One day Murlock returned from hunting in a deep part of the forest. There is no known record of her name or details about her. She shared the dangers of life with a willing spirit and a light heart. He had married a young woman, in all ways worthy of his honest love and loyalty. He kept a gun-a rifle-for hunting to support himself. He began the hard work of creating a farm. When Murlock built his cabin he was young, strong and full of hope. I ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed boy in the area knew haunted the spot.īut there is an earlier part to this story supplied by my grandfather. With a fearless spirit I went to the place and got close enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it. That closes the final part of this true story, except for the incident that followed many years later. She had died so many years before him that local tradition noted very little of her existence. I know only that the body was buried near the cabin, next to the burial place of his wife.

I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. It was not a time and place for medical examiners and newspapers. One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. He had known him when living nearby in that early day. He told me the man's story when I was a boy. These details I learned from my grandfather. He was tall and thin with drooping shoulders-like someone with many problems. His hair and long, full beard were white. Something other than years had been the cause of his aging. He appeared to be seventy years old, but he was really fifty. I imagine there are few people living today who ever knew the secret of that window. Sometimes, he could be seen lying in the sun on his doorstep. It surely was not because of the man’s dislike of light and air. No one could remember a time when it was not.

His simple needs were supplied by selling or trading the skins of wild animals in the town. He seemed a part of the darkness and silence of the forest, for no one had ever known him to smile or speak an unnecessary word. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest. But among those remaining was a man who had been one of the first people to arrive there. Many of them had already left the area for settlements further to the west. The area had a few settlements established by people of the frontier. In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, Ohio, lay a huge and almost endless forest. Our story today is called “The Boarded Window.” It was written by Ambrose Bierce.

The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce