Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman’s throat—­dear God! that I might forget them!—­no trace of the assassin was ever found.

I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally, was greatly changed.  Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything—­a footfall, the sudden closing of a door—­aroused in him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension.  At any small surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before.  I suppose he was what is called a “nervous wreck.”  As to me, I was younger then than now—­there is much in that.  Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.  Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land!  Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.

One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I walked home from the city.  The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound aloof.  Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white.  As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying, hardly above his breath: 

“God!  God! what is that?”

“I hear nothing,” I replied.

“But see—­see!” he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.

I said:  “Nothing is there.  Come, father, let us go in—­you are ill.”

He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the center of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense.  His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly distressing.  I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my existence.  Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw.  I turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute.  I do not recall any feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation.  It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my face and enfolded my body from head to foot; I could feel the stir of it in my hair.

At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly streamed from an upper window of the house:  one of the servants, awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp.  When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all the years that have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderland of conjecture from the realm of the unknown.