This letter, oddly enough, was what first gave Ward the exact location of Curwen’s Providence home; for none of the records encountered up to that time had been at all specific. The place was indeed only a few squares from his own home on the great hill’s higher ground, and was now the abode of a Negro family much esteemed for occasional washing, housecleaning, and furnace-tending services. To find, in distant Salem, such sudden proof of the significance of this familiar rookery in his own family history, was a highly impressive thing to Ward; and he resolved to explore the place immediately upon his return.

The more mystical phases of the letter, which he took to be some extravagant kind of symbolism, frankly baffled him; though he noted with a thrill of curiosity that the Biblical passage referred to⁠—Job 14, 14⁠—was the familiar verse, “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.”