the wax is cooling and no time must be lost,—­grasps the first that comes to hand, too absorbed in the main issue to give a thought to what would pass as an insignificant subsidiary trifle.  No rascal is sharp enough to guard every point,—­a general fact that illustrates over and over again, in the experience of man, the seminal truth that in a mercenary and physical as well as in a high and spiritual, sense there is neither wisdom nor profit outside of the limits of absolute integrity and unflinching uprightness.

The detective laid aside the papers with a light heart, knowing that at last he was complete master of the situation.  Below Camden on the infested route the post-office was kept in a store at two points only, and in one of those no thimbles were sold.  The clew pointed unerringly to Raven’s Nest as the spot where alone the requisite conditions to account for the imprint on the violated seal were to be found.  Thither the officer accordingly went; and the moment his eye rested on Michael Mahoney, Jr., he recognized the heaven-branded features of a thief.

Returning to Sioux City, he telegraphed to another agent, who had a large number of the cases growing out of the robberies, to come on at once.  The two men took stations, one on each side of Raven’s Nest, and in thirty hours they arrested the youthful criminal, who in the interval stole four decoy letters, and paid a portion of the contents to one of the officers who was testing him.

Mr. Furay collected from the thief and his relatives the full amount stolen from the mails during the entire continuance of the depredations, restoring the money to the rightful owners dollar for dollar.  Young Mahoney made a written confession, supplemented by three or four codicils relating to items which, to use his own language, “at first did not to me occur.”  He was tried the following February, and sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of three years.

Within fifteen days from the time when the doors of the prison were closed upon the son, the villainous old father, acting perhaps on the theory that no two shots ever strike in exactly the same place, began also to rob the mails.  In due time Mr. Furay again appeared on the scene and took the old reprobate away a prisoner.  When the trial came on, a material witness for the prosecution happened to be absent, the lack of whose testimony proved fatal to the case, for after hanging a day and a night, the jury brought in a verdict of acquittal.

AN ERRING SHEPHERD