Doctors are far away, so he tries to help her, but she fades away and all signs of life depart. One day, he returns from hunting to find his wife in a delirium of fever. Murlock and his young bride head west and carve a homestead out of the forest. The story flashes back to Murlock’s youth. Few remember her, and only the narrator’s grandfather knew the cause of Murlock’s isolation. He’s buried next to his wife’s grave on the property. 'That of Granny Magone' is Bierce's earlier treatment of a similar subject.Īccording to author Patricia Garcia, the entire story is structured around the boarded window, a kind of symbolic threshold which unites the turning points of the narrative and 'functions to enhance the suspense by directing attention toward the question of why it is boarded'.Murlock is found dead at his cabin, apparently of natural causes. Upon examining his wife's corpse, Murlock sees that there is part of the panther's ear in between her teeth.īierce's story of a man who incorrectly thinks his wife has died of fever is thought to have been influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's ' The Premature Burial'. He fires his rifle to see what is going on and witnesses a panther dragging his wife by the neck.

The table shakes and there is movement but in the dark it is hard to discern. When he awoke there was some other presence in the room and he could feel it. Perhaps it was a wild beast perhaps it was a dream. Again, and nearer than before, sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Later on, with her dead in the room, he fell asleep.Īt that moment came in through the open window a long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening wood! But the man did not move. There was no means of saving her and thus, he found himself alone with her dead body. In 1820, Murlock had returned from hunting to find his wife in dire fits that eventually caused her to die. The narrator tells the reader that this is all the known facts of the story, but there are some whispers about what had happened. He was buried near the cabin next to his wife. The story tells of a man named Murlock who lived alone in his cabin and was found dead one day. The setting for the story is the part of Ohio where Bierce's family lived until 1846. It was first published in The San Francisco Examiner on Apand was reprinted the same year in Bierce's collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. ' The Boarded Window: An Incident in the Life of an Ohio Pioneer' is a short story by American Civil War soldier and writer Ambrose Bierce.

The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce