About This Book
It was a June day; breezy, yet somewhat too warm. The slow going old passenger train on the slow going mail route, that shall be nameless in these chronicles, seemed in less of a hurry than usual, and I, stretched lazily across two seats, with my left arm in a sling, was beginning to yield to the prevailing atmosphere of stupidity, when we rumbled up to a village station, and took on board a single passenger. I was returning from a fruitless mission; and had stepped on board the eastward-bound train in anything but an enviable frame of mind; and no wonder I, who prided myself upon my skill in my profession; I, who was counted by my chief the "best detective on the force, sir,"-had started, less than a week before, for a little farming settlement in one of the interior States, confident of my ability to unravel soon, and easily, a knotty problem. I had taken every precaution to conceal my identity, and believed myself in a fair way to unveil the mystery that had brought grief and consternation into the midst of those comfortable, easy-going farmers; and I had been spotted at the very outset I had been first warned, in a gentlemanly but anonymous fashion, to leave the neighborhood, and then, because I did not avail myself of the very first opportunity to decamp, had been shot from behind a hedge And this is how it happened: Groveland, so called, doubtless, because of the total absence of anything bearing closer resemblance to a grove than the thrifty orchards scattered here and there, is a thriving township, not a town.
