Everything, indeed, about the transaction was unusual. The hour, the circumstances, and the locality, all contributed to inspire a greater horror of the act; and yet, up to this moment, no man’s name, of high or low, bears a blemish of continued suspicion. Justice seems to rest, after the excitement of the instant search,—a search that, I have every reason to know, was intricate and thorough; but, at the same time, it is well to know that the intelligent Chief of the police department has only seemed to pause. His eyes have never been entirely withdrawn from the contemplation of the subject; and I feel assured, from what I know, that his vigilant and nervous grasp will, at the appointed time, be placed upon the shoulder of the atrocious criminal. The murderer may have perhaps, ere this, caught glimpses, from his abode of gloom in another world, of those two spirits whose bodies he hacked so butcherly. If that be so, the Chief will have naught to do; but if he be alive, wandering a desolate path through a desolate world, it may be that justice will not have waited with an energetic patience in vain. THE NARRATIVE. I. THE ROADS. There are two roads direct by which the scene I am about to describe can be reached from Boston. One is the steam-car road, passing through Roxbury, and dropping way-passengers at Laurel Hill Station. The other is the horse-car line, that, for some portion of the route, runs parallel to the steam. The third, and more picturesque, is another horse-car line, which passes through Jamaica Plain, and drops the passengers some several hundred yards west, and farther removed from the official terminus of the two other routes. It was by the second of these routes, that, on the 12th day of June, 1865, two children, Isabella and John Joyce, started from their home in Boston, where they were temporarily boarding, to spend a few hours in May’s wood, intending to return, according to the elder one’s promise, in time for her brother to attend his afternoon school. Thus it is established that the sister never intended to go farther than the wood first proposed; and in this we have the first glimmering of the series of mysterious circumstances in which the wretched affair is enveloped from the beginning to the end. This girl was not sixteen years old. The boy was barely eight.