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Its occupants were gone when one stormy, dark, and gusty night, form after form passed silently along in the same beaten track, by a given point near the house of old Mr. Warren. All the inmates of that house had long before retired to rest. The house was dark, no light from any window gleaming forth into the darkness, and so the men passed by. There was one ear, however, awake. Eliza roused herself to hear what she fancied was an uncommon moaning in the winds, or the tread as that of elves o'er the roof well covered with the winter's snows.

It has been often remarked that in lonesome situations, sounds of passing footsteps are more plainly noticed by any who may dwell there, even though the tread may be light, and the noise much slighter than would awaken attention in more densely occupied quarters. And Ave think this is so. We think on this account it was that Eliza herself heard what no other living ear in that house that night did hear -- the tramp, tramp, tramp of passing men -- for she crept silently to the window casement, turned aside the corner of the curtain, and, in robe de nuit, gazed out into the dark midnight to note the passing, unwonted sounds. And if she saw aught she moved not, nor uttered any sound of alarm, even awakening no one that dreamed on and slept a faithful, honest sleep under her roof. * * *

Was it that George himself had left the house that night, and in his movements disturbed her own slumbers, and was she peering forth into the darkness in quest of his form?

Silently the work goes on. It sways this way and that. Stout men, with their might, have hold with hooks and ropes of the main part of this desolate old home of sin and shame, the Tuckers' house. Now rises the wind, and it lifts hard with the strong men to overthrow the hateful dark object crouching beneath the trees and the forest for protection, where the orgies of drunkenness have long had their most famous abode. The winds moan through the forests, and the gloom deepens as the work goes on. Dark nights become our deeds of lawlessness -- when we lift our hands against another's right, how humble soever that may be. Silence, too, and labored breathings, told it as the work of violence done another, though perchance a foe or villain. But these were brave hearts and determined ones. They knew not a surer way, nor a better, than the one devised to "spot" a plague among them that had long been to many an intolerable nuisance. And at last, as they pull and weigh themselves against the posts and braces of the house, and the winds pour their full strength against the resisting walls, the heavy structure yields; these working men feel it yielding; they have it at an angle; it breaks, it sways here and crumbles there, and it falls and crashes, and breaks into a hopeless, disordered mass of ruins!

When the morning curtains were drawn up from the darkened rooms of night, and the sun arose, nothing of the former order of Tucker's house remained. The chimney had not fallen -- the west wall was standing -- the roof over that part of the building had crushed in and rested, one side, on the upper edge of this wall, the other side of it on the floor -- and beneath this lay a mass of straw -- and near it the fire-place, undisturbed. All else was changed. The house lay in ruins, broken up by the violence of its overthrow. And well was it, if the winds blew it down, (?) this structure, that no one had slept there when it fell!

And certain it is, no one ever lived to know, who did not at the first know, much, if any thing positive, about this extraordinary overthrow. Even Eliza knew no more. She slept that night so soundly that she heard no noise; she saw no one. Her husband was asleep beside her when she awoke! No one seemed ever to have dreamed of any such event. Nobody could tell what somebody had to do with it. Everybody spoke of it as a thing done, but nobody appeared as a witness. Some persons thought to be very innocent (!) complained loudly that it was an outrage; but the outrage had no clients. The universal sentiment was, that if the family had been present when the building fell they must have been crushed; and the public relief at their escape went far to assuage the public grief at their loss!

In a day or two the winds and snows had filled up all the footsteps and paths around the premises, and as white as new fallen snow could make look a deed of darkness, so white and innocent looked this.

Returning in the twilight of the third day from their long forage abroad, and Mag Davis with them, John and Polly Tucker stood aghast over the ruins of the house. It made them almost sober to contemplate the sad condition in which those ruins now left them. They no longer had a home retreat, no house which they might call their own, no good shelter nearer than the poor-house where they might betake themselves and feel secure from storms of wind, and snow, and rain.

They were first sad, then as they regarded it the work of human hands, they gave way to anger -- to violent, profane wrath. No, we cannot write the words they uttered, the wicked oaths they muttered, the revenge they promised.