form of the bride bending toward
the light which came in sparsely through the half-open shutter she
had loosened for this task. This was the shutter which had never
again been fastened and whose restless blowing to and fro had first
led attention to this house and the crime it might otherwise have
concealed indefinitely. Had some glimpse of the rank grass growing
underneath this window lured her eye and led her to cast away the
ring which she had no longer any right to keep? It would be like
a woman to yield to such an impulse; and on the strength of the
possibility I decided to search this small plot for what it might
very reasonably conceal.

But I did not wish to do this openly. I was not only afraid of
attracting Durbin's attention by an attempt which could only awaken
his disdain, but I hesitated to arouse the suspicion of Mr. Moore,
whose interest in his newly acquired property made him very properly
alert to any trespass upon it.

The undertaking, therefore, presented difficulties. But it was my
business to overcome these, and before long I conceived a plan by
which every blade of grass in the narrow strip running in front of
this house might be gone over without rousing anything more serious
than Uncle David's ire.

Calling together a posse of street urchins, I organized them into
a band, with the promise of a good supper all around if one of them
brought me the pieces of a broken ring which I had lost in the grass
plot of a house where I had been called upon to stay all night.
That they might win the supper in the shortest possible time and
before the owner of this house, who lived opposite, could interfere,
I advised them to start at the fence in a long line and, proceeding
on their knees, to search, each one, the ground before him to the
width of his own body. The fortunate one was to have the privilege
of saying what the supper should consist of. To give a plausible
excuse for this search, a ball was to be tossed up and down the
street till it lighted in the Moore house inclosure.

It was a scheme to fire the street boy's soul, and I was only afraid
of failure from the over-enthusiasm it aroused. But the injunctions
which I gave them to spare the shrubs and not to trample the grass
any more than was necessary were so minute and impressive that they
moved away to their task in unexpected order and with a subdued
cheerfulness highly promising of success.

I did not accompany them. Jinny, who h