ave wanted in this nest of infamy? What errand
of hope, fear, despair, avarice or revenge, could have brought this
superior gentleman with his refined tastes and proudly reticent manners,
so many miles from home, to the forsaken den of a brace of hardy
villains whose name for two years now, had stood as the type of all that
was bold, bad and lawless, and for whom during the last six weeks the
prison had yawned, and the gallows hungered. Contemplation brought
no reply, and shocked at my own thoughts, I put the question by for
steadier brains than mine; and instead of trying further to solve it,
cast about how I was to gain entrance into this deserted building; for
to enter it I was more than ever determined, now that I had heard to
whom it had once belonged.

Examining with a glance the several roads that branched off in every
direction from where I stood, I found them all equally deserted. Even
the school children had disappeared in some one of the four or five
houses scattered in the remote distance.

If I was willing to enter upon any daring exploit, there was no one to
observe or interrupt. I resolved to make the attempt with which my mind
was full. This was to climb the old tree, and from one of the two or
three branches that brushed against the house, gain entrance at an
open garret window that stared at me from amid the pine's dark needles.
Taking off my coat with a sigh over the immaculate condition of my new
cassimere trousers, I bent my energies to the task. A difficult one you
will say for a city lad, but thanks to fortune I was not brought up in
New York, and know how to climb trees with the best. With little more
than a scratch or so, I reached the window of which I have spoken,
and after a moment spent in regaining my breath, gave one spring and
accomplished my purpose. I alighted upon a heap of broken glass in a
large bare room. An ominous chill at once struck to my heart. Though
I am anything but a sensitive man as far as physical impressions are
concerned, there was something in the hollow echo that arose from the
four blank walls about me as my feet alighted on that rough, uncarpeted
floor, that struck a vague chill through my blood, and I actually
hesitated for the moment whether to pursue the investigations I had
promised myself, or beat a hasty retreat. A glance at the huge distorted
limbs swaying across the square of the open window decided me. It
was easy to enter by means of that unsteady support