One of the lost letters contained several twenty dollar notes on one of the Boston banks. On the occasion of a public Exhibition, held at the close of the term, in the Academy before referred to, a large number of visitors from abroad were collected together, and as money at such a time would be circulating in the town more freely than usual, it seemed not unlikely that one or more of those bank notes might find their way into the current of business, and furnish, by their identification, some clue to the perpetrator of the robberies. With this hope, I inquired privately of several merchants in the place, whether they had recently taken any such bills, and learned from one of them that, about two weeks before, at the time of the Exhibition, several of those or similar bills had been offered for exchange by a stranger, which fact would perhaps have attracted no particular attention, were it not for the absence of any apparent object in this exchange. The imperfect description of the stranger which I obtained, agreed tolerably well, as far as it went, with that of Mr. F., post master in the town of C., where was one of the offices through which the many missing packages should have passed. The most decided mark of identity which was furnished me, was a brown over-coat, cut something after the Quaker style, which my informant remembered to have been worn by the stranger for whose accommodation he had exchanged notes similar to those described. Deeming it unsafe to inquire of any neighbor of the suspected post master whether he possessed such a coat, I adopted the expedient of attending, on the following Sabbath, the church of whose congregation he was a member, for the purpose, of course, of listening to a good sermon, not forgetting, however, under the scriptural license furnished in Luke xiv. 5, to look about now and then for the Quaker coat and its owner,--a wolf in sheep's clothing. I observed the frequent characteristics of a country congregation,--a noisy choir, a gorgeous display of ribbons and other "running rigging" by the fairer portion of the audience, and a peculiarly ill-fitting assortment of coats, but never a Quakerish garment. By the time the preacher had drawn his last inference, I had drawn mine, namely, that it is easier to identify a man by his face than by his coat, inasmuch as he cannot lay aside the one, while he may the other. The day, indeed, was remarkably mild, and few over-coats made their appearance. Mr. F. was present, however, at both services, as I afterwards learned, and occupied a seat in the choir,--a _base_ singer, probably.