We concealed our faces as well as we could under the circumstances, and passed at as rapid a rate as was compatible with the muscular powers of our Rosinante. It afterwards appeared that Willis was out on a collecting tour that day, and that neither of us were known to him, nor had he the least suspicion of our business.
The mail which had so frequently suffered the loss of its valuable contents, passed over the route in the night, leaving Fort Covington at about ten P. M. and reaching the suspected office a little before midnight.
An interview with the victim of the former losses, resulted in his preparing a letter containing one hundred dollars in bank-notes, addressed to the same New York correspondent to whom the other letters had been sent. A full account of the bills was taken, and the letter sealed with a _small_ wafer. A post-bill was prepared by the post master at Fort Covington, and the letter enclosed in a wrapper directed on the outside to New York City.
For the first time it occurred to me that the _string_ to be put upon the decoy package, might be made to play an important part in supplying evidence of crime. If the letter should be robbed, and then destroyed together with the wrapper, and the money secreted, no proof of the deed would remain excepting the circumstance that the package went into that office and never came out. But the most cunning depredator would never think of destroying a thing so insignificant as a string. So I concluded to make it available in the experiment about to be tried. Among my notes of this case, I find the following description--"A white cotton string, twelve inches long; a knot exactly in the middle, another an inch from one end, and another two inches from the other end,--the last-mentioned end dipped in ink."
The package, tied up with this tell-tale string, was then thrown into the bag, and we soon set out on our return in the mail conveyance. The road lay for the most part through thick swampy woods, upon whose grim silence the cheerful sound of our sleigh-bells made but little impression. Nor did we possess any other means for dispelling the gloom around us than the red glow of a couple of cigars, with which we resisted the encroachments of Jack Frost, so far as our noses were concerned. These (the cigars, not the noses) must have appeared like feeble imitations of a pair of coach lamps.