These cases, as they reached the Department, were duly prepared and submitted to the Special Agent for investigation. Search and inquiry were promptly instituted. But for a time the utmost vigilance failed to obtain any clue to the supposed embezzlements. The cases of loss continued to multiply; and at length the Agent's attention was particularly drawn to the Distributing Post-Office at P. A circle of numerous facts pointed unmistakably to this spot as their center and focus. It was here that the lines of circumstantial evidence from every quarter converged and met. The post-office at P., therefore, became an object of special interest in the eyes of the Agent. However, investigations in this direction proved at first no more successful than elsewhere. The high integrity of character for which the post master was distinguished, and the excellent reputation of his clerks, stood like a wall of adamant in the way of all evidence and all suspicions. The Agent seemed destined to be baffled at every point. Yet a stern truth stared him in the face, and fixed its immovable finger over this Distributing office. Every missing letter, although reaching P. by various routes, had been mailed at points South of it for points North of it. Here they must all concentrate, and here only. It was therefore at this place only that all the losses could have occurred. Several days were passed by the Agent in P. and the vicinity, quietly pursuing his investigations. No person knew the secret of his business. He became acquainted with the post master and his two clerks, studied their characters, and their social circumstances. The first was a man of position and competence, whose honor no breath of calumny had ever dimmed, and who could not possibly have any motive for periling the peace and prosperity of his family by a dishonest course. Neither did the unflawed respectability of the clerks betray any chink or crevice in which to harbor a doubt. The elder of these, and the superior in the office, was a young man of education and refinement. We will call his name Carleton. His face was frank, his eye steady and clear, his manners always self-possessed and easy. The Agent liked and admired him from the first. He learned too that he was a favorite with all who knew him--that his connections were among the first families in the State; and that by his talents and high-toned generous impulses, he had so far nobly sustained the lustre of his family name. Another circumstance was greatly in Carleton's favor. Although descended from the "aristocracy," the fortunes of his family had run somewhat low in the later generations; and now, his father being dead, he devoted himself zealously to the maintenance of his aged mother, and the education and support of his only sister.