“Either their uppermost stories are not so practicable, or the ladies have not such valuable jewels.” “But how do they know that?” “By watching and inquiry. This affair may have been in action for more than a month. Your house has been watched; your habits ascertained; they have found out when you dine—how long you remain in the dining-room. A day is selected; while you are busy dining, and your servants busy waiting on you, the thing is done. Previously, many journeys have been made over the roofs, to find out the best means of entering your house. The attic is chosen; the robber gets in, and creeps noiselessly, or ‘dances’ into the place to be robbed.” “Is there _any_ chance of recovering our property?” you ask anxiously, seeing the whole matter at a glance. “I hope so. I have sent some brother officers to watch the Fences’ houses.” “Fences?” “Fences,” explains the Detective, in reply to your innocent wife’s inquiry, “are purchasers of stolen goods. Your jewels will be forced out of their settings, and the gold melted.” The lady tries, ineffectually, to suppress a slight scream. “We shall see, if, at this unusual hour of the night, there is any bustle in or near any of these places; if any smoke is coming out of any one of their furnaces, where the melting takes place. _I_ shall go and seek out the precise ‘garretter’—that’s another name these plunderers give themselves—whom I suspect. By his trying to ‘sell’ your domestics by placing the ring and toothpick in their bed, I think I know the man. It is just in his style.” The next morning, you find all these suppositions verified. The Detective calls, and obliges you at breakfast—after a sleepless night—with a complete list of the stolen articles, and produces some of them for identification. In three months, your wife gets nearly every article back; her damsels’ innocence is fully established; and the thief is taken from his “school” to spend a long holiday in a penal colony.