and months
associates with those who have defied the law, and have stained their
hands with blood; but in the end he emerges from the trying and fiery
ordeal through which he has passed triumphant. The law is vindicated,
and the criminal is punished.

Despite the warnings of his indefatigable counsel, and the fears
which they had implanted in his mind, the detective had gained a
control over the mind of the guilty man, which impelled him to
confess his crime and reveal the hiding place of the money which had
led to its commission.

That conviction has followed this man should be a subject of
congratulation to all law-abiding men and women; and if the fate of
this unhappy man, now condemned to long weary years of imprisonment,
shall result in deterring others from the commission of crime, surely
the operations of the detective have been more powerfully beneficial
to society than all the eloquence and nicely-balanced theories--incapable
of practical application--of the theoretical moralist, who doubts the
efficiency or the propriety of the manner in which this great result
has been accomplished.

ALLAN PINKERTON.

BUCHOLZ AND THE DETECTIVES.

THE CRIME.

CHAPTER I.

_The Arrival in South Norwalk._--_The Purchase of the Farm._--_A
Miser's Peculiarities, and the Villagers' Curiosity._

About a mile and a half from the city of South Norwalk, in the State
of Connecticut, rises an eminence known as Roton Hill. The situation
is beautiful and romantic in the extreme. Far away in the distance,
glistening in the bright sunshine of an August morning, roll the
green waters of Long Island Sound, bearing upon its broad bosom the
numerous vessels that ply between the City of New York and the
various towns and cities along the coast. The massive and luxurious
steamers and the little white-winged yachts, the tall "three-masters"
and the trim and gracefully-sailing schooners, are in full view. At
the base of the hill runs the New York and New Haven Railroad, with
its iron horse and long trains of cars, carrying their wealth of
freights and armies of passengers to all points in the East, while to
the left lies the town of South Norwalk--the spires of its churches
rising up into the blue sky, like monuments pointing heaven-ward--and
whose beautiful and capacious school-houses are filled with the
bright eyes and rosy faces of the youths who receive from competent
teachers the lessons that will prove so valuable