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At the breakfast table the Governor scanned a local paper and with a chirrup passed it to Archie, pointing to a double-column headline: A CARNIVAL OF BURGLARY IN MAINE Archie's eyes fell upon the bizarre photograph of a dead man with which the page was illustrated, and he choked on a fragment of grapefruit as he read the inscription: "Dead Thief, Identity Unknown."

"Your devoted, humble servant, "DARTHEA. My aunt said it was sweet and thoughtful of Darthea, and we had a fine laugh over the burglary of that bad man, McLane. The woman went back with two notes stitched into the lining of her gown; one was from, my aunt, and one I wrote; and to this day Darthea alone knows what it said. God bless her!

It was that dead scent that always seems to hang about the vicinity of a newly quenched fire. I was so close that I caught the sound of the man's breathing. With every second breath there came a barely perceptible wheeze, and in an instant my mind flashed back to the night of the burglary in Bryce's house and the man I had caught coming out of the library.

While the family were at church Hicks rifled the house and stole their money. A marked coin led to his conviction, and he got a three years' sentence. He was never, afterward, out six months at a time, and was sent up successively for burglary, criminal assault, robbery, larceny, cattle-stealing and horse-stealing.

I had been keeping records of the child crimes that came up in the course of my work that year. They began before the kindergarten age with burglary and till-tapping. "Highwaymen" at six sounds rather formidable, but there was no other name for it.

At first it had filled Mrs Sudberry with great alarm, raising in her feeble mind horrible reminiscences of tales of burglary and midnight murder. After suffering inconceivable torments of apprehension for two nights, the good lady could stand it no longer, and insisted on her husband going out to see what it could be.

Soon after that, many a story of burglary, robbery, swindling, petty larceny, and every conceivable crime, was related for the amusement of the circle; and the plots and counterplots of thieves and thief-takers raised the wonder of the peasants. Larry Hogan was especially delighted; more particularly when some trick of either villany or cunning came out.

Arrived there they minutely examined the premises, and gave it as their opinion, judging from the style of the work and from the tools which lay around, that the burglary had been committed by a well-known burglar named Harry Penrose, and that the night watchman, whom they immediately placed under arrest, must have been his accomplice.

"Very well," resumed Colonel Menendez, beginning to roll a second cigarette whilst continuing to smoke the first, "I know that you are right, of course, but it is nevertheless very difficult for me to explain. I mentioned the attempted burglary, if so I may term it, in order to clear your mind of the idea that my fears were a myth.

How! apply to a man well brought up the same punishment as to a vagabond? For shame! To compare an offense of good society with a vulgar burglary? Fie! Thus, for the public defaulting officer: two months imprisonment. For the liberated prisoner: twenty years hard labor, and the pillory. What can be added to these facts? They speak for themselves.