We are in a quiet square of well-built, neatly-painted residences. There is an air of comfort and well-to-do-ness about them which bespeaks the "genteel" neighbourhood. The windows are gracefully curtained, the knockers and bells are highly polished, the steps are scrupulously clean. The window-boxes are filled with flowers. Look well at the house with the turquoise-blue window-boxes. A canary is hanging in the dining-room and singing merrily in the morning sunshine. As we watch, the door opens and a nursemaid comes carefully down the steps with a baby in a perambulator. Two prettily-dressed little girls follow. At the open doorway a young mother stands and watches her little ones as they start hill of childish merriment for their morning walk. It is a pretty scene, and we know that the four walls of the house frame a picture of happy English home-life. But some years ago there lay in the room in which the canary is singing a corded box. At the front door stood a van on which this box was about to be loaded. There is another little square five minutes' walk away. On the balcony of one of the houses at the far end a charming girl in a pink blouse is standing. She is leaning over the balcony and talking to some girl friends who have come out of a neighbouring house. Presently a peal of girlish laughter rings out on the soft May air, and the girls wave their hands to each other in token of adieu. The pretty girl in the pink blouse goes back again into the room, and as we move away there comes through the open window an air from the latest Gaiety success. Both these houses belonged at one time to an elderly clergyman. One was empty--the one in which the Gaiety music is being played--and a workman was employed in doing it up that it might be re-let. The old clergyman went out one morning to see how the repairs were going on, and that was the last that was seen of him for some time. His elderly housekeeper at his residence in the other square expected him back to dinner. But instead of her master the workman came. That was the last that was seen of the old housekeeper for some time. A few days later a van stood at the door. The caretaker, a workman, explained that he had been left in charge and had to send a box away. The vanman picked up the box to carry it out, and found his hand stained with blood. He uttered a cry of alarm and exclaimed, "What does this mean?" Then the workman ran out of the house and the van-man ran after him. The fugitive, who had hurriedly swallowed a dose of laudanum, was arrested by a policeman. Other constables proceeded to the house and opened the box. In it was the body of the housekeeper. She had been strangled with a rope, which was still round her neck. The rope had been drawn so tightly that it had forced blood from the victim's mouth. The murderer had not calculated on this, and owed the detection of his crime to the circumstance.