The servant and the minister's wife followed along at a respectful distance behind Philip, one armed with the poker and the other with a fire-shovel, while he pulled open closet doors with reckless disregard of any possible man hiding within, and pretended to look into the most unlikely places for him, joking all the while to reassure his trembling followers.
They found one of the windows in Philip's study partly open.

But that did not prove anything, although a man might have crawled in and out again through that window from an ell of the parsonage, the roof of which ran near enough to the window so that an active person could gain entrance that way.

The whole affair remained more or less a mystery to Philip.

However, the letters and the knife were real.

He took them down town next day to the office of the evening paper, and asked the editor to publish the letters and describe the knife.