tions
of it over the country. At last it was seen by a woman named Callahan,
living in Boston, who was in search of a daughter who had gone astray.
She instantly pronounced it to be that of her child, and she was
corroborated by all the members of her family and several of her
neighbors. The identification was no less specific than before, and the
perplexed authorities, glad at last to know something certainly, gave
Mrs. Callahan an order for the body. Before, however, she had completed
her arrangements for its transfer to Boston, a message reached her from
the daughter, who was lying sick in Bellevue Hospital, and so the head
once more became a mystery. And such it has always remained. The body
told that a female who had been delicately reared, who had fared
sumptuously, and had been arrayed in costly fabrics, had been foully done
to death, just as she was stepping into the dawn of womanhood--and that
is all that is known. Her name, her station, her history, her virtues,
or it may be, her frailties, all went down with her life, and were
irrevocably lost. There is every probability that her case will always
be classed as unfinished business."

On Friday, July 20th, 1870, Mr. Benjamin Nathan, a wealthy Jewish
resident of New York, was foully and mysteriously murdered in his own
dwelling by an unknown assassin. All the circumstances of the case were
so mysterious, so horribly dramatic, that the public interest was wrought
up to the highest pitch.

Mr. Nathan was a millionaire, a banker and citizen of irreproachable
character, well known for his benevolence, and highly esteemed for his
personal qualities. His residence stood on the south side of
Twenty-third street, one door west of Fifth Avenue, and immediately
opposite the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in one of the most desirable and
fashionable neighborhoods of the city. The mansion itself was palatial,
and its owner had not only surrounded himself with every luxury, but had
taken every precaution to exclude housebreakers and thieves. But a short
time before his death, he remarked to a friend that he believed that his
house was as secure as a dwelling could be made.

On the night of the 28th of July, Mr. Nathan slept at his residence, his
family, with the exception of two of his sons, being then at their
country-seat in New Jersey, where they were passing the summer. One of
these sons accompanied his father to his sleeping room towards eleven
o'clock, but the othe