Chapter II: Preface

I take advantage of this antique form of literature to make a statement.

The murders of which I shall have to speak in the following pages have been misunderstood. There was only one species of crime in their perpetration, and this I have from the highest authority. If I had thought it advisable, I could have pointed out the progress by which the assassin reached his determination, his peculiarity of character, and his motives; but such a course would have detected justice to the culprit, not the culprit to justice. Whenever he shall be discovered, the evidence will be ample justification for my assertion with regard to the character of the crime, and reveal the darkest, wickedest, and most deliberate murders with which the history of humanity has been cursed.

I am indebted to my friend, THOMAS HILL, Esq., the eminent landscape painter, for the singularly appropriate adaptation of weird figures to letters on the cover of my book, and also for the very felicitous representation of the “Ghost.” His magic pencil masters the alphabet as well as the higher regions of art, and I feel assured that my readers will be pleased that I had, in my need, so able an assistant in helping me to make my humble effort acceptable.

J. B.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Preliminary Remarks 9

I. The Roads 11

II. The Incidents 18

III. The Scene 22

IV. The Brook 25

V. The Dogs 30

VI. The Flat Bridge 34

VII. Suspected 41

VIII. The Murder-Rock 45

IX. Suspicion 49

X. Was it a Ghost? 57

XI. The Tests 67

XII. Tests 75

XIII. The Doctor’s Story 94

XIV. My Plan of Punishment 101

XV. The Children 110

XVI. Ghosts 113

XVII. Manifestations 123

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

The main circumstances that form, in part, the topic of my recital, excited, at the time of their occurrence, a feeling of unprecedented horror. They came upon the public sensibility with a force that even the previous recital of the bloody events of the civil war could not lessen. Habituation to horror had not deadened the public susceptibility; for there was around the incidents a belt of mystery and affright that defied the approach of justice, and baffled private speculation.

No necessity, even in the tortuous excuses of crime, was apparent for the deed; for the victims had had no opportunities to establish, individually of themselves, hostile relations with any one, and their condition placed them beyond or beneath the chance of social importance. They were claimants to no estate in litigation, stood in no man’s way to advancement, could have produced no rivalry, had inspired neither revenge, nor jealousy, nor love. They had, in fine, none of those means that men and women have to incite to crime; for they were children, and yet they were subjected to a fate that few, if any, children, had confronted before.

The commission of the deed was a barbarity; its motives, apparently, a paradox.

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.