Upon receiving this letter, the unfortunate father consulted with his friends and neighbours; and, by their advice, he wrote immediately to the postmaster at Natchez, informing him of the circumstances, and requesting that the person who applied for his answer might be detained. Four days afterwards, a man came to the window of the post-office, and enquired if there was any letter to the address of Thomas Tully. The postmaster pretended to be searching for the letter amongst a pile of others, and meanwhile a constable, who was in attendance, went round and captured the applicant. Upon the examination of the letter, it appeared that he was an Irishman, who had some time previously been hanging about Natchez, and had endeavoured to establish a school there. As he, however, had been unable to give any satisfactory account of himself, of where he came from, or what he had been doing up to that time, and as his manner and appearance were moreover in the highest degree suspicious and repulsive, he had not succeeded in his plan, and the few parents who sent their children to him had speedily withdrawn them. He was known at Natchez by the name of Thomas Tully, nor did he now deny that that was his name, or that he had sent the letter, which was written in a practised schoolmasterlike hand. It was further elicited that he was perfectly acquainted with the paths and roads between Natchez and Hopefield, and in the neighbourhood of those two places, as well as with the swamps, creeks, and rivers there adjacent. He was fully committed, till such time as the father of the stolen child should be made acquainted with the result of the examination. In five days Clarke arrived with the negro boy Caesar. The whole town showed the greatest sympathy with the poor man's misfortune, the lawyers offered him their services free of charge, and a second examination of the prisoner took place. Every thing possible was done to induce the latter to confess what had become of the child; but to all questions he opposed an obstinate silence. The negro boy did not recognize him. At last he declared that he knew nothing of the stolen child, and that he had only written the letter in the hope of extorting money from the father. Hardly, however, had this been written down, when he turned to Clarke, with an infernal grin upon his countenance, and said, "You have persecuted and hunted me like a wild beast, but I will make you yet more wretched than you are able to make me." He then proceeded to inform him of a certain place where he would find his child's clothes.