Answer:
What mood is conveyed through the words used to describe the appearance of the jail? Dreary
What can the reader infer about when the jail was built, based on the historical and geographical context provided in this excerpt?
It was built when the town was settled.
see picture
Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front.
— The Scarlet Letter,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Step-by-step explanation: