MISS LAURA STANBRIDGE MAKES A MISTAKE—CAUGHT IN THE ACT.
Laura Stanbridge throughout her lawless career had been singularly fortunate in escaping detection. She was known or suspected rather of being a receiver of stolen goods, and while following this occupation she had as yet not been entangled in the meshes of that net which the law throws out to catch the unwary or less fortunate criminal.
But no one is wise at all times, and such was proved to be the case with Miss Stanbridge.
Actuated by a mad impulse, or, it might be, from the desire of excitement, this unprincipled woman chose to do a little robbery on her own account.
There was no occasion for it, for she was rich, and therefore had not the excuse of extreme need; but nevertheless she could not resist the impulse.
She was stopping for a day or two in a small country town in the north of England.
Clickborne, the place in question, was one of those clean dull towns where the streets are always white, the pavement equally so, likewise the houses.
Some persons called it a pretty place, and, as far as cleanliness and salubrity were concerned, there was perhaps no reason for complaint.
But it resembled a huge white sepulchre—the names over the doors forming the epitaphs, the cries of the commercial vagrants forming the funeral hymn.
This is, perhaps, not a very flattering description of the place, but it is one which a journalist gave in one of the London newspapers. We do not, of course, vouch for its accuracy, for journalists are prone at times to sacrifice truth to effect. That it was clean and apparently dull is beyond all question.