THE ANTIQUITY OF THAT SHEEP'S SKIN AND ITS PIOUS USEFULNESS--A LARGE LOSS OF SILKS, SATINS, LACES, AND OTHER GOODS--A CONSULTATION--A LONG STUDY--THE VARIOUS CHARACTERS OF SEVERAL CLERKS, WHAT THEY DID, AND HOW THEY KILLED "SPARE TIME"--INFLUENCE OF THE CITY ON MORALS--NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK--A MOST WONDERFUL SERIES OF THEFTS--THE MATTER INEXPLICABLE AT FIRST, GROWS MORE SUBTLE--A GLEAM OF LIGHT AT LAST--A BRIGHT ITALIAN BOY PLAYS A PART--A LADY FOLLOWED--MORE LIGHT--AN EXTEMPORIZED SERVANT OF THE CROTON WATER BOARD GETS INSIDE A CERTAIN HOUSE--SARAH CROGAN AND I--HOW A HOUSE IN NINETEENTH STREET DELIVERED UP ITS TREASURES--"WILLIAM BRUCE," ALIAS CHARLES PHILLIPS--A VERY STRANGE DENOUEMENT--A MEEK MAN TRANSFORMED; HIS RAGE--A DELIVERY UP, WITH ACCOMPANYING JEWELS--A "WIDOW" NOT A WIDOW REMOVES--WHAT SARAH CROGAN THOUGHT. It is an astonishing thing to a detective, and ought to be to every person of sense, it seems to me, that after the experiences of ages "the-wolf-in-sheep's-clothing" still keeps on deluding people. Everybody ought by this time to know the animal, and everybody does, in a sense; but everybody has heard of him, and seen him somewhere along the path of life, and either been bitten by him, or sorely frightened, or something of the sort. Yet forever he is playing his wiles with success with everybody; and his sheep skin is the same one he has used ever since historic time began, and perhaps long before that. But I did not take my pen to descant upon the blunders and stupidities of my fellow-mortals, or to adorn this page with a lecture on morals and hypocrisies, but to tell a tale in which, perchance, a "moral" will be better "painted" by the facts it discloses than by my discursive pen.