“Is there more than one night-key to your house?” I now asked.

She shook her head.

“And when did Mr. Hasbrouck last use his?”

“To-night, when he came home from prayer meeting,” she answered, and burst into tears.

Her grief was so real and her loss so recent that I hesitated to afflict her by further questions.  So returning to the scene of the tragedy, I stepped out upon the balcony which ran in front.  Soft voices instantly struck my ears.  The neighbours on either side were grouped in front of their own windows, and were exchanging the remarks natural under the circumstances.  I paused, as in duty bound, and listened.  But I heard nothing worth recording, and would have instantly reentered the house, if I had not been impressed by the appearance of a very graceful woman who stood at my right.  She was clinging to her husband, who was gazing at one of the pillars before him in a strange fixed way which astonished me till he attempted to move, and then I saw that he was blind.  I remembered that there lived in this row a blind doctor, equally celebrated for his skill and for his uncommon personal attractions, and greatly interested not only by his affliction, but in the sympathy evinced by his young and affectionate wife, I stood still, till I heard her say in the soft and appealing tones of love: 

“Come in, Constant; you have heavy duties for to-morrow, and you should get a few hours’ rest if possible.”

He came from the shadow of the pillar, and for one minute I saw his face with the lamplight shining full upon it.  It was as regular of feature as a sculptured Adonis, and it was as white.

“Sleep!” he repeated, in the measured tones of deep but suppressed feeling.  “Sleep! with murder on the other side of the wall!” And he stretched out his arms in a dazed way that insensibly accentuated the horror I myself felt of the crime which had so lately taken place in the room behind me.

She, noting the movement, took one of the groping hands in her own and drew him gently towards her.

“This way,” she urged; and, guiding him into the house, she closed the window and drew down the shades.

I have no excuse to offer for my curiosity, but the interest excited in me by this totally irrelevant episode was so great that I did not leave the neighbourhood till I had learned something of this remarkable couple.

The story told me was very simple.  Dr. Zabriskie had not been born blind, but had become so after a grievous illness which had stricken him down soon after he received his diploma.  Instead of succumbing to an affliction which would have daunted most men, he expressed his intention of practising his profession, and soon became so successful in it that he found no difficulty in establishing himself in one of the best paying quarters of the city.  Indeed, his intuition seemed to have developed in a remarkable degree after the loss of his sight, and he seldom, if ever, made a mistake in diagnosis.  Considering this fact, and the personal attractions which gave him distinction, it was no wonder that he soon became a popular physician whose presence was a benefaction and whose word law.