He found the house to be a large frame dwelling, with extensive grounds surrounding it; everything evinced the utmost refinement and good taste, and it was evidently the abode of respectability and wealth.

The lights were gleaming through the windows of a room upon the lower floor, and Manning quietly opened the gate, and screened himself behind some tall bushes that were growing upon the lawn.

Here he was effectually hidden, both from the inmates of the house, and the passers-by upon the street.

The scene that greeted his vision was so peaceful and homelike, that Manning was convinced that Duncan's family were entirely ignorant of his movements or his crime.
The father, a hale old gentleman with a smiling face, was reading aloud to the assembled members of his family, his wife and two daughters, who were busily engaged in some species of fancy work, so popular with ladies at the present time, and their evident enjoyment of the narrative was unmixed with any thought of wrong-doing or danger to one of their family.
"How strange are the workings of circumstances," thought the detective.
"Here is a happy home, a family surrounded by wealth, refinement and luxury, peaceful and contented, while a beloved member of it is now an outcast from the world, a fugitive from justice, hiding from the officers of the law, and vainly seeking to elude the grasp that sooner or later will be laid upon his shoulder." Silently maintaining his watch until the family retired, the detective slowly made his way to his hotel, and as he tossed upon his pillow, his dreams were peopled alternately with happy home-scenes of domestic comfort and content, and a weary, travel-stained criminal, hungry and foot-sore, who was lurking in the darkness, endeavoring to escape from the consequences of his crime..