These were some of the thoughts which troubled me, but I put them past for after consideration, while I made arrangements with the organ-grinder to try a curious experiment, first binding him to absolute secrecy, even from his “friend, Tom Joson.” The lost money-bag had been made out of a piece of the green cloth which had covered M^cCarthy’s organ when he was overtaken by rain. He had made the bag himself, and said he would know it again among a thousand. I asked him if he could make one a little like it in size, to which he promptly answered that he could, and out of the same stuff. I then left him, and returned late at night, and long after it was dark. We weighted the new money-bag with a quantity of coppers which the organ-grinder had taken in the streets, and then placed it on the ledge in the chimney. I then mounted to the roof and easily found the right chimney top, as I had made M^cCarthy light a candle and place it within the fire-place. I then lowered the “fishing tackle” I had prepared for my experiment. This was a leaden sinker at the end of a string, to which was attached an arrangement of hooks, which could not have failed to catch the money-bag if I could only have brought them near it. But there was the difficulty. I fished and fought away for half an hour, but I could never get swing enough on that sinker to bring the hooks near the bag, though I knew exactly where the bag lay, which was more than the thief could have known. As the fire-place widened considerably from the chimney proper, I could not see the bag for which I was fishing, and in the end I gave up the attempt, almost convinced that the robbery had not been effected by any such means. I had gone there after dark to make my queer experiment with a view to keeping the thing as quiet as possible, and also because I thought it likely that the real attempt had been made under like conditions. While doing so I was, without knowing it, within a few feet of what would have given me the real clue to the mystery—I might almost have touched it with my hand—and yet I saw nothing, and left the roof rather more puzzled than when I ascended. Had I gone in daylight all that might have been different.