It sometimes happens that the ends of justice are best secured by allowing criminals to go on for a time unmolested in their course, and even by affording them facilities for the commission of offences, which will be to them as snares and pitfalls. When means like these are adopted for the detection of crime, a temporary check to the operations of the suspected persons, from whatever cause arising, creates some additional trouble and anxiety to those who are endeavoring to ferret out the evil-doer, and provokes a degree of exasperation toward his unconscious abettor.
Such an untimely interference with plans carefully laid, and carried out at a considerable expense of time and effort, once occurred while the author was attempting to bring to light an unscrupulous depredator, in whose detection the public was much interested, as many had suffered by the loss of money sent through his office.
I had been hard at work for a week in pursuing this investigation, having for the third time passed decoy letters over the road on which the suspected office was situated, (the road being one of the roughest kind, about forty miles in length, and very muddy,) and was flattering myself that that day's work would enable me to bring my labors to a conclusion satisfactory to the public and myself, if not to the delinquent; when my hopes were, for the time, dashed to the ground by the innocent hand of the village parson.
And it happened in this wise:—
The mail carrier was instructed to throw off his mail, as usual, at the suspected office, and to remain outside, in order to afford the post master a good opportunity for the repetition of the offence which he was supposed to have committed, the Agent being all the time a mile or two in advance, in another vehicle, impatiently waiting to learn the fate of his manœuvres.
As the part of the road where I was stationed, was in the midst of woods, and the carrier had no passengers, no particular caution was needed in conducting the conversation, and before my associate had reached me, he called out.
"I guess you'll have to try it again; the Dominie was there and helped to overhaul the mail to-day."
The sportsman, who, having just got a fair sight at the bird which he has been watching for hours, beholds it, startled by some blunderer, flying off to "parts unknown;" the angler, who, by unwearied painstaking, having almost inveigled a "monarch of the pool" into swallowing his hook—sees a stone hurled by some careless hand, descending with a splash, and putting an end to his fishy flirtation;—these can imagine my feelings when the mail carrier made the above announcement.