There was delivered to the widow of Joseph Curwen a sealed leaden coffin of curious design, obviously found ready on the spot when needed, in which she was told her husband’s body lay. He had, it was explained, been killed in a customs battle about which it was not politic to give details. More than this no tongue ever uttered of Joseph Curwen’s end, and Charles Ward had only a single hint wherewith to construct a theory. This hint was the merest thread⁠—a shaky underscoring of a passage in Jedediah Orne’s confiscated letter to Curwen, partly copied in Ezra Weeden’s handwriting. The copy was found in the possession of Smith’s descendants; and we are left to decide whether Weeden gave it to his companion after the end, as a mute clue to the abnormality which had occurred, or whether, as is more probable, Smith had it before, and added the underscoring himself from what he had managed to extract from his friend by shrewd guessing and adroit cross-questioning. The underlined passage is merely this: