The Flight of Two Owls

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.