That the secret be well kept is obviously necessary. A failure to preserve it until the proper moment of _dénouement_, throws all into confusion, so far as regards the _effect_ intended. If the mystery leak out, against the author’s will, his purposes are immediately at odds and ends; for he proceeds upon the supposition that certain impressions _do_ exist, which do _not_ exist, in the mind of his readers. We are not prepared to say, so positively as we could wish, whether, by the public at large, the whole _mystery_ of the murder committed by Rudge, with the identity of the Maypole ruffian with Rudge himself, was fathomed at any period previous to the period intended, or, if so, whether at a period so early as materially to interfere with the interest designed; but we are forced, through sheer modesty, to suppose this the case; since, by ourselves individually, the secret was distinctly understood immediately upon the perusal of the story of Solomon Daisy, which occurs at the seventh page of this volume of three hundred and twenty-three. In the number of the “Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post,” for May the 1st, 1841, (the tale having then only begun) will be found a _prospective notice_ of some length, in which we made use of the following words— That Barnaby is the son of the murderer may not appear evident to our readers—but we will explain. The person murdered is Mr. Reuben Haredale. He was found assassinated in his bed-chamber. His steward (Mr. Rudge, senior,) and his gardener (name not mentioned) are missing. At first both are suspected. ‘Some months afterward,’ here we use the words of the story—‘the steward’s body, scarcely to be recognised but by his clothes, and the watch and ring he wore—was found at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been stabbed by a knife. He was only partly dressed; and all people agreed that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed, before his master.’ Now, be it observed, it is not the author himself who asserts that _the steward’s body was found_; he has put the words in the mouth of one of his characters. His design is to make it appear, in the _dénouement_, that the steward, Rudge, first murdered the gardener, then went to his master’s chamber, murdered _him_, was interrupted by his (Rudge’s) wife, whom he seized and held _by the wrist_, to prevent her giving the alarm—that he then, after possessing himself of the booty desired, returned to the gardener’s room, exchanged clothes with him, put upon the corpse his own watch and ring, and secreted it where it was afterwards discovered at so late a period that the features could not be identified.