The Flight of Two Owls

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!