plain gold ring worth
two or three dollars, but that will turn up. I'll look again."

"In my opinion you'll not find it. There's been a raid, I tell you. Come
_in!_"

Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the town
constable, Jim Blake. They sat down, and after some wandering and
aimless weather-conversation Wilson said:

"By the way, We've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two.
Judge Driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and Tom here has missed a gold
ring."

"Well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the
further it goes. The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the Ortons,
the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact everybody
that lives around about Patsy Cooper's had been robbed of little things
like trinkets and teaspoons and suchlike small valuables that are easily
carried off. It's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the
reception at Patsy Cooper's when all the neighbors were in her house and
all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to
raid the vacant houses undisturbed. Patsy is miserable about it;
miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on
account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that
she hasn't any room to worry about her own little losses."

"It's the same old raider," said Wilson. "I suppose there isn't any
doubt about that."

"Constable Blake doesn't think so."

"No, you're wrong there," said Blake. "The other times it was a man;
there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, thought
we never got hands on him; but this time it's a woman."

Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. She was always in
his mind now. But she failed him again. Blake continued:

"She's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in
a black veil, dressed in mourning. I saw her going aboard the ferryboat
yesterday. Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I don't care where she
lives, I'm going to get her--she can make herself sure of that."

"What makes you think she's the thief?"

"Well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some nigger
draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going
into houses, and told me so--and it just happens that they was _robbed_,
every time."

It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence.
A pensive silence followed,