lts described; but it may be said that that hour was
the most intensely exciting of any of my professional life, causing the
blood to chill and boil alternately. The business was so peculiar, and
connected with men so exalted in position, and conducted with such
wonderful ability and tact, that now, years after, scarcely a day passes
that my mind does not revert to those hours and do homage to those
transcendent abilities by which it was conducted, till I sometimes think
the possessor of them was an overmatch for Lucifer himself. My eyes
were for the first time opened to the marvellous in his department
of knowledge and art; and the region of impossibility was materially
circumscribed, and the domain of the prince of the powers of the air
extended _ad infinitum_. Into those regions it is not my present purpose
to delve.

After a business acquaintance of several years with Mr. Sidney, I have
learned that he was formerly a rich manufacturer, and that he was nearly
ruined in fortune by the burning of several warehouses in which he had
stored a large amount of merchandise that was uninsured. The owners of
these store-houses were men of wealth, influence, and respectability.
Alone of all the citizens, Mr. Sidney suspected that the block was
intentionally set on fire to defraud the insurance-offices. Without
any aid or knowledge of other parties, he began an investigation, and
ascertained that the buildings were insured far beyond their value.
He also ascertained that insurance had been obtained on a far greater
amount of merchandise than the stores could contain; and still further,
that the goods insured, as being deposited there, were not so deposited
at the time of the fire. He likewise procured a long array of facts
tending to fix the burning upon the "merchant princes" who held the
policies. To his mind, they were convincing. He therefore confronted
these men, accused them of the arson, and demanded payment for his own
loss. This was, of course, declined. Whereupon he gave them formal
notice, that, if his demand were not liquidated within thirty days,
never thereafter would an opportunity be afforded for a settlement. That
the notice produced peculiar excitement was evident. _Yet the thirty
days elapsed and his claim was not adjusted_.

From that hour, with a just appreciation of the enormity of the offence
which he believed to have been committed, he consecrated his vast
energies to the detection of crime. His whole so