mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!

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: