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the date of the fifth extract made by myself from the newspapers. You
will find that the discovery followed, almost immediately, the urgent
communications sent to the evening paper. These communications, although
various and apparently from various sources, tended all to the same
point--viz., the directing of attention to a gang as the perpetrators
of the outrage, and to the neighborhood of the Barrière du Roule as its
scene. Now here, of course, the suspicion is not that, in consequence of
these communications, or of the public attention by them directed, the
articles were found by the boys; but the suspicion might and may well
have been, that the articles were not before found by the boys, for the
reason that the articles had not before been in the thicket; having
been deposited there only at so late a period as at the date, or shortly
prior to the date of the communications by the guilty authors of these
communications themselves.
"
This thicket was a singular--an exceedingly singular one. It was
unusually dense. Within its naturally walled enclosure were three
extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and footstool. And this
thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate vicinity, within
a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose boys were in the
habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of
the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a rash wager--a wager of one
thousand to one--that a day never passed over the heads of these boys
without finding at least one of them ensconced in the umbrageous hall,
and enthroned upon its natural throne? Those who would hesitate at such
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