“Truly!” exclaims the man of the spectacles, in a moment of abstraction.

Brother Spyke says:  “the Lord be merciful.”

“On the body of the poor man we found this document.  It was rolled carefully up in a rag, and is supposed to throw some light on his history.”  Mr. Fitzgerald draws leisurely from his pocket a distained and much-crumpled paper, written over in a bold, business-like hand, and passes it to the man in the spectacles, as a dozen or more anxious faces gather round, eager to explore the contents.

“He went out of the Points as mysteriously as he came in.  We buried him a bit ago, and have got Downey in the Tombs:  he’ll be hanged, no doubt,” concludes the detective, laying aside his cap, and setting himself, uninvited, into a chair.  The man in the spectacles commences reading the paper, which runs as follows: 

“I have been to you an unknown, and had died such an unknown, but that my conscience tells me I have a duty to perform.  I have wronged no one, owe no one a penny, harbor no malice against any one; I am a victim of a broken heart, and my own melancholy.  Many years ago I pursued an honorable business in this city, and was respected and esteemed.  Many knew me, and fortune seemed to shed upon me her smiles.  I married a lady of wealth and affluence, one I loved and doted on.  Our affections seemed formed for our bond; we lived for one another; our happiness seemed complete.  But alas! an evil hour came.  Ambitious of admiration, she gradually became a slave to fashionable society, and then gave herself up to those flatterers who hang about it, and whose chief occupation it is to make weak-minded women vain of their own charms.  Coldness, and indifference to home, soon followed.  My house was invaded, my home-that home I regarded so sacredly-became the resort of men in whose society I found no pleasure, with whom I had no feeling in common.  I could not remonstrate, for that would have betrayed in me a want of confidence in the fidelity of one I loved too blindly.  I was not one of those who make life miserable in seeing a little and suspecting much.  No!  I forgave many things that wounded my feelings; and my love for her would not permit a thought to invade the sanctity of her fidelity.  Business called me into a foreign country, where I remained several months, then returned-not, alas! to a home made happy by the purity of one I esteemed an angel;—­not to the arms of a pure, fond wife, but to find my confidence betrayed, my home invaded-she, in whom I had treasured up my love, polluted; and slander, like a desert wind, pouring its desolating breath into my very heart.  In my blindness I would have forgiven her, taken her back to my distracted bosom, and fled with her to some distant land, there still to have lived and loved her.  But she sought rather to conceal her guilt than ask forgiveness.  My reason fled me, my passion rose above my judgment, I sank under the burden of my sorrow, attempted to put an end to her life, and