Out of a Labyrinth

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.

Its inhabitants reside amid their farms, and, save the farm buildings, the low, rambling, sometimes picturesque farmhouses, or newer, more imposing, “improved” and often exquisitely ugly, white painted dwellings; the blacksmith shop, operated by a thrifty farmer and his hard-fisted sons; the post-office, kept in one corner of the “front room” by a sour-visaged old farmer’s wife; and the “district” school-house, then in a state of quiescence,—town institutions there were none in Groveland.

The nearest village, and that an exceedingly small one, was five miles west of Groveland’s western boundary line; and the nearest railroad town lay ten miles east of the eastern boundary.

So the Grovelanders were a community unto themselves and were seldom disturbed by a ripple from the outside world.