" She knelt down upon the
    platform where they were standing and lifted her clasped hands to the
    sky.  The dull, gray weight of clouds made it invisible; but it was no
    hour for disbelief,--no juncture this to question that there was a sky
    above, and an Almighty Father looking from it!

    "O God!"--ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah,--then paused a moment, to
    consider what her prayer should be,--"O God,--our Father,--are we not
    thy children? Have mercy on us!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Hepzibah and Clifford are as inexperienced as children as they step out of the yard of the House of the Seven Gables. Clifford looks almost drunk with excitement. Hardly anyone notices Clifford and Hepzibah passing by. Hepzibah continues to feel as though she is walking in a dream. Clifford pulls Hepzibah toward a line of railway cars. He feels as though he has never been awake before. Inside the train, the two elderly Pyncheons are surrounded by 50 completely unfamiliar people. Clifford feels full of life. Hepzibah is fretful. Clifford comments that Hepzibah is still thinking about Judge Pyncheon. But she shouldn't - she should join Clifford in the world and be happy! Hepzibah thinks Clifford has gone insane. The train conductor stops and asks how far Clifford and Hepzibah are going. Clifford says they're traveling for pleasure and want to go as far as they can. A fellow passenger speaks up. The narrator calls him "gimlet-eyed," which means sharp-eyed or piercing. He says Clifford and Hepzibah have chosen a bad day for their excursion. On a day as stormy as this one, it's better to stay home. Clifford says home isn't actually as great as people say it is. He thinks the whole trajectory of humankind has been moving toward the present and the future and away from the past. Homes represent the past, and trains represent the future. Soon we will just keep moving all the time like nomads. The gimlet-eyed man tells Clifford that it would be awful "to live everywhere and nowhere!" . Clifford thinks that would be the best thing that could happen to humanity. Clifford remembers "a certain house within familiar recollection" . This house is huge, melancholy, and dark. There is a dead man sitting in it who taints the whole house. Clifford has never been able to be happy there, thanks to the "dead" man "with open eyes." The gimlet-eyed man is starting to look rather afraid of Clifford. Clifford says it would be a relief to him if his whole house burned down. Clifford exclaims that this morning he was old, but now he feels young again! The gimlet-eyed man definitely looks embarrassed. Hepzibah tells Clifford to be quiet - everyone thinks he's insane. Clifford turns back to the gimlet-eyed man. Clifford tells the gimlet-eyed man that all of the worst sins committed by humankind are over property. The gimlet-eyed man tells Clifford he's sure he is right. Clifford suggests that hypnosis will help solve some of the world's troubles. He's also excited about "rapping spirits" - i.e., spirits who are supposed to speak up during seances. The gimlet-eyed man thinks this is all nonsense. The gimlet-eyed man does like the telegraph machine, though. Clifford approves of the telegraph machine when it carries messages of love across the country. But he doesn't think it should be used to catch bank robbers or murderers, since it puts them so much at a disadvantage. He gives an example: if a man is running away from a house where there is a corpse sitting up in a chair, would it be fair to have the news of that corpse waiting for him in the next town? The gimlet-eyed man is confused: he "can't see through " . The train stops at a small station and Clifford and Hepzibah quickly get off. All of Clifford's sudden energy is draining out of him. He tells Hepzibah to figure out what to do next. Hepzibah prays to God to help them.