| Years and years after their claim had passed out of the public memory, the Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the colonel's ancient map, which had been projected while Waldo County was still an unbroken wilderness. | Прошло уже много лет, как права полковника были забыты, а Пинчоны все продолжали справляться с его старой картой, начерченной еще в то время, когда графство Вальдо было непроходимой пустыней. |
| Where the old land surveyor had put down woods, lakes, and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces, and dotted the villages and towns, and calculated the progressively increasing value of the territory, as if there were yet a prospect of its ultimately forming a princedom for themselves. | Где старинный землемер изобразил только леса, озера и реки, там они намечали расчищенные пространства, чертили деревни и города и вычисляли возрастающую ценность территории. |
| In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some one descendant of the family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense and practical energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the original founder. | Впрочем, в роду Пинчонов в каждом поколении появлялась какая-нибудь личность, до некоторой степени одаренная проницательным умом и энергичностью, отличавшими старого полковника. |
| His character, indeed, might be traced all the way down, as distinctly as if the colonel himself, a little diluted, had been gifted with a sort of intermittent immortality on earth. At two or three epochs, when the fortunes of the family were low, this representative of hereditary qualities had made his appearance, and caused the traditionary gossips of the town to whisper among themselves: | Черты его натуры можно было наблюдать в характерах многих его потомков: они отражались в них с такой же точностью, как если бы сам полковник, только несколько смягченный, время от времени снова появлялся на земле. Тогда в городе говорили: |
| "Here is the old Pyncheon come again! | "Опять показался старый Пинчон! |
| Now the Seven Gables will be new shingled!" | Теперь семь шпилей засияют снова!" |
| From father to son, they clung to the ancestral house, with singular tenacity of home attachment. | Все как один Пинчоны были привязаны к родовому гнезду. |
| For various reasons, however, and from impressions often too vaguely founded to be put on paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not most of the successive proprietors of this estate, were troubled with doubts as to their moral right to hold it. |