As the sun rose higher in the heavens the heat increased in proportionate intensity, and when I was ready to start, say about half-past ten o’clock, I was glad to second the persuasions of my friends not to venture out in such seething weather. Probably it was providential, or possibly a great error, that I did not accomplish my original design. To reach my objective point—the picturesque rocks which had so fascinated my sense of the beautiful—I would have been obliged to follow the path, first over the low bridge, and subsequently within six or seven feet of the spot where the body of Isabella Joyce was first seen. Now, it is a well-ascertained fact, that the children left their home by the cars sometime about eleven o’clock on that morning. Their intention was simply to go to May’s wood, nearer to Boston than Bussey’s. What induced them to change their purpose, and advance as far as the latter, is _partially_ a mystery; and though I have a well-digested theory upon that very important—indeed, all-important—point, I must withhold it; for well I know that if he is alive, one of the first persons to read this narrative, on its publication, will be the murderer himself, and I cannot afford to give him farther chance to plot explanations and arrange evasion by any word of mine. Leaving home at about eleven, in three-quarters of an hour, or less, they could reach Bussey’s wood (for I take it for granted they did not tarry at May’s wood, persuaded by _some one_ to go farther off from Boston), say, about twelve o’clock. Give them time to gather leaves and wreathe them, as they did,—a wreath being found around the boy’s hat, and portions of wreaths about the murder-rock, where the girl had evidently been employed in such amusement,—and we reach half-past twelve, or perhaps a little later; and that is the time I have fixed as the epoch; for after that, whatever of garlands were woven, were made by hands we cannot see, but only hope to see. Now, had I not changed my intention to sketch that forenoon, I would have passed by the path beyond which, hidden by the woody screen, the girl was afterward sitting, and also grazed the spot whither the boy had fled, or been thrown; but it would have been before they had entered the wood; but I would have been at work at the moment of the killing, or, mayhap, passing within a few feet of the place where Isabella Joyce was murdered, or, after being murdered, concealed.