hough we had called for a prescription
instead of a thief, and found the postmaster handing out the mail that
had just been assorted. Bedell did not look as Brooks did and so he
was not recognized.

We waited patiently, listening to the torturing discords of the Alvin
Silver Cornet Band that was practicing in the room above the store,
till finally the patrons had departed, when I approached the postmaster
and informed him of my unpleasant mission, which, was, in effect, that
some person in the Alvin postoffice had, within the last three hours,
abstracted $67 from the two registered letters that I held in my hand,
and that my friend and myself had called to recover the money.

"Merciful God," said the postmaster, "it is impossible. No person
handled those letters but myself; there is my endorsement; so help me,
I did not open them, and I swear with uplifted hand before my Maker
that this is the truth." As I turned to Bedell, as much as to ask if
he ever heard such a falsehood, the gentle summer breeze wafted in
something that admonished us that the silver cornets were trying to
catch the air of "Dan Tucker." Bedell, feeling sorry for the
postmaster, the band, and me, turned to find relief by reading the
labels on the bottles.

I told the postmaster that while I did not charge him with the crime I
would like to have him satisfy, if he could, that the money taken from
the letters was not then in his possession. To this he most cheerfully
assented, and search was made not only through his clothes, but through
every conceivable place about the office and store where it could
possibly have been secreted.

At length we became satisfied the money was not there, but, of course,
not satisfied that the postmaster had not taken it. I asked him if any
person other than himself ever assisted in handling the mails, and he
answered: "No one." "Does not some person other than yourself have a
key that will unlock either of your store doors?" "Yes." "Who is that
person?" "It is George Havens, the leader of the band." Turning
quickly to Bedell, I said: "The leader of the band has a key to the
rear door, and he steals in while the postmaster is at dinner."

Five minutes later the horn that once through Alvin's hall the soul of
discord shed, now hung as mute on the band-room wall, as though that
soul had fled, and George Havens had been called to account for
appropriating to himself certain funds that had not been contributed