closer.

"It was in 1845," the Judge began, "just after I had taken my degree,
and I had been walking through Cornwall with a knapsack--no small
adventure, I can tell you, in those days. The inhabitants declined to
believe that anyone could walk and carry a pack for the fun of the
thing, and I left a trail of suspicion behind me. The folks were
invariably hospitable, though convinced that I was pursuing no good.
You remember, Mr.--, that when Telemachus visited Gerenia he was
generously entertained, and afterwards politely asked if he happened to
be a pirate. My case was pretty similar, only my Cornish hosts did not
ask, but took it for granted.

"In the first week of August--to be precise, on the 4th--I reached
Polreen Cove, and found lodging at the small inn. The spot and the
people so pleased me that I engaged my rooms for a week. At the week's
end I had decided to stay for a month. I stayed for almost two months.

"Well, as luck would have it, I had not been in Polreen three nights
before there happened the first burglary within the memory of its oldest
inhabitant--if burglary it was. I incline to think that Mrs. Giddy, the
general dealer, had left her shop-door unbolted, and that the culprit,
after removing the bell--the door had two flaps, and the bell, hung on a
half-coil of metal, was fitted to a socket inside the lower flap--had
quietly walked in and made his choice. This choice was a peculiar one--
six bars of yellow soap, a cullender, some tallow candles, a pair of
alpaca boots, a pair of braces, several boxes of matches, an uncertain
amount of cheese, a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs, a coloured almanack,
three of Mrs. Giddy's brass weights, and the bell. He was detected two
months later at Bristol, in the act of using one of the handkerchiefs,
which illustrated the descent of Moses from Mount Sinai; and four other
handkerchiefs were found in his possession, together with Mrs. Giddy's
brass weights. He had disposed of the rest of the booty, and proved to
be a stowaway who had been turned out of a Cardiff schooner on Penzance
quay, penniless and starving. Nothing further was proved against him,
and it still puzzles me how he made his way through the length of
Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset, on the not very nutritious spoils of Mrs.
Giddy's shop.

"For the moment he got clear away. Not a soul in Polreen had set eyes
on him, and as he entered the village by night so he departed.

"I know now that th