no stir nor footstep about the house.

This morning, there was the same death-like quiet. From my window, I overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that your relatives were seen leaving the house in the midst of yesterday’s storm. A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyncheon being missed. A feeling which I cannot describe — an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or consummation — impelled me to make my way into this part of the house, where I discovered what you see. As a point of evidence that may be useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial valuable to myself, — for, Phoebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with that man’s fate, — I used the means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon’s death.”