The Stories of the Three Burglars
By FRANK R. STOCKTON
THE STORIES OF THE THREE BURGLARS
I am a householder in a pleasant country neighbourhood, about twentymiles from New York. My family consists of myself and wife, our boy,George William, aged two, two maid-servants, and a man; but in thesummer we have frequent visitors, and at the time of which I am about towrite my Aunt Martha was staying with us.
My house is large and pleasant, and we have neighbours near enough forsocial purposes and yet not too near or too many to detract from therural aspect of our surroundings. But we do not live in a paradise; weare occasionally troubled by mosquitoes and burglars.
Against the first of these annoyances we have always been able to guardourselves, at least in a measure, and our man and the cook declare thatthey have become so used to them that they do not mind them; but toguard against burglars is much more difficult, and to become used tothem would, I think, require a great deal of practice.
For several months before the period of this narrative our neighbourhoodhad been subject to visits from burglars. From time to time houses hadbeen entered and robbed, and the offenders had never been detected.
We had no police force, not even a village organization. There was asmall railway station near our house, and six miles away was the countytown. For fire and police protection each household was obliged todepend upon itself.
Before the beginning of the burglarious enterprises in our midst, we hadnot felt the need of much protection in this direction; sometimespoultry was stolen, but this was a rare occurrence, and, althoughwindows and doors were generally fastened for the night, this labour wasoften considered much more troublesome than necessary. But now a greatchange had taken place in the feelings of our community. When the firstrobbery occurred the neighbours were inclined to laugh about it, and tosay that Captain Hubbard's habit of sitting up after the rest of hisfamily had gone to bed and then retiring and forgetting to close thefront door had invited the entrance of a passing tramp. But when asecond and a third house, where windows and doors had not been leftopen, had been entered, and, in a measure, despoiled, people ceased tolaugh; and if there had been any merriment at all on the subject, itwould have been caused by the extraordinary and remarkable precautionstaken against the entrance of thieves by night. The loaded pistol becamethe favourite companion of the head of the house; those who had nowatch-dogs bought them; there were new locks, new bolts, new fastenings.At one time there was a mounted patrol of young men, which, however, wassoon broken up by their mothers. But this trouble was unavailing, for atintervals the burglaries continued.
As a matter of course a great many theories were broached as to thereasons for this disturbance in our hitherto peaceful neighbourhood. Wewere at such a distance from the ordinary centres of crime that it wasgenerally considered that professional burglars would hardly take thetrouble to get to us or to get away from us, and that, therefore, theoffences were probably committed by unsuspected persons living in thispart of the country who had easy means of determining which houses wereworth breaking into and what method of entrance would be most feasible.In this way some families, hitherto regarded as respectable families,had fallen under suspicion.
So far, mine was the only house of any impo