gradually lulled
her into slumber, of saying to herself--the best of all auditors for
those who have sound hearts and clear consciences:

"I thought I would do it--I meant to do it--and may I never play
detective again if I don't believe that I have _done_ it!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

JOHN CRAWFORD AND HIS NEPHEW--THE WRECK OF A WORKING MAN--THE EPISODE OF
THE COCK--THE EFFECT OF JOSEPHINE HARRIS'S LETTER, AND AN EXODUS.

In order to demonstrate more clearly the state of affairs before
existing at the house of John Crawford, and the effect really produced
by the missive (it might almost as well have been called a _missile_) of
Josephine Harris,--it will be necessary to change the point of view to
the big house on the hill, at a little before noon on that pleasant
Sunday of summer.

The back piazza of the house looked north and eastward over a slight
depression which might almost be called a valley, and then at the range
of hills rising behind and stretching downward on the other side almost
to the Mohawk. Nearer, it looked out upon an extensive garden, carefully
laid out and thriftily in growth with all the ground-fruits and
vegetables natural to the climate, at that time in full luxuriance.
Around the high board fences of the garden stood an almost endless
variety of fruit-trees, the cherry-trees at that moment literally red,
or black, or amber, as the case might be, with those delicious little
globules of pulpy fruit-flesh which seem like drops of fragrant
sweetness squeezed from the very heart of Nature. Among them stood apple
and pear-trees, each loaded with the growing fruit of that wonderful
fruit-season, in which the smile of God seemed resting broadly on the
whole American continent in the wealth and variety of its productions,
however his hand may have been smiting it with the desolations of
personal strife and bloodshed.

Digressions have become so common during the course of this narration,
that if the later ones are not excusable on the score of propriety, they
at least have that excuse which is held to be so important by the
lawyers and the statesmen--_precedent_. And having already sinned in
that regard, beyond any hope of forgiveness and almost beyond any
feeling of accountability for the erraticism of the pen--let us pause
here, under the reminder of those hanging fruits in John Crawford's
garden, to say that while perhaps no nation has ever before been so
cursed with an extended civil war as thi