The goods were returned--made and unmade dresses, and all; and the jewelry amounted to nearly enough to cover the best estimate of the losses which we could make. Phillips made a full confession of how he did things. He was sly and wily, and easily abstracted such goods as he desired, and doing them up himself, sent them off by the porter, when sending out other packages. One of the porters remembered to have gone many times with packages for Mr. or Mrs. William Bruce; and he also, he said, sent packages to various hotels, to impossible names, and marked on the corner, "To be called for;" and being able to describe the goods, if any query arose as to the propriety of giving the package to him, always succeeded in getting it. It was thus he managed. The house, at my suggestion, very generously furnished Mrs. Bruce with three months' support, out of compliment to her giving up the goods without resistance, and in order to give her time to turn about and find something to do; for, though unmarried, by legal formula, to Phillips, as Mr. Bruce, she supposed herself his legal wife under the laws of the State, and was by no means a bad woman. Indeed, she was a good woman at heart; and after in vain trying to get together a little private school, as the widow of William Bruce,--for she insisted on being called Mrs. Bruce,--she turned to dressmaking, and did very well; and being a fine-looking, indeed, a showy woman, succeeded, in the course of two years after Phillips's flight, in winning the affections of a much older man than Phillips, but a wealthy and honest one; and was duly, and this time, with much ceremony, married. I did not meet Sarah Crogan again for over five years from the time I last saw her at 19th Street; but she had not forgotten the Croton Water Company's man. She had married meanwhile; but she vowed that it came "nare breakin' her heart, so it did," when she discovered that the "bould officer of the law" was her sweetheart of a day or two before, and had but "thricked" her into letting him go all over the house, "like a wild rover!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A FORCED-MARRIAGE SCHEME DEFEATED. --------------