Was it a ghost? The murders in Bussey's wood

by Henry Johnson Brent

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
A. K. LORING,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Rockwell & Rollins, Stereotypers and Printers,

122 Washington Street, Boston.

DEDICATION.

I dedicate this book to that philosophy which can argue without anger, can have a disbelief without sustaining it by insolence; which can pause on the brink of a chasm, and, because there happens to be no bridge by which it can cross over, will not proclaim to all the world that no bridge can be built; to the philosophy which sees as much beauty in a doubt as in a solution, and has not ventured, or mayhap will never venture, to affix a limit to human thought, or define the prerogatives of our Lord and Creator. I do not dedicate it to the Free Thinker, but to the Just Thinker. The highest reverence exists oftener than otherwise in the humblest soul, and the night of our ignorance is lit by stars to accustom us to the effulgence of the dawn. The future is the poetry of our hope; the present our rest, from which we extend the wings of memory for the longer and more glorious flight toward the end. My work will be found to look faintly but fondly to those things, if it is read aright; and so in all and everything I humbly say that I have no higher ambition than to serve my Master.

PREFACE.

I take advantage of this antique form of literature to make a statement.

The murders of which I shall have to speak in the following pages have been misunderstood. There was only one species of crime in their perpetration, and this I have from the highest authority. If I had thought it advisable, I could have pointed out the progress by which the assassin reached his determination, his peculiarity of character, and his motives; but such a course would have detected justice to the culprit, not the culprit to justice. Whenever he shall be discovered, the evidence will be ample justification for my assertion with regard to the character of the crime, and reveal the darkest, wickedest, and most deliberate murders with which the history of humanity has been cursed.