The old farmer raised his rifle as deliberately as if he had been aiming at a squirrel instead of a fellow man. Three shots blazed out in rapid succession.
The first shot went wild. At the second my husband stumbled. At the third he threw up his hands and pitched forward headlong in the road.
"We've got him!" the crowd shouted with what seemed to me fiendish glee, and rushed up to where Ned's body lay in a quivering, bloody heap.
I supposed he was dead, but, whether dead or alive, I knew there was nothing I could do to aid him. Nervous and trembling at the awful sight I had seen, I slipped out of town unnoticed.
WHAT CAME OF OUR CRIMES
I saw nothing of George Mason and for months afterward did not know how he had escaped. With better judgment than my husband showed he had remained quietly in the store after the outcry started. He saw the shooting, and, in the confusion which followed, he found little difficulty in getting out of town.
Friends of mine in New London aided me to return to the hospital in Hartford, where Ned had been taken after the shooting. His recovery was slow, for there was a bullet imbedded nine inches deep in his back which the surgeons were unable to remove. As soon as he was able to stand trial he was sentenced to three years in State prison, and, when he had completed this term, he was given three years in Massachusetts for the robbery at Palmer.
This was the result of our crimes in New England—my husband nearly killed and sentenced to six long years in prison. Can you wonder why I have learned the lesson that crime does not pay?
But, to my sorrow, I did not learn the lesson then—no, not for many years after that. With my husband in prison the support of my little ones fell wholly on my shoulders, and I promptly turned to bank robbing as the easiest way I knew of making a living.
My early training under such expert bank robbers as Ned Lyons, Mark Shinburn, and Harry Raymond made me extraordinarily successful in this variety of crime. The cleverest men in the business began to have respect for my judgment and were continually inviting me to take an important part in their risky but very profitable ventures. Soon, as I am going to tell you, my reputation for skill in organizing the most daring robberies and carrying them through without detection had spread even beyond the limits of the underworld.