George Miles White

FROM BONIFACE TO
BANK BURGLAR

OR

THE PRICE OF PERSECUTION

HOW A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS MAN, THROUGH
THE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE, BECAME
A NOTORIOUS BANK LOOTER

BY

GEORGE M. WHITE
Alias GEORGE BLISS

BELLOWS FALLS, VT.
TRUAX PRINTING COMPANY
1905

Copyright, 1905,
By B. F. SLEEPER, Westminster, Vt.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

While paying the penalty of a last misdeed, I resolved that no more of life’s precious years should be spent in sowing to the wind and that my life’s sun should not set in eternal night; and I have been able to keep my resolution. In the awful moments of lonesomeness in the prison cell, I conceived the idea of publishing my life history in so far as I could make it interesting to the financial world and general public. Many hours of solitude, while others slept, I devoted to rummaging through the past in search of facts, dating them from the innocent days of my young manhood and resurrecting them from period to period, until I succeeded in compiling a life history which, I sincerely trust, will prove not only a helper to those who have the care of great sums of money devolving upon them, but will also be accepted by those tempted to depart from the path of rectitude as a warning not to be lightly regarded.

I have endeavored to be accurate in my treatment of each part of this history, and if there shall be discovered an error here and there, kindly, dear reader, attribute it to a lapse of memory. I kept no record of events, for in leading the life of a transgressor it is not conducive to safety; so I have been forced to depend solely upon my memory, which, as it dwelt on the past, soon became alive again with old scenes. Acts long forgotten returned to me clothed as they were more than twoscore years ago, and I found myself living over the bright days, the dark days, the days of wealth, and the days of poverty. I started to write a small book, but facts crowded upon me until I have been enabled to issue a volume of no mean proportions.

G. M. WHITE.

CONTENTS

FROM BONIFACE TO BANK
BURGLAR

PART I

CHAPTER I
MY HOTEL DAYS

“Here I am back again, Ellis, my dear boy!” I said to my clerk in the Central House, as comfortable and inviting a country hostelry as the average man of travel would want to make an occasional visit to, if I do say it myself.

“Glad of it, Mr. White,” returned Ellis Merrill, as he reciprocated my hearty hand-grasp. He had been with me in the hotel business for some time, and I rather fancied him. And he was a most trustworthy young man too.

I glanced at the register on the desk, as any hotel proprietor is apt to do after several days’ absence.

“Ah,” remarked I, as my eyes fell on two names—“Wyckoff and Cummings. They came yesterday. Are they together?”

“Yes, Mr. White; and they seemed to be mighty well stocked with cash. Up to date they’ve been very prompt in paying their bills; in fact, have paid for everything in advance.”

I glanced over a file of business papers. Then I said: “It seems they’ve hired one of our best teams for three days, paid for it, and will return to-morrow. That’s good business, Ellis.”

“Right you are, sir.”

I gossiped more about my guests,—as to what business they might be engaged in, and the like.

“Mr. Wyckoff told me that he’s a United States deputy marshal. As to his companion, he didn’t say anything,” said Merrill. “I allowed him to have about the best team we had in the stable, on the representation that he was a government official.”

This was in the spring of 1864, when there was much reason to believe that the war between the North and South over the negro was drawing to a close. I was a resident of Stoneham, Massachusetts, and, after a fashion, felt pretty well satisfied with myself and surroundings. I was the owner of a hotel, a large livery with a fine stock of horses and vehicles, besides a grocery business in which I employed several clerks, and a goodly interest in Towle & Seavy’s wine house at 21 Congress Street, Boston. Also, I had a few parcels of real estate in Stoneham, which were increasing in value. In these days of colossal fortunes, the total of my worldly possessions then would be of no account; but I, the holder of thirty thousand dollars and a happy home, surrounded by a happier family, my father and mother still living, and I barely thirty, with the spirits of youth, felt, as I have just said, pretty well satisfied with my life and the world generally.

I had just returned from a delightful visit to my paternal home in Vermont, to find this United States deputy marshal and his friend, James Cummings, guests at my hotel. I must confess to having a feeling of curiosity as to what they looked like, which may have been a trifle effeminate in me; so I was not sorry when, the next day, this Mr. Wyckoff, unaccompanied by his friend, drove up to the hotel. Aside from curiosity, I had the excusable characteristic, usually found in public-house proprietors, of wanting to cater to patrons with full purses and a disposition to spend money freely. Naturally, I greeted Wyckoff effusively and made him a welcome guest. He seemed to be of a good sort; a bright, stirring young fellow, with a pleasing address and a ready flow of language. I was very much interested in his conversation on war topics, his knowledge, it seemed to me, being based on a wide experience. He appeared to be well versed in the financial opportunities of the war, particularly as to army contracts,—how they were obtained and the large amount of money that was being made out of them.

Wyckoff was not the first marshal to stop at my hotel, for in those tumultuous times they popped up frequently in search of deserters from the army. I confess to taking a great liking to him, and when in a few hours he left the hotel, saying he must go on farther, I felt genuine regret, in which there was not mingled an avaricious thought.

“I hope you’ll stop here whenever you come down this way,” I said to him at parting.

“I certainly shall,” was his reply; “and I’m quite likely to be along soon, too. I liked the team I had, and all of your hotel accommodations. If I do come, I shall need another team no doubt, and I hope you’ll let me have your best.”

“That you shall, Mr. Wyckoff. The best service of my house and stable shall be yours.”

The next I saw of him was in September, when he put up with me again. He engaged one of my best spans and was away three days. Later in the same month he was my guest, and, hiring another outfit, was gone three or four days. In October I saw him, but in a most unexpected manner, as shall be related in due time.

Affairs prospered with me in the usual happy channel, and day by day saw me adding a few dollars to my little fortune. I saw no speck, portentous of trouble, on life’s horizon, nor did I discover anything that foretold disaster. My business was firmly established and my credit was of the highest order. For my honesty I was respected, and as for wisdom, I was supposed to possess as much, if not more, than the average resident of my town. On an occasion I had been a postmaster, with all the honor that office of the United States government confers upon one living outside of the great cities. As I have said, life was flowing like a placid river, when, one day, James Cummings, the companion of Marshal Wyckoff, registered at the Central House. Now I did not like this man from the first, though he seemed a good enough fellow and talked freely of his affairs and his home in Rochester, New York, where there was a big fruit-tree nursery, of which he said he was an agent. I had not met him on his first visit, and it was not until I had seen the register and asked who the stranger in the bar-room was, that I knew Marshal Wyckoff’s friend.

Presently Merrill told me Cummings wanted a team to make a hurried journey to Keene, New Hampshire, something like a hundred miles distant. I objected to sending my horses on a trip like that; but Cummings insisted that he must meet Wyckoff at Keene the following night, as they had a very important matter to transact there.

“I have certain business interests to look after in Lowell and Nashua,” declared Cummings, “and I can’t get through in time to make railroad connections to Keene.”

I said it was not possible to accommodate him, that my time was occupied sixteen hours out of twenty-four, and that I hadn’t a man in the stable who knew the way to Keene. If a team was furnished, Cummings was told, I would have to go along with it, and that I didn’t feel like doing, as the trip would require too much of my time. But he insisted that it was of the utmost importance to him and Wyckoff that he get to Keene. Having in mind that Wyckoff was such a good fellow, and desiring very much to be of service to him, though I couldn’t see my way clear to spare the time, I told Cummings that I would undertake the journey, provided I was paid twenty-five dollars a day and my expenses. I really hoped that I had fixed a figure that would not be accepted, for the regular charge was nearly one-half less. But to my astonishment, he took me up. Indeed, I have reason to believe, having learned more of Cummings, that I could have had double the amount I asked, for he snapped me up in a breath.

Early the next day we started with one of my finest double turnouts. The roads were heavy with mud, yet the trip to Lowell was accomplished in excellent season. There Cummings had me drive him to the American House, where I waited for him nearly an hour. He told me he had called on a man who put him on the track of a very important matter, but he was careful not to tell me what his business was. The time was passing in an uninteresting way, to my mind, and I would have been glad enough to listen to any sort of drivel. Somewhere about noon we reached Nashua and put up at the Indian Head Hotel. Cummings had another engagement, which left me alone for more than an hour. He seemed a little excited on returning, but said nothing, other than that he was getting through with his business in fine shape, and we would reach Keene in time to see Wyckoff according to their agreement. After a needed bite to eat, we resumed our journey, and got to Keene about eight o’clock, just as darkness had well come down. Cummings congratulated me on the quick trip we had made, as I let him down at the Cheshire House, after which I put up at Harrington’s Eagle Hotel, having known the genial-faced proprietor since my early boyhood days. While I was at supper, a tap on the shoulder caused me to look up. Beside me stood Marshal Wyckoff. Before I had time to speak he took a seat opposite me, and remarked with a smile, “I caught you napping!” Then he added: “Cummings has received word from his business house in Rochester to start back at once, and he must leave on the first train. Indeed, he has already gone.”

I said something commonplace at this, and then Wyckoff went on, “I’ve got a matter of importance to look up at Claremont, about forty-five miles from here, and I’d like you to drive me there to-morrow.”

I knew that the distance would be too much for my horses, so I said that I’d take him there if he’d hire a rig in Keene. This was agreeable to him, and on the following morning we got an early start, I having engaged a team from Layton Martin’s stables, and arrived at Claremont about midday. At Wyckoff’s request we drove to a hotel, where I remained while he went to transact the business for which he came. We were off for Keene not long after one o’clock, and passing through Surrey about supper-time, I drove Marshal Wyckoff to the residence of a kinsman of mine, where we pulled up and had a hearty meal. My companion made a great impression on my relatives, who urged him with much earnestness to visit them if ever he chanced to be in the neighborhood again. Resuming our way, we reached Keene not long after nightfall. The following day, with my team, we went to Concord, Massachusetts, where the marshal got a train for Boston—or so he told me. I started for Stoneham, with the better part of a hundred dollars in my pocket, which had been paid me for my services. On the way I thought not a little of Marshal Wyckoff. Never had I come in contact with a man so active in business affairs, yet so affable, considerate, and generous. Withal, he was a most jolly companion, and I say once more that I felt great regret at parting with him. It was foolish of me, no doubt, but I have to record the fact. When we next met, seven months had intervened.

CHAPTER II
THE WALPOLE BANK BURGLARY

B. F. Aldrich was the cashier of the Walpole Savings-bank, and the bank was in his general merchandise store. Thus it can be readily understood that the village of Walpole wasn’t much from the viewpoint of map-makers, though its residents were not a little proud of their abiding-place.

These facts being known, it will not be difficult to imagine the consternation of the Walpole people, when one morning, just prior to Thanksgiving Day in 1864, they got out of bed to find that their only bank had been robbed of nearly half a hundred thousand dollars. At first it was doubted; but not long delayed was the confirmation, and it came with all the thunder that such events create in small villages. Soon, scared and white-faced men, women, and children, depositors and bank officials, crowded to Aldrich’s store. I will not deal with the clamoring ones who thought their savings of years, perhaps, were gone forever. My object is more to tell how the robbery became known and in what manner the burglars were apprehended. I have it from an eye-witness that Cashier Aldrich was in a state bordering on frenzy at times, and at others seemed to be on the verge of a collapse. The keys found dangling in the store door were his, and had been undoubtedly left there to hide the identity of the real perpetrators of the crime. Any one with reason would not deny that, and Aldrich realized his awful position only too well.

He told the bank officials that the store door was strongly secured, when he left, late the previous night; but upon waking the next morning, he missed the keys from his trousers pocket, the trousers being found on the floor in the hall. He could not believe that any one had been in the house during the night, for not a soul had heard a sound. He could not make himself believe that he’d been so careless as to leave the keys in the store door, but to be certain, no time was lost in making an investigation.

All his worst fears were confirmed. The keys were dangling in the lock, the safe had been opened with a key, and papers were scattered over the floor. Every dollar of the cash and bonds had been taken. The bank was ruined, and great was the excitement in Walpole for many days.

The town constables and the sheriff of the county looked wise for several weeks, but got no trace of the burglars. The depositors of the bank were wroth at this, and declared that some action that would bring results must be taken. Herbert T. Bellows, one of the largest of these, led the movement. He was powerful in social and political life, and more able to lose his interest in the bank than almost any one else. He said that good detective work would be sure to result in the recovery of some of the property. So he went to New York City for detectives. Bellows was determined that his wealth should not be taken from him without his putting forth a great effort to recover it. The New York police force sent Timothy Golden and James Kelso, two of the ablest sleuths of which it could boast, and placed them at his disposal. They hadn’t been at work long when it was concluded that the robbery had not been committed without the assistance of some one familiar with the routine of Aldrich’s store. The directors were told that the cashier’s story of the loss of the keys was exceedingly flimsy, and that it looked very much as though he knew more about the robbery than he cared to tell.

“We admit that it is a delicate matter,” said Detective Golden, with great decision, “but unless your cashier can offer a better explanation, you’d better direct us to arrest him.”

The directors repelled this conclusion with the greatest vigor. Cashier Aldrich, they declared, had not been unfaithful to his trust. They said they’d stake their reputations and lives, if necessary, on it. However, Golden and Kelso believed he was guilty, and pushed their investigation on that line. Their persistence in this belief, after many weeks, began to weaken the confidence of some of the bank officials, and it was only a matter of a very few days, when he would have been arrested, that an unexpected clew turned up. It served to change the tide of suspicion from Aldrich, who eventually came from under the cloud, with his character undefiled. It was like giving him a new life. For many weeks he’d borne the torture—that mental agony that must come to the innocent man suspected of a crime by those who had once believed him to be honest beyond question.

At the verge of casting Aldrich in jail the detectives were suddenly called back to New York. It was long past the time when a tangible clew was expected from that quarter, but at last one of the government bonds taken from the Walpole Bank had turned up in the United States Treasury at Washington. It had been purchased from a man named Cummings, by a reputable business man of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Armed with this information, the detectives interviewed the Scranton man, who told them he understood that Cummings was an agent for a fruit-tree nursery at Rochester, New York, and that he was said to be a friend of a Dr. Hollister at Providence, a hamlet on the outskirts of Scranton. Golden and Kelso went to Providence, though they didn’t believe that Cummings would be the real game they were after. However, if he proved to be a link in the chain that would lead them to the “looters” of the Walpole Bank, they would be satisfied. Arriving in Providence, Dr. Hollister was found, but Cummings wasn’t there. The doctor at once became a mystery in the case. While insisting that Cummings was merely one of his patients, his information was so unsatisfactory, and so evidently reluctant was he to assist the detectives, that they began to suspect him of knowing more about the Walpole burglary than he cared to tell.

The result was that Dr. Hollister was arrested, and extradited to New Hampshire as quickly as the law would allow. It proved to be a fruitless piece of work of the detectives and undoubtedly a most unpleasant experience for the doctor. They could only prove that Cummings had been his patient, which was less than nothing. An early hearing resulted in the prisoner’s discharge from custody and his return to Pennsylvania. As for Golden and Kelso, they were deeply chagrined, to say the least. They felt happy indeed, when, finally, no serious financial loss through a criminal libel suit came of the arrest.

But the tireless energy they’d put in the case was at last rewarded. Cummings was located in New York City. Thither they returned, but arrived one day too late, for the bird had flown. However, as Golden was talking to the housekeeper, his eyes fell on a sensational weekly story paper lying on a table, which bore the name of Cummings,—and he gained the information from the housekeeper that the paper had been changed to another address. As she apparently knew little or nothing about Cummings, the detectives went to the office of the story paper. There they found that the paper was being sent to “M. Shinburn, Saratoga, New York.” This was a mighty small clew to follow. At their wits’ end, however, the detectives decided to make the trip. Possibly they might find Cummings there.

It was not difficult to find “M. Shinburn.” The gossips in Saratoga believed him to be a wealthy business man who had recently located there and who had purchased a large farm on the outskirts of the village, where he lived with a brother, whose name, they had heard, was Frank. The few who had made his acquaintance found him to be of a most affable sort. Indeed, they declared that he had come from the South or West, and had bought the farm about a month previous. Just when he first put in an appearance at Saratoga they could not tell, however.

As the days wore on, many little characteristics in Shinburn made the detectives believe that he was not all he professed to be. They felt certain that it would be a wise move to arrest him; yet there was the Dr. Hollister fiasco still fresh in their minds, and to make another mistake was something not to be relished. At last, driven to desperation by circumstances, Golden told Kelso that the risk must be taken; and it was—but I will allow the former to relate, in his own way, what came of it.

“We were at our last ditch,” said he, “when we decided to take him in. It was a big risk,—much like a plunge in the dark,—but we determined to do it. The favorable opportunity came one night right after the theatre. Kelso and I waited on the outside, and when Shinburn came to the street, we pinched him. Now, mind you, it was just speculation. Well, he put up the stiffest kind of a kick, but we would not let up on him until every pocket had been turned inside out and every scrap of paper examined. We found on him five coupons cut from bonds, and two railroad bonds, all stolen from the Walpole Bank. Of course that settled it for keeps. We locked him up, and then, armed with only our nerve, we searched his house, his brother Frank putting up a big holler, and found files, skeleton keys, wax impressions, and other burglars’ tools. Among the keys we discovered was a duplicate that would open the outer vault door of the Ashuilot Bank at Keene.”

I have it from Golden that Cashier Faulkner of the Ashuilot was about unnerved when shown how easily the key opened the vault door. He realized how narrow had been his escape from an experience like that of Cashier Aldrich. The detectives told him there was no doubt that the Ashuilot would have been robbed as soon as the excitement of the Walpole case had died out.

Shinburn was taken to New Hampshire and locked under a strong guard in the jail at Keene. Meanwhile the detectives took up the trail after James Cummings, which led them to Philadelphia, where he was arrested a few days later. In his possession were something more than five thousand dollars in currency, undoubtedly the result of the bond sale. He was extradited to New Hampshire and lodged in the same jail with Shinburn. District Attorney Lane was handed the money by Golden and Kelso.

CHAPTER III
ONE SHERIFF I KNEW

“Good afternoon, George!”

“How do you do? Upon my word, sheriff, but you’re the last man I expected to see in Stoneham to-day. How’s business in Fitchburg?” Such was my response to Sheriff Butterick, who, with a young man, very sprucely dressed, had called at my hotel. It was a delightful afternoon on the second day of June in 1865.

“Shake hands with Mr. Golden—Mr. Tim Golden!” said the sheriff, introducing his companion, and a warm hand-clasp followed. I told the sheriff that I was pleased to meet any friend of his in all seasons. I laughed loudly when Mr. Golden said:—

“I suppose you don’t know you’re under arrest, Mr. White?”

“Why, certainly I do,” was my answer, being perfectly willing to carry on the joke. “What’s the charge? Chicken-roost theft, bank robbery, or high-handed murder?”

I turned to Sheriff Butterick, and a laugh died on my lips. I’d caught a peculiar light in his eyes, and it sobered me up in a moment. I looked again at Mr. Golden. A silver shield of some sort was on his vest, and he was holding his coat back that I might read an inscription on it. “New York City Detective Bureau” was what I saw.

“I’m Tim Golden, one of the New York detective force,” said he. “I’m here with the sheriff to get you for that Walpole Savings-bank job.”

“Bank job?” I repeated, failing to catch his meaning.

“Yes, the Walpole bank burglary.”

I had begun to feel a little upset. The worst I could think of was, that by the barest possibility I had made a business mistake and that a lawsuit was confronting me. At the mention of a bank burglary I felt that little worriment vanish, and bursting into a laugh, I cried: “Come, come! you can’t persist in that joke, sheriff, for it won’t work. Try another, old fellow.”

Detective Golden’s next words frightened me, for I realized that he was in earnest.

“This is serious, Mr. White. You’re wanted in New Hampshire for that Walpole bank burglary, and there is no dodging it.”

“Burglary! Why, man, my business affairs occupy me from sixteen to twenty hours a day, and I’ve been at it every day.”

“Can’t help that,” said Golden.

“But I can.” I felt my anger rising rapidly.

“You had time enough to be much in the company of Mark Shinburn,” said the detective, looking at me, his eyes half closed. There was a harsh appearance about his face I failed to like when he did that.

“And who’s Shinburn?” I asked. “Never have I heard of such a name.”

“You were with him a lot last fall.”

“It’s a mistake—a big mistake!” I insisted angrily.

“But you have heard of Wyckoff?” insinuatingly inquired Detective Golden. I started. Any one else as innocent as I would have done the same. I had actually forgotten Wyckoff; yes, I had been with him last fall when he made the trip to Claremont and Concord.

“True, I have heard of Wyckoff, a deputy marshal who stopped at my hotel and hired my teams, and I did drive him from Keene to Claremont and to Concord,” said I. “But what of it? Is that bank burglary?”

“It seems to be of no use, Mr. White,” put in the sheriff, “for that Wyckoff you were trundling about the country is Mark Shinburn, now under arrest at Keene. I confess the whole thing is a puzzle to me, but Golden, here, says you’re mixed up in the case somehow, and you’ll have to come up to Keene with us.”

“But it is an outrage,” cried I, following up the outburst with an argument much too long for the occasion, for it profited me nothing. Not a word I could say would in any way straighten out the tangle. In short, I was under arrest. Detective Golden asked me if I would go with him to New Hampshire without extradition formalities.

“Of course I’ll go, if I must go at all; but, being innocent of this mess, I hate to be treated in such an ignominious manner. It is not the result I dread, for an innocent man can’t be proved guilty in this age. Yes, I’m ready to go with you now.”

And I went on to my fate—a fate I could not have foreseen. What a trip it was—one I never shall forget. We arrived at Keene, a lively though old-fashioned town, and the county-seat of Cheshire County, and I was, for the first time in my life, behind prison bars.

After all the years since that tremendous affliction, the like of which turns black hair to gray and the smooth brow into furrows, I can’t bring myself to a calm retrospection of the scenes in which I was powerless in the strong hands of my unscrupulous enemies. But in all the blackness that memory still brings up to me, I have one bright remembrance of the faithfulness of my relatives and close friends, who, thank God, believed me innocent then, and do to this day.

While awaiting the action of the law and consulting frequently with my lawyers, I had ample time to learn the inside story of the Walpole bank robbery, of which I had no knowledge, save what I heard from neighbors and the newspapers. I had no pecuniary interest in the bank; therefore, when the arrest came, I had forgotten that a crime of that sort had been committed. Many of its details were told me later, by Detective Golden, and such as he didn’t know were supplied me by others, among whom were my legal advisers.

CHAPTER IV
THE UNEQUAL FIGHT

May no other man realize what I suffered in the weeks of confinement in the jail at Keene.

Innocent of the crime of burglary, a man who had always stood up boldly among his fellow-men, looking all squarely in the eye, to be thus ignominiously, horribly entangled in the meshes of the law was to set upon him the torments of hell. I doubt, if there be a corner set apart, in the infernal region, in which certain condemned ones must meditate forever over their evil deeds, whether their mental agony will be a tittle of the writhing anguish that besieged my soul, until I was left a wreck of my former self.

Ay, the torture I endured—an indescribable, lingering horror—can in no manner be compared with the most excruciating physical distress that mortal may bear and survive, except to demonstrate, by comparison, the insignificance of the latter. So far apart are they, that they stand as the East from the West, the remotest Past from the remotest Future.

I was at times far removed from a calm contemplation of my position, and on more than one occasion wondered if my brain would retain its normal reasoning. Once I feared that I would go stark mad, with the wild rush of a thousand fancies, pursuing each other through my brain, like so many little green-eyed imps. Oh, it was horrible. And there came moments when I cursed man and God, and raved that man was a misnomer for all that was devilish and that God was only a myth. Again, and I was being sifted, as it were, through a sieve of the finest mesh, that part of me left in the sieve being transformed into all that was vile, and my pulverized self passing through, all the good in me, being blown to the four winds of heaven. No doubt that this was a fantasy, yet as I lay in my cold cell I was so vividly impressed that it seemed a hideous reality.

Following such an affliction, there would come calmer moments, in which I was able to contemplate my condition, in much the same manner as a hardened criminal. When this mood possessed me, I had an awful, haunting dread of what the future might hold to rule my after days. But, as the time passed, and I had frequent consultations with my attorney; talked of the associations I had had with the man Wyckoff, whom I had come to know as Mark Shinburn; discussed my arrest at Stoneham, when I believed, at first, that I was the victim of a joke; and went over the various stages of my case, I began, at intervals, to be somewhat philosophical.

It was a hard matter to realize, that I, an innocent man, was actually under arrest and locked in the same jail with professional criminals, and accused, jointly with them, of burglary. Yet more difficult was it to believe that this man Shinburn was Wyckoff, the United States deputy marshal and guest at my hotel. Though he was identically the same smooth, affable gentleman in jail that I had met and travelled with the year before, I found it almost impossible at times to believe that he was a criminal—which I knew from the accumulating evidence. Day after day I came in contact with him, talked with him, discussed the evidence for and against him, and heard him confess to being sorry that his acts had involved me. I had liked Wyckoff the deputy marshal, and I liked none the less Mark Shinburn, though he was the means of my undoing.

My attorney, A. V. Lynde, with whom I had done no little real-estate business, often visited me in jail, and we discussed the points that were held by the prosecution to be positive proof of my guilt. There was my journeying about the country with Shinburn and Cummings, while they were, at the same time, plotting to rob the Walpole Bank, and many other points that were brought against me, but of a still more circumstantial nature. All these matters were laid before me, and I could well understand how some people might honestly believe me guilty.

As I lay in jail, I did not know that the avarice of a stockholder of the Walpole Bank would lead him to persecute me almost beyond measure. I did not think that he would, with good reason to believe me guiltless, use his influence to set one of the real criminals free, and set the law upon me, in order that he might recover the loss he had sustained through the robbery. I did not know that he would continue his persecution until every dollar of my wealth was stripped from me, and I was left at the mercy of my friends to defend my innocence. But so it was.

While I lay in jail, asking day by day for a hearing, the coils of injustice were being tightened about me. The prosecution did not show its hand by any too quick action. It was only when the process of the law must be carried out that there was no longer secrecy kept by those who held my fate in their hands. I had asked for an immediate hearing on the day of my arrest, but it had been denied me. One would have thought that a man who had borne a good reputation in a community bordering on the very jail that held him, would have been given more consideration than a professed criminal. It was not so. The earliest opportunity given me to be heard was four weeks after my arrest. Then I was afforded only a chance to plead not guilty to the charge, for the district attorney, F. F. Lane, asked for an adjournment for two weeks and was given it. What conspiracy was hatched during those two weeks, I shall allow the facts to tell in their undeniable way.

The jail was one, for strength, that modern builders might copy with profit to governments. It was of granite walls, two feet thick, with double-barred windows and ponderous doors, well secured with massive locks. The main floor of the jail proper was used for small fry thieves and petty offenders, but the second floor contained three cells which were used for the safe keeping of those charged with murder and felony. Shinburn, Cummings, and I occupied these cells. The two end ones were light, but that in the middle was on the order of a dungeon. My cell was large, and two windows opened from it to the street.

One morning, shortly after the adjourned hearing, I missed Cummings. No meals were brought to him that day, and when I could speak to the jailer’s wife, she told me that he had been set free. At the first opportunity I communicated with Shinburn, whose cell was the farthest from mine. He said that Cummings had been let out of the back door of the jail, so to speak, after relinquishing all claim to the five thousand dollars he had when Detective Golden arrested him.

“Although the district attorney knew that Jim sold the bond to the Scranton man, it was not possible to prove that the cash found on him was received from the sale,” said Shinburn; “and when Jim said he’d let up on the dust in case there was no conviction, Lane let him go. What’s more, Jim’s railroad fare was paid to Rochester.”

Galling to me were these facts, if facts they were; and I had no reason to doubt Shinburn in view of the positive information that Cummings was no longer a prisoner. What a turn of fate was it, indeed, that wrought out the freedom of a guilty man and left me, the innocent one, still in jail! Was it any wonder that I groaned aloud and wondered whether there was a God?

I now recall with what rapidity my case was called after the district attorney had gotten Cummings out of the way. It was put forward with all the vigor that I had clamored for six weeks prior, and excuses were made that the delay was caused by the difficulty in framing the case. As the time for the hearing drew near, I had a feeling that I was in deadly peril, though Mr. Lynde assured me that there was no doubt that I would not be held for the grand jury.

At last the day of the hearing before the magistrate came, and Shinburn and I were taken into court. Mr. Lynde represented me, while Don H. Woodward, a bright young attorney, had been retained by Shinburn. The latter’s brother Frank, of Saratoga, had come East to look after his interests. At times I had hopes that I would be free at the close of the hearing, and again I would be despondent. I knew that I ought not to be where I was, and it did seem to me that no circumstances ought to be convincing enough to long imprison an innocent man. The discharge of Cummings, by what means I never quite knew, created a grave doubt in me; besides, I hadn’t much faith in the wisdom of the magistrate at the hearing.

Mr. Lynde made a good representation for me, and so did Woodward for Shinburn. In taking up my case, Mr. Lynde asked for a separate hearing on my behalf, on the ground that the facts in the charge were vastly different from those Shinburn must meet. This, District Attorney Lane opposed with all his legal power and personal influence. All the pleading that my attorney or I could do fell on unsympathetic ears, apparently. My plea, as an innocent man, for the administration of common, humane justice, was as futile as was Mr. Lynde’s. It was ruled that Shinburn, the guilty, and White, the innocent, must be examined together. And we were. The facts were against him, and I, with him for a millstone about my neck, as it were, was held to await the action of the grand jury. Shinburn, being guilty of the crime charged, had hoped to escape, and it seemed to me that I had a right to.

Thus was I doomed to stand in the same prisoners’ dock with him, my case tightly fastened to his with legal thongs,—the innocent and the guilty to stand or fall together! What an unequal fight, what an injustice, was dealt me!

In my declining years I often wonder, if there be a Supreme Ruler,—and I believe there is,—whether, on the Judgment Day, there’ll not be an awful reckoning for those who were so unjustly against me in my vain battle to establish my innocence.

Realizing how matters were going, I asked Mr. Lynde to retain the services of Mr. Woodward, and as I bade him good-night at the jail, we’d decided to call to our aid also, ex-Judge Cushion and John M. Way, both of whom I knew very well. The bail in my case was fixed at fifteen thousand dollars, and in Shinburn’s, five thousand more. I hoped to be out into the world again, before many hours, no matter what the future held for me beyond the grand jury. As I meditated over the release of Cummings and the action of the magistrate, I actually would not have been surprised if Shinburn had been discharged, while I, alone, was held to an accounting.

While I had lain in jail, Herbert Bellows began a suit in tort in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and, attaching my property, sacrificed it at a forced sale. Though the trial of the suit was never had, I was stripped of my property and left financially helpless, save for the loyalty of my friends. Notwithstanding this lack of means, these friends, not a few of them my creditors, came to my assistance, and I was admitted to bail. In the meantime the grand jury handed down a joint indictment against Shinburn and myself, and the case was placed on the calendar of the October term of the Cheshire County Court.

CHAPTER V
HANGING OF THE MILLSTONE

It was toward the middle of October that Shinburn and I were brought to trial, in the meantime the grand jury having presented indictments against us, but that didn’t seem to affect me greatly, for the reason that I was becoming more hopeful every day. Having been admitted to bail and afforded an opportunity to be among my friends once more, the despondency which attacked me in jail had given way to a feeling of almost certainty that I would be declared not guilty. My attorneys, the day before the trial, having examined all of our witnesses, from Stoneham and Boston, were even more sanguine than I. John M. Way told me that the prosecution could no more convict me than it could walk on air. In fact, he said there wasn’t “a peg to hang a hat on.” And as to Shinburn, though he had not been able to get bail, his counsel said there would be no trouble in proving an alibi for him. If Shinburn, who, I had no doubt, was guilty, could hope to escape, how much more reason was there for me to expect a verdict of acquittal.

The trial day came, but our case was not called until long after noon. A big crowd was in the court-room, as widespread interest had been caused by the predicament which I was in. There were hundreds of people present from several counties, a great many of whom could not obtain admittance, owing to the lack of room.

I sat with my counsel, while Shinburn was seated twenty feet away, with his. My attorneys had planned to make a great fight for a separate trial, and had come to court primed with material to wage the battle. While District Attorney Lane, who I knew was as persistent as ever to convict me, was trying to get a jury, I had an opportunity to look about me. Herbert T. Bellows was there to press the charge against us, and as I looked in his face, I could see that he had no sympathy for me. Two women and a man, sitting not far from Shinburn, were pointed out to me as Mrs. and Miss Kimball and Frank Shinburn. The former, mother and daughter, and the latter, Shinburn’s brother from Saratoga, had come to testify to an alibi for him. The women, I was told, had dined in a Boston hotel with him, at the time of the burglary. Another friend, whose name was said to be William Matthews, of New York City, sat near Shinburn and was present to testify that the latter was in Boston at the time of the burglary; and again, in testimony as to character, would swear that he knew the prisoner in New York, as a respectable Wall Street broker.

There were many of my friends present, which included my Boston business partners, Charles Meriam, a broker who had done no little business for me, and my friends and my employees from Stoneham. Besides these, I saw, what was dearer than all, my relatives, sitting there to say by their acts that they believed me innocent, though the whole world should be against me.

Disregarding the district attorney’s anxiety to get a jury together, we registered a plea of not guilty to the crime of burglary, and Judge Cushion, addressing Judge Doe, the ruler of the court, asked for a separate trial of the indictment against me.

“We do not, your honor, dispute the law,” said he, “but we wish to plead for a deep consideration of the merits of the case. It has been set forth that the prisoner Shinburn and my client, Mr. White, must, under the construction of the statutes of this state, be tried together, because the acts alleged to have been committed by one are linked with the acts committed by the other, as charged, and that this is the best procedure, in order to best serve the interests of the state, to the end that the law shall be vindicated and those punished who committed the Walpole bank burglary.

“Now, your honor, there is no man who stands firmer than I for the elevation of the moral and legal standards. I would see men walk in the best paths of citizenship, and I would have the people look upon the law as something too pure and unsullied to be lightly held, instead of being obeyed for fear of the consequences. I would have the law respected because it is right, and not because there is a penalty if it is violated. But in the case of the prisoners before the court to-day, there is a distinct difference. In Shinburn we have a man about whom there is nothing known in this community. He may be guilty of the charge of burglary or he may not. So far as I know, he is falsely accused. But, as to George White, my client, many of you here know, and I know, that until this damnable accusation was brought against him he was untouched by the shadow of suspicion.

“There are, no doubt, many in this court-room to-day who have known him as child and man, and who know him to be all that a well-bred youth and man should be. Born almost on this very soil, he has been educated, instructed in business affairs, and by his diligence and unusual energy has won the respect of all who have personally known him, and such as have not been fortunate enough to have an intimate acquaintance with him have respected him for the fine business reputation that his efforts have won. From one pursuit to another he went on, only to become more and more successful, and until the day that this awful charge was laid at his door, no man had dared to breathe a vile word against his splendid character. I doubt if he had an enemy in the world the day of his arrest, and, as far as I know, he has none to-day.

“But a robbery was committed in Walpole; a bank was unlocked with the cashier’s keys, and several thousands of dollars were appropriated. Presently we find that two men, accused of that crime, have been apprehended. In the course of an investigation by the authorities, it was developed that these men, one alleging himself to be a United States deputy marshal, had hired, at various times, horses and carriages from the livery stable owned by my client, Mr. White, and that on an occasion he drove them to the points they desired, as he had been engaged to do. Having acted as their servant, and having been well paid for it, Mr. White returned to the pursuit of his business, and was in entire ignorance of the fact that the two men he had thus served were, at the very time, plotting to rob the Walpole Savings-bank, as is charged in the indictment.

“Now I claim, your honor, that in Mr. White, an innocent citizen, a reputable business man, whose character is above the awful imputation against him, we have an unusual case; and that this court of justice, in view of the fact that all men are entitled to every privilege whereby they may establish their innocence, is bound to respect those rights.

“In Mr. White we have a man known to the community in which he is to be tried. In the moral court he has been on trial before his fellow-men all his life, and the verdict has been handed down, that he has done well. We find that the magistrate who held him for the grand jury declared that he must stand trial, side by side, with a man who is an entire stranger in the community; and why? Because, your honor, this man saw fit to hire horses and vehicles from him! One of the men who went to Mr. White’s stable and engaged a carriage, and who was apprehended and charged with the Walpole bank burglary, has been set free. Why is it that the man Cummings, about whom we know nothing, is given a clean bill of health, while my client here, Mr. White, whose life has been an open book, is held to prove his innocence? If the prisoner Shinburn, who, with Cummings, hired vehicles from Mr. White, is guilty, why is not the man Cummings brought before the bar to answer? Instead of that, your honor, the district attorney has arraigned one of the accused and permitted the other to go, and my client, Mr. White, seems to have been brought in to fill up the vacancy.

“But of the man Shinburn I know nothing. It is alleged, however, that bonds were found in his possession, the same the property of the Walpole Bank, and it is also charged that he was seen in Keene shortly before the burglary. As I have stated, I know nothing of this, but I do know that the evidence, such as it is, is entirely different from that alleged against my client. I do know that he had nothing to do with stolen bonds, that none were found in his possession, that he had no guilty knowledge that he had been driving criminals about the country, and that, in view of these facts, he is entitled to a separate trial from that given the other prisoner at the bar.

“And now, your honor, in the name of common justice, in the name of humanity, I ask, ay, demand, that Mr. George White, the honorable business man of Stoneham, be given a fair opportunity to prove his innocence of this infamous allegation the district attorney has made against him. And, your honor, the way to accord him that right which the constitution bestows on him, in my opinion, is to give him a separate trial. In the name of justice I demand that right.”

Judge Cushion’s plea made a profound impression, it seemed to me, on every one in the court-room; not excluding Judge Doe and the district attorney. There was an intense feeling within me that I would be accorded the privilege for which my counsel had spoken. Judge Doe looked at the district attorney as if to say, “I’ll hear you now,” and Mr. Lane arose and began his short opposition, in a cold, hard voice.

“We have a case against two men,” said he, “and they are before the court—Mark Shinburn and George White. The Walpole Savings-bank burglary was committed by two men, and we are prepared to show by competent testimony that the prisoners at the bar are guilty of the crime with which they are charged. They are jointly indicted, are jointly guilty, and they, according to the law of this state, must be tried together.

“The prisoner White was a poor farmer but a few years ago. It is not possible that he could have honestly accumulated the wealth he now possesses. Where did he get it? He was seen driving about the country with the prisoner Shinburn at the time the plot to rob the Walpole Bank was being concocted. These are the plain facts which the state will prove. There can be no legal decision rendered by the court which will accord the prisoner White a separate trial. I will quote the law.”

District Attorney Lane then read at length from the criminal law of the state, and sat down.

Don H. Woodward, as I have said, was a young attorney, and never had had an opportunity to show his powers. Undoubtedly fired by the injustice which had been meted out to me, he pressed into the fight with an energy that even surprised himself. He spoke of the unfairness of the law that precluded a separate trial for the prisoners, and then proceeded to bitterly arraign the district attorney. Seldom has a prosecutor been compelled to listen to a flaying such as was administered him by this dashing young lawyer. His words were fearless, and at times he charged the district attorney with being influenced by ulterior motives.

“A man was arrested in Saratoga, your honor,” said he, “a business man, a broker. That man is the prisoner, Mr. Mark Shinburn. Bonds were found on him by the police. Two weeks later a man known to the district attorney as James Cummings was apprehended and held in the jail with Shinburn by Mr. Lane. The first knowledge of the whereabouts of the property taken from the Walpole Bank was obtained through the sale of one of the government bonds, and the man who sold the bond was James Cummings. When the detectives arrested him, they found more than five thousand dollars in his possession, the result of the sale of one or more of the stolen bonds. This man Cummings placed bonds in the keeping of my client, Mr. Shinburn, to be sold in the open market. The result of doing a legitimate business for a man who has turned out to be a ‘looter’ of the Walpole Bank, is that my client is before this court accused of the crime of burglary.

“Now, your honor, I wish to show, in plain words, that mighty queer proceedings have been going on since the arrest of this man Cummings, and particularly since a third prisoner, Mr. George White, was brought into the case. The district attorney has placed himself, through certain acts, mighty near where a foul cesspool of conspiracy can be scented. Whether he has readied that condition of his own volition, or whether the powerful political influence of a stockholder of the Walpole Bank has forced him into it, I am not in the position to say. But I do charge that there has come into this case an element that should bring to the cheeks of all honest men the blush of shame.

“Why, your honor, the district attorney brings into this court two men, one a respectable business man and broker of Saratoga, New York, and the other an honorable gentleman known to this community for nearly all his life, and charges them with an infamous crime. He has come here to ask a jury to convict them and your honor to pass sentences that shall put them in state prison, to their everlasting disgrace, the loss of their citizenship, the loss of their fair reputations, and what is more, the district attorney would further tear the bosoms of loving mothers and fathers already grievously afflicted with sorrow. All this District Attorney Lane would do, in face of the fact that he has allowed James Cummings, the actual Walpole burglar, the Walpole stolen bond seller, to go entirely free of prosecution. He dare not deny it, your honor. And why has he done this? Ask Herbert T. Bellows, sitting in this court-room, and perhaps he can tell you and the others why this unheard-of thing has been done. Will Mr. Bellows speak out? No, sir—not he! Neither will the district attorney.

“Why, your honor, the very money found on Cummings was from the sale of one or more of the Walpole bonds. When Detective Golden arrested him, this money was confiscated and turned over to District Attorney Lane. While it may not be proved that it was the fruit of the bond-selling, it can be proved that Cummings sold the stolen bonds. My client, Mr. Shinburn, sold no bonds, neither did Mr. White; but Cummings did. Why was Cummings allowed to slip out of the back door of the jail, your honor? Will the district attorney tell us? What has become of the five thousand and more dollars? Was that money the price of the release of the ‘looter’ of the Walpole Bank? If so, who prompted District Attorney Lane to accept the price, if he did?

“Again, your honor, I wish to call your attention to the fact that the defendants, through their counsel, made persistent efforts to get an early hearing, but it was denied them at the instigation of District Attorney Lane. For six long weeks their pleas were disregarded, and in the meanwhile the district attorney made a dicker with Cummings, the Walpole bank burglar, and in that bargain this Cummings turned over to Mr. Lane more than five thousand dollars. Then the enterprising burglar was set at liberty, to continue his preying upon the public, it being done in a star chamber proceeding, and supplied with money to pay his railroad fare to Rochester, New York. I state all this, your honor, with a view of opening your eyes to what is going on in this case, and with the hope that the prisoners, so infamously charged, may be given the benefit of this warning.

“All of this looks very plain to me, sir. Cummings was arrested with a large amount of cash in his possession, and some one wanted it, and he was willing to give it up, provided he was set free. Two men, it is alleged, your honor, robbed the Walpole Bank. Mr. Shinburn was arrested and would do for one prisoner; but if Cummings were given his liberty, who would take his place? That was the question. Where was the second victim to come from? Ah, a thought strikes some one! A certain hotel keeper and liveryman in Stoneham let teams, according to the district attorney, to a man resembling Mr. Shinburn, one of the defendants here. Excellent! Grand idea! The liveryman was arrested, and was none other than Mr. George White, the other defendant here. The men behind this case got detectives from New York to journey to Stoneham and drag into this awful mess this respectable business man; and we find him in court before your honor to-day, the second victim, standing in the shoes which Cummings should fill. Is not this an infamous state of affairs, your honor? I charge that the district attorney set James Cummings free. I charge that Cummings did not take the five thousand dollars with him, and that the district attorney paid for the railway ticket that took him to Rochester. If ever there was a case of compounding a felony, then this is one. In view of all these facts, your honor, I say that the prisoners at the bar should be granted separate trials.”

Judge Doe had listened to this impassioned speech with much interest, apparently, but without any delay decided that Shinburn and I must be tried together. Asking for a moment in which to consult, Judge Cushion, and Mr. Woodward and the others of Shinburn’s and my counsel drew aside and earnestly discussed the attitude of the court and district attorney. My counsel believed me to be innocent and Shinburn guilty, yet in view of the ultimatum that both must be tried at once, it was a question whether there could be found a way to further fight for separate trials, or, bowing submissively to the ruling, proceed to establish a joint defence in which the innocent and guilty must stand or fall together.

“It’s sink or swim, gentlemen!” Judge Cushion told the others at the termination of the conference; and they returned to the tables.

Well, when court adjourned that afternoon, a jury to try us had been chosen, Sumner Warren being its foreman, and the preliminaries had been accomplished so that the prosecution was ready to call its witnesses the first thing the next morning. As for my feelings, they had undergone a great change since the convening of the court. All the fear that possessed me after the hearing at which I was denied a separate chance to prove my innocence, was upon me again. The hopefulness of the morning had resolved into the gloom of night. I must fight my way through the great cloud that beset me, handicapped by the case of a man I had no reason to doubt was guilty of the crime with which he stood accused. Linked with a criminal, I must prove my innocence or be convicted a felon.

My lawyers said there was no reason for me to feel despondent; that we would win despite all that was pitted against us; that there wasn’t any evidence upon which the jury could possibly base a verdict of guilty, though they might be ever so prejudiced. As to the jury being a fair and well-disposed body of men, Judge Cushion said he had no doubt of that. I took all this as poor comfort, however, and in my hotel that night there was precious little sleep for me. After a long, weary vigil, the dawn came, and with it the nerve-distracting trial, which lasted ten days.

I shall not go into the details of the testimony. Herbert Bellows was a witness, testifying to the ownership of the bonds found in Shinburn’s pockets; and another witness declared that Shinburn was a man he’d seen riding in a rig, between Walpole and Keene, early in the morning following the burglary, and upon being asked to identify the other man with Shinburn, said I looked very much like him. Detectives Golden and Kelso swore to the facts surrounding Shinburn’s arrest, and to the search in the Saratoga farm-house where burglars’ tools were discovered. Other witnesses told how I let horses and carriages to Shinburn, and drove him to Claremont and Keene, and that I had engaged a turnout from Layton Martin’s stables to do so. All of which I had done; but was it not horrible to sit and listen to the criminal construction placed upon these innocent acts? to listen to the motive attributed to me? And still other witnesses swore that I had accumulated a fortune in two years, that was impossible of accomplishment through honest means, and that being the case, I must have gotten the money somewhere, and why not from the Walpole Bank? At times I writhed under these damning words, and it was with the utmost difficulty that I was restrained, time and time and again, from springing to my feet and crying out that they who talked thus were liars. Glad I am that my friends made me hold my peace!

At last the prosecution rested and the defence called its witnesses. Frank Shinburn told the jury that his brother was a broker and that James Cummings placed the bonds in Mark’s hands for sale. Shinburn’s sister corroborated him. On cross-examination this testimony was shaken, particularly that of the brother. Mrs. Kimball and her daughter testified that they dined with Shinburn and Billy Matthews at the Revere House in Boston at the very time District Attorney Lane alleged he was in Keene plotting the burglary. These women were honest in giving this testimony, but a subsequent examination of the hotel register showed that the dinner took place the day after the robbery. William Matthews swore that Shinburn was a broker who did much business in Wall Street, New York City, and that he had often sold bonds for him, and that he’d dined with the prisoner and the two women in the Revere House, Boston, as had been testified to.

My witnesses from Boston testified to the business which took me to that city every day, from ten o’clock in the morning until evening. The time for every day in the week prior and after the burglary was accounted for. One of my partners in the Boston firm of Towle & Seavy told of the manner in which I had accumulated wealth. Several bank officials testified to the dates on checks which showed where I was at vital moments,—the moments when I was supposed to be actually engaged in robbing the Walpole Bank. A number of witnesses testified to various business ventures in which I was engaged with John M. Way and several other reputable business men, and how many checks passed in this business; and Charles Meriam, a broker of Boston, swore to the sums of money that he received and invested for us, all of which made a perfect accounting of the prodigious wealth which the district attorney had conjured up against me. A. V. Lynde went on the stand and told of my real-estate transactions with him; how I had bought tracts of land from him and how I had dealt at all times honorably. My clerks, Ellis Merrill and Fred Benson, told in detail of my strict attention to business; of how I got up every week day at five o’clock in the morning, attended to my business in Stoneham, and leaving that in charge of my employees, went to Boston to look after my business interests there. After finishing in Boston I would return to Stoneham to look after things at the close of the day. In fact, all of my time was well accounted for, making a complete alibi. Ellis Merrill testified to the fact that he had been the first to meet Wyckoff and Cummings at the Central House; that I was away when they came, and that he let a team to them of which I knew nothing until my return from Vermont. All these witnesses testified to my splendid business and social reputation, my honesty, veracity, and integrity. Fully twenty witnesses, all intimate friends, took oath on my behalf, to combat the testimony of a few witnesses, none of whom could swear positively to a point against me, except that I drove about the country a man who, they swore, was Shinburn.

Shinburn was not wanted by his counsel to take the witness stand; but I impatiently awaited my time to tell what I could, in the minutest detail, of my movements that could in any way be dragged, even by conspiracy, into the case. At last Judge Cushion called my name, and I arose to testify. District Attorney Lane was on his feet in an instant, protesting loudly that I had no right to witness for myself, that it was contrary to the New Hampshire laws; and he quickly quoted from the statutes.

Judge Cushion answered back in clarion tones, that, law or no law, I must be given an opportunity to explain many circumstances; that the law of God and common sense entitled me to every opportunity to prove my innocence. He declared that I could easily explain away all the ugly suspicion that attached to me through my association with the bogus United States deputy marshal. But it was a fruitless argument for me. Judge Doe decided that I could not testify on my own behalf, and in this manner another thong was added to those already binding the millstone to my neck. The remainder of the trial was a vague dream to me. Judge Cushion made a masterly plea for the defence, and Assistant District Attorney Wheeler, the brightest legal brain then attached to Mr. Lane’s office, wove a web of evidence about Shinburn and spoke of my suspicious acquaintance with the man Wyckoff. I know the judge wept as he pleaded my case, and I know that Lawyer Wheeler was bitter in his arraignment of Shinburn. Standing out prominently in my memory, however, are the words he chose in closing his “summing up” for the prosecution. They were directed to the witness William Matthews.

“And this is the sort of a witness they bring from the reeking hells of New York to be a witness in a New Hampshire court of justice,” he cried, pointing to Matthews. I thought it was a terrible thing to hear said of a man, and wondered why this friend of Shinburn’s did not measure the assistant district attorney’s length on the floor, in front of the very eyes of the judge and jury.

Judge Doe charged the jurors to consider well the facts in the testimony, and told them what was evidence and what was not. It was a hard, merciless review of the case, and I shivered with apprehension. It struck me like a chill wind from a damp, mouldy cavern. The jury retired, and when it was evident that they would not bring in a verdict that day, I was taken to a cell to await the morning. Oh, the uncertainty, the horror of it all!

As I was conducted to the court-room the next day, it did not take long to tell what the verdict was; for I could read the dreaded news in the face of Sumner Warren, the foreman, as he and the other jurymen filed to their seats. I felt faint with the strain.

“Guilty!” I heard Sumner Warren say, in response to the clerk’s solemn question.

“Guilty!” I groaned to myself. “Was ever there such injustice?”

“Bad enough, but I’m glad it’s no worse, George,” said my good friend and attorney, Mr. Lynde. “We’ll have you free—a disagreement is as good as an acquittal, in this case.”

“How? what? why?” I stammered, all but dazed.

“Shinburn has been convicted, but the jury has disagreed in your case!” said he. “That’s why they were out all night. Six of them believe you are not guilty.”

“Thank God!” I breathed. “Then six of them believe that I could not be guilty of the awful crime charged to me. But how in God’s name can any of them believe it?”

I could not see all the hope that my attorneys seemed to derive from the situation. I wanted to be entirely free from the horrible accusation. Six men, under oath to render a verdict according to the evidence, had determined that I was guilty, though I was innocent. I was half condemned, and to me that meant a stigma would ever be hovering about my reputation, and some one always would believe that I was not the good man I claimed to be. Judge Cushion freely expressed the opinion that there would never be another trial; that I would be admitted to a nominal bail, if not allowed to go on my own recognizance, and that in due time the indictment would be dismissed. Despite the depression that the verdict had left upon me, I went to the jail that morning with a faint hope.

Later in the day Shinburn was sentenced to ten years at hard labor in the Concord state prison. He took the judge’s words with an indifference which I couldn’t understand. In fact, a little later, in his cell, I saw him making eyes at a pretty woman who lived in a house across the street, just back of the jail. She was married, and seemed to enjoy very much the many sly flirtations she had had with him from her windows. I thought that she was better off attending to her husband’s affairs than wasting her smiles on a man convicted of burglary. But then, there was never a gauge that would truly measure the taste of women. Some of them do most unaccountable things where a man is concerned.

At the first opportunity Shinburn told me that he was really sorry I’d got into trouble at all, but congratulated me on the prospect of my getting entirely free of the charge. He seemed to entertain the same idea with my counsel as to the outcome of my case, and expressed the wish that he’d been as fortunate as I.

During the day I had a long consultation with Judge Cushion and my faithful attorneys, who said that they would get Judge Doe to fix a bail for me at the earliest possible moment. I urged them to do so, as I wanted to get away from the terrible haunting thoughts that besieged me. I said that prison bars were not conducive to pleasant thoughts.

At about five o’clock that day I saw Shinburn, coat and hat on, come out of his cell. He had unlocked his door, as I could plainly see, with a key that looked very much like a piece of heavy tin. He relocked it, motioning me to keep silent, and slipped behind the grated door through which the jailer and his wife were expected to appear, almost any minute, from the corridor into the cell room. I waited. Almost immediately the couple came in and passed over toward his cell; why he was not discovered with only the grated door between him and the jailer, I can’t understand. The instant the way was clear he slipped from behind the door and, waving his hand to me, disappeared. In an instant the visitors to Shinburn’s cell found it empty, and then there was excitement enough for all hands in the jail.

The next morning I heard how Shinburn fared as far as those engaged in pursuing him would tell. Upon passing from my view he had hastened downstairs, and through the apartments of Jailer Wilder, threw up a window sash in the parlor, and jumped into the yard. Getting into the street, he encountered Under-sheriff Davis, who chanced to be passing the jail. Dodging him, Shinburn started eastward out of the village toward the woods. The under-sheriff, recovering from his surprise, began yelling like a madman, and started in pursuit, followed by a crowd of shouting villagers. Soon there was a mob after him, but not one of them was armed, and it was supposed that Shinburn was no better off.

For three-quarters of a mile the fugitive kept ahead of his pursuers, and by that time he had reached the woods, in front of which was a tall fence. Climbing over it, he coolly seated himself on a log and waited for his enemies to come near. When they had, he drew his revolver and, covering them, said sudden death was awaiting any one who attempted to cross over the fence. Not one dared to disobey him.

In the meantime Jailer Wilder, arming himself, followed on after the first party. When Shinburn saw reënforcements approaching, he got up from the log, and, smiling cheerfully, said, “Now you see me and now you don’t!” At this he turned and plunged into the woods and was lost to view. He left his overcoat behind, for it had retarded his escape.

For several hours, according to the story I was told, the woods were searched, but Shinburn was not found. Later I heard there was a wholesome dread of the pistol he carried, and that none of the party was too venturesome. Jailer Wilder was at loss to know where Shinburn got a key to his cell door and where he had obtained a revolver. I was asked more than once, but of a truth I knew nothing of the plan of escape. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to the sheriff.

High-sheriff George Holbrook made an investigation which resulted in putting upon the jailer the suspicion that he conspired in Shinburn’s escape. Subsequently Wilder was removed from office, and the stigma of it he carried with him to his grave. But be it recorded here, that he was innocent beyond all doubt. In later years I had it from Shinburn’s own lips, that the unfortunate jailer was blameless; and that his descendants may know it, even at this tardy day, is why I have been thus earnest and painstaking in recording the fact.

Maximilian Shinburn

CHAPTER VI
PERSECUTION

I awoke the next morning, with a start, from a night of interrupted slumber. The closing hours of the trial and the escape of Shinburn had command of my brain till it was a relief to open my eyes and become conscious of my surroundings. As I thought of Shinburn away from the horror of the jail, I will not attempt to deny that I had a sense of gladness for him. I had seen considerable of this man in jail, and I had to confess to myself that he possessed the rare faculty of winning the friendship of almost any one. He had won mine as the fictitious deputy marshal, and knowing him at length as the bank burglar, I could not do else but like him. His whole-souled, generous nature shone through his criminal craft, until at times I found myself wondering if he really were a felon,—wondering if I were not in a dream. When this mood was dissolved, and I realized that he was a criminal of exceptional cunning,—all he’d been proved at the trial,—I asked myself what it was that had sent him on to the commission of crime. At times, when I would hear his soft, gracious voice, look in his kindly blue eyes, and admire his genial smile, it was not difficult to fancy him standing in a pulpit, preaching the word of God. But I am digressing too much.

These thoughts gave way to the more important matter of getting bail. Now that the jury had disagreed, my counsel applied for my release, believing that only nominal bail would be required; but imagine their astonishment when Judge Doe announced he’d increased it to twenty thousand dollars. This was as outrageous as it was unexpected, in view of the issue of the trial. Had I not been declared innocent, practically, by some of the jurymen? Was not their action sufficient in itself to warrant the authorities, on the moral ground, if on no other, in giving me the benefit of the doubt, so far as bail was concerned? My counsel were up and doing, unsparing of words in protesting against the injustice, proceeding almost to the point of offending Judge Doe. And my loyal friends again came to the rescue. Speedily setting about, they subscribed the new bail, and in a few days my release was once more applied for. To our consternation this sum was declared to be insufficient, and when an explanation was demanded of Judge Doe, he answered by increasing the bond to forty thousand dollars.

“And if that is offered,” he declared coldly, “I’ll make it eighty thousand dollars!”

Here was persecution absolute. His decision was a flat refusal to accord the right guaranteed me by the constitution,—the right of admission to bail, charged as I was with a felony only. A constitutional guaranty had been swept away like so much waste paper. My trial had been a travesty on justice, and then to crown that, I was being persecuted, was hopelessly bound in the toils of a relentless, powerful enemy, it seemed. I must remain in jail to await another trial—bear the agony longer—helpless, because a certain influential man had schemed to drag my wealth from me to reimburse himself and others. As to getting my wealth, that, indeed, had been accomplished. My business had been seized and sold, and I was penniless and dependent. What more did they want? Would the human vultures not be satisfied until my body had been thrust in a prison cell and kept there for years—until torture had devoured it? Was there, I cried out to God, no limit to the persecution of an innocent man? Where was that boasted justice, that love and that piety of the Puritans? Had mammon ridden roughshod over and crushed out those high ideals of old New Hampshire? I found no answer, not even an echo of my words from the four bleak walls of my prison-house.

As the weeks wore on and there was no relief, the evil that persisted in forcing itself upon me, from time to time, and which I had as often conquered, came back again with still greater force. Made reckless to the danger point by the power of my wrongs, I fostered the evil thoughts until they were almost my ruling passion. I swore one day I would no longer willingly submit to such inhuman treatment; that I would be a law unto myself, and that I would accept the consequences, be what they might.

The dreary autumn days had merged into winter when the decision to break out of jail became an accepted thought. Day and night I meditated over a plot that would make freedom from my cell certain. My friends, aroused over the injustice heaped upon me, were only too willing, at last, to lend their aid. All the tools, clothing, and money needed would be forthcoming at the proper time, and I believed that God would forgive any one who would brave a violation of the law to succor an unfortunate one like me.

At last I completed a plan, and when February came I had secreted in my cell the saws, files, and other implements necessary to cut my way to freedom. In the cell with me at that time was a young burglar named Woods, whom I did not much trust, but felt obliged to include in my plans. He, naturally, was willing, and from then on we labored together in one common interest.

It looked like a hopeless job at the beginning, barred and triple barred as the cell window was. There were two sets of inner iron bars in trellis work, and attached to the set nearest to the window sash by four iron rods in sockets was yet an outer trellis. The only way to get through this network of bars was to cut an opening in the two inner trellises, large enough to admit the passage of our bodies, and sever the inner ends of the four rods supporting the outer trellis. This done, the outside trellis could be pried off, when it would drop in the jail yard. But all this necessitated sawing twenty-seven square inches of iron—a tremendous undertaking, as can be readily understood. However, I was determined to succeed, even to the surmounting of greater difficulties.

I decided that the sawing must be done in the daytime, else the rasping of the saw would attract the attention of some one in the jail. Besides, Sheriff Aldrich, who had succeeded Jailer Wilder after Shinburn’s escape, slept in an apartment on the floor below, and not any too far away for our purpose. By daylight we could work fairly well by dodging people passing in front of the jail and those who occasionally came in the corridor leading to the cell. From the inside was where we must expect the most interference. Believing that I could best throw off suspicion, in case any one came near while we were busy, I had Woods do the sawing. The points most pregnable were pointed out, and we began. At once it became a most difficult and tedious job. The weather was frigid, and when we weren’t shivering with apprehension lest we be discovered, we were being badly nipped by Jack Frost. Very frequently people passed in the road, or Jailer Aldrich came in the corridor, or there was danger of our work attracting the attention of some one of the prisoners below. There were days when we accomplished scarcely anything, owing to the almost incessant interference; while on other days we made hopeful advancement. Finally, after two weeks of work and worry, we had cut, all but the shreds, an aperture in the inner trellises, sufficiently large, we believed, through which we could crawl. The shreds we would cut the afternoon before we made the exit. The four bars holding the outside trellis had been similarly treated. Then, having been provided with what we needed to make the journey, we set the following midnight as the hour for our surreptitious exit. The next evening, after supper, we finished the opening in the bars and prepared for the vital moment. We had a stout piece of wood in the cell to use as a lever for prying off the outside trellis, and at midnight, all being ready, I proceeded. Despite my greatest effort, the lever would not move the trellis, and when Woods added his weight, there was no better success. I was shocked and disappointed. It seemed that we had not sawed near enough to the severing point, so far as the four rods supporting the outer trellis were concerned. I had feared that the thing would fall off before we were ready and spoil our escape. The stick seemed too short to furnish the leverage needed. I looked about for something better, feeling satisfied I wouldn’t find it in the cell. Suddenly it flashed across me that I could use a part of the iron bedstead, and I cut off one of its legs, and we went at the work again like madmen, as time was fast leaving us in a sore predicament. Even the new lever didn’t avail us anything further than to show me that we had made the opening in the inner trellises too small. We were confronting a critical situation indeed.

It would soon be daylight, and the jailer would call with our morning meal; and if the aperture in the grating was not filled, we could not expect anything but discovery.

“What can we do, White?” asked young Woods, pale-faced. It was bad enough, he thought, to be in jail for burglary without facing a charge of attempting to escape from it.

I recalled we had cosmetic. Perhaps the iron-work could be kept in place with it until we could get something better. I put the patches of grating back in their places and filled the crevices with the cosmetic. It didn’t seem to me they would stay in. Any vibration, I thought, might tumble them out.

“It’s the best we can do, Woods,” I said, not cheerfully; “and as to that lame bed, we’ll have to be mighty careful it doesn’t betray us. We’ll see that it is carefully made,—no one can do that job so well this morning as one of us.”

“I’ll be the chambermaid,” Woods said, with a laugh that had a false ring in it.

“By cracky, how my back hurts!” I said, with a groan, as I doubled forward and hobbled about the cell. “I never had such a peculiar pain in my life.”

“Must have caught it from the open window,” suggested the young man. “Hope it won’t make you sick. Better get a porous plaster from Aldrich. Mother allers uses ’em.”

“The ordinary kind won’t cure my pain, lad,” I answered, with a laugh and straightening up; “I’ve got to have some pitch—the real pine. Nothing else will relieve me.”

Woods looked mystified.

“Wait,” said I.

When Jailer Aldrich brought in breakfast, he was sorry to see me in such “rheumatiz” distress, and I had little difficulty in inducing him to fetch me a quantity of pitch with which to make a “home-made” porous plaster. It was to be differently applied than he dreamed. It was not difficult to obtain the pitch, because Aldrich usually supplied the prisoners with any necessities.

With it I patched up the grating so that it would stand inspection at long distance, though a casual examination close by would have meant instant exposure. However, that day we began to make the opening in the inner trellises five inches larger. On the third day we received a fright that caused me to tremble for an hour afterward and wonder how it all turned out so well for us. High-sheriff George Holbrook and two visitors came unexpectedly upon us, despite my precaution. It was with great difficulty that we assumed our normal conditions. Any other time I would have been glad to see them, but now it was simply, it seemed to me, like playing tag with discovery. Holbrook must not be allowed to get near the window or all would be over. I never was too much of a talker. I had often declared I would never make a book agent or an insurance solicitor, but how I did chatter away at them. I said anything, nothing, talked of all subjects I could think of, until it seemed I must have driven them away in disgust. Indeed, they were about to depart when the sheriff moved toward the window.

“Holbrook!” I cried, in sheer desperation. “Here—see this!” and caught up a law book Don Woodward, one of my counsel, had loaned me. I don’t know what I said or read and I don’t care, for it did the trick. Holbrook and the visitors a moment or two later had gone. Woods was near the window, trembling. I sat down and wiped the clammy sweat from my brow. My heart was beating sluggishly; and for a few minutes my vision was dazed and I could see naught but dancing sparks like little stars. I came mighty close to swooning.

“We’ve got to get out of this to-night, Woods,” I said, on recovering. “It won’t do to spend another day here under these conditions.”

And we went to work again and at dark had finished the sawing, practically. Five minutes more of that kind of work would suffice.

Clothed, a rope of blankets ready, and in every way fitted for our journey, we waited for midnight. I well remember the weather—severely cold and plenty of snow on the ground. We were to race for the farm-house of Woods’s father, two miles out of Keene. There, without Mr. Woods’s permission, we were to get a horse and sleigh.

At last the hour came, and with the bed leg for a lever I pried at the outer trellis. Thank goodness, this time it moved, and I shoved it outward, expecting it to fall to the ground. Fate was with us—instead, one of the shreds of iron tenaciously hung fast and answered as a hinge. The two hundred and fifty pounds of iron swung back almost noiselessly against the masonry and remained there. Had it fallen, the crash, notwithstanding the snow, might have aroused Jailer Aldrich, sleeping not far away. The rest of the journey to terra firma was not difficult. With blankets tied end to end, we let ourselves down to the ground, and, scaling the stone wall, quit the jail at one o’clock in the morning. We found it pretty hard plodding through the snow. Getting to Woods’s barn, we stealthily as possible hitched up the horse, but not without some trouble with the family watch-dog. However, Woods succeeded in quieting him, and, getting off with no further discovery, we were soon driving at a fast pace through Surrey, past Walpole, and toward Bellows Falls. When near the bridge over the Connecticut River we passed a noisy sleighing party, among whom I recognized, by his voice, Sheriff Stebbins of Charlestown, Sullivan County. We kept our heads well down in our coats and felt glad when we’d got by without being discovered. Several years after that I saw Sheriff Stebbins at Charlestown under rather peculiar circumstances.

We encountered nothing unpleasant in the six miles drive from Bellows Falls to Saxton’s River, where lived a fine old uncle of mine. He and my aunt had a comfortable place on the outskirts of the village, and although they knew we were fugitives, they made us welcome. My aunt prepared a nice breakfast while I sent Woods to the village with his father’s rig, instructing him to leave it there to be returned and gave him money to pay for the hire of another. He came back, and after breakfast we resumed our journey toward Londonderry. It was my plan to drive over the Green Mountains into New York State, and, getting rid of the team, to strike out for a large city, probably New York. Woods had a cousin in Londonderry, where he said we could get some food for ourselves and fodder for the horse, after which the next point to be made would be Salem, just over the Vermont border in New York. This we did to a dot. I, being ready to continue the journey from Salem by rail, directed Woods to drive the team from there eastward twelve miles to a village, where he was to put it in charge of the stage driver who journeyed regularly to Saxton’s River. Thus the liveryman would get back his property in the good condition we found it. Woods was to make Troy or any other place he saw fit.

By rail from Salem to Troy, thence to New York, was a matter of only a few hours, and as I whirled along I had ample time to meditate over my lot; but the more I thought of what I had gone through, the more I seemed to be forced down to by-paths into which I had never dreamt of setting foot. After a time I compelled myself by sheer force to think of other things—what I would do, whether I would go farther west or remain in New York, and whether it would be wise to immediately ask for employment in some big dry-goods store there. I knew I could do passably well as a clerk in that line, for the experience in my father’s store and in my own later would stand me in hand.

At Albany I managed to get a newspaper, but saw nothing in it about my escape. A few hours later I was in New York. It was a dreary day, but after all there was a sense of freedom about me. I was no longer in a grewsome cell at Keene. I was away from those months of horror. Reflecting over what I had done, I felt certain that a reward would be offered for my capture. In plain terms I realized that I was a fugitive from justice. As the word “justice” came to me I seemed to fill up with hatred. What a travesty my experience had proved the word to be. I shuddered at the possession of such thoughts, for hitherto I had been a firm believer in the righteous adjustment of all things; had been a sincere believer in the law. Again I stifled these ugly feelings that surged up within me.

Starting out for lodgings, I soon found them and sat down to lay out my plans. Again despite all my best efforts to the contrary, the terrible experiences dating from the second day of June would come to the fore, and I seemed to hear evil voices urging me to forsake all that was good and plunge into the swift-flowing current of vice. But, as on other occasions when I’d battled with evil, I could see the faces of my father and mother looming up in this train of thought, like a shaft of silver light athwart a threatening cloud, and I could hear, it seemed, the earnest solicitation of my loyal friends to be courageous though the worst come, and that they would stand by me until the last. When these good thoughts gained the ascendency, again I resolved to profit by it, and straightway set about to seek honest employment in which I could make a fresh start, endeavor to fight down my persecutors, and rebuild my fortune.

I found a clerkship in A. T. Stewart & Company’s retail dry-goods house after some effort, and though the wage was small and the prospects of an advancement were not encouraging, I began once more to take on a little hope. I succeeded in communicating with my friends at home in good time, but obtained precious little encouraging information. A reward of a thousand dollars had been posted throughout the country for my apprehension, and it was with a feeling that only a man can know who has experienced woes like mine that I read the description of the desperate bank burglar, George White, and of his midnight escape from jail along with another burglar.

The first knowledge in the jail of our escape came from a citizen passing just at daylight. He saw the rope of blankets hanging from the open window, and, rushing excitedly into the jail, woke up Jailer Aldrich with the cry, “Better look after your boarders—there’s a blanket hanging out of the jail windows.” Poor Aldrich, I was afterward told, rushed about as though bereft of his reason.

Another piece of unpleasant news was the row made by the liveryman of Saxton’s River. It seems that Woods had disregarded my instructions as to the team we hired from there, and, instead of paying for it with the money I gave him, had it charged against me. Besides that he had driven to Troy, got intoxicated, and while attempting to sell the outfit was arrested and taken back to Keene. The liveryman, ascertaining who had engaged the team, lodged a complaint against me, and in the minds of some people I had become a horse thief as well as a bank burglar. Eventually the liveryman recovered his turnout unharmed. Later, though, through my brother, I paid him one hundred and twenty-five dollars to escape an indictment for horse stealing. Woods’s love for liquor and disregard of my instructions was the means of casting further odium on me.

I had been in Stewart’s nearly three weeks when I learned that Shinburn had been recaptured and sent to Concord prison to complete his sentence. I was sorry to hear this. Indeed, I felt despondent for several days over the mishap to that criminal, regardless of my effort to shake off the almost unaccountable feeling. I hadn’t succeeded when a development forcibly turned my attention into another channel. My hopes, which had grown wonderfully since my employment, were suddenly dissipated like a morning mist before an August sun. One morning a man whom I had known intimately in Boston—indeed, considered to be a trusted friend—came to the store. He was as much surprised at the meeting as I was frightened. There was no opportunity to evade him, so I made the best attempt I could to be unconcerned, and declared my delight at seeing him. We shook hands heartily and talked over my predicament, not forgetting to speak of the reward that was offered for my return to New Hampshire. He expressed sympathy for me and bemoaned the fact that I had been dealt with so unjustly, and held me blameless for escaping from my enemies. We were about to say adieu when I asked him if he would mention anything of our meeting when he returned to Boston.

“On my honor, no!” he answered with a ring in his voice which sounded true and friendly.

“I hope not,” said I, gratefully, “for I’ve been pretty badly handled, and I’m trying hard to get myself together again. If they find I’m here, it’ll be all day with me.”

And so we parted, but in my heart there came a heaviness, a sense of depression that I couldn’t shake off, try as I would. I had a premonition that this friend, regardless of his protestations, would be sadly tempted by the reward. I felt that he would argue that I would sooner or later be captured, and that there was no reason why he shouldn’t get the benefit of the thousand dollars. In the scales, his friendship on one side and avarice on the other, I believed that the former would prove the lighter weight. Indeed, I was so deeply impressed with impending danger that I resigned that day, drew five dollars due me, and left the store forever. It was well that I acted thus promptly, for not many hours subsequently the police were searching for me. My friend’s faithfulness had been of the kind that wouldn’t stand the test. In the balance, weighed against his love for money, his friendship for me had proved many ounces too light.

Verily, I was being persecuted to the end.

PART II

CHAPTER I
SIDETRACKED

Hunted out of honest employment, I found myself very much in the position of the pursued rabbit; therefore I was compelled to seek the first cover that presented itself. I had been robbed of every dollar of my hard-earned fortune. A fugitive from justice, there was a reward proclaimed abroad for my arrest, though I was an innocent man. All this was awful to realize, the bitterness of it eating still deeper into my soul. What would the end be?

Anxious to begin life afresh, I had sought a strange city and under a new name had attempted to do it, but fate was horribly, relentlessly cruel. What would I do? where could I turn? I had only five dollars in the world, and that wouldn’t carry me far. Alas, I was not unlike the hunted rabbit. I had been the victim of a cruel game of life. It was a most critical period at which I had arrived. The fatal line must soon be crossed. Good and evil would fight out their battle. In the jail at Keene I had been besieged by thoughts that made me shudder, but the evil that battered my soul now was as the blackness of hell in comparison. Bitterness was rapidly eating into my worst nature; the tender words of a fond father and the sweet prayers of a loving mother were fast becoming far-off sounds in my dulled ears. Recollections of the sort that sear consciences came to the fore, uppermost being the words I had heard from the lips of an old conductor of the Fitchburg railway, not far from my home. I had often been with him on his trips and talked with him, for he was well known to me in my youthful days. How well I remembered the words. They burn in my brain even to-day, as well they should, for they played a strong part in the influence which sent me on to a life of reaching out for that which was not lawfully mine.

“See that fine property?” this conductor said to me one day, as he pointed out a big country residence; and when I nodded assent, he added, “Well, I’ve got a first mortgage on that.” Presently he said, with a meaning I could not misunderstand, “We conductors have the name of knocking down fares, so we may as well have the game.”

Twice on the trip he made that remark. For several years the meaning of the words “name” and “game” lay dormant in my mind, but how freshly it came back to me in the moment of my standing balanced between the narrow path of rectitude and the broad road of crime. Homeless, desolate, hunted like a real criminal, a reward hanging over my head, made a good soil in which the seeds of evil deeds might take quick root. To whom in this extremity might I turn? I asked this question of myself many times, and the only reply was the echo of my own words. There was a Boston man in the city with whom I was well acquainted, and who knew my side of the case thoroughly, and whose sympathy I had. I must have some money, therefore I appealed to him, and he loaned me twenty dollars. This, with five I had, constituted my cash capital. The remainder of it was my brain, and it shall be seen to what purpose I put it, ere many days passed.

There was another man in New York I knew—Shinburn’s friend Matthews; Billy, he called him. I remembered that his address was 681 Broadway, so I determined to look him up. Knowing Shinburn, I ought not to have been surprised at anything in Matthews, but I was actually dumfounded when I learned that 681 Broadway was a notorious gambling house kept by one Harvey Young, and that Matthews was a faro dealer there. Young’s place was at that time an attractive resort for the younglings of New York’s rich men, thousands of whose dollars passed over the green cloth every night. I now knew why Mr. Wheeler, the assistant prosecutor, in summing up at the Keene trial, had pointed out Matthews and asked the court in scornful tones to look upon the sort of man “they bring from the reeking hells of New York to be a witness in a New Hampshire court of justice.” Undoubtedly the New York detectives had known that much of Matthews and had told it to Mr. Wheeler.

But I had reached and passed the fatal line now, and it seemed to me that I wasn’t sorry to learn what this man Matthews was,—an employee in a gambling den. Even if he were a criminal like Shinburn, I felt that I didn’t care. When I rang the bell, a man who looked like a servant answered it, and to my inquiry said Matthews wasn’t in, but would be that night. I said I would come again, and did several hours later. I had only met Matthews speaking with Shinburn in the jail at Keene, altogether perhaps a half-dozen times. He was a dapper, earnest little fellow, and seemed in all ways a better man than I imagined a gambler could be. I was greeted heartily by him, and he told me that my escape wasn’t news, an account of it having been in the newspapers. My face must have been a delineator of my determination to do something desperate, for he asked me if he could assist me in any way. I told him he might, and that there could be none too much haste to suit me.

“You see the fix I am in by accommodating your friend Shinburn, whom I believed to be a government official,” I said with great feeling. “I had a clerkship here, but have been forced to resign it, that I may keep clear of arrest. Here I am, practically on my knees; and, frankly, I don’t know what to do. Can you help me on my feet again?” I knew what was in my mind to do, for I was desperate, and I awaited his answer with anxiety.

“What can I do?” he asked; “you certainly are in a peculiar fix.”

“I’ve got to get out and hustle,” exclaimed I, while trembling in every joint.

“What do you mean?”

I meant to say steal, but my tongue couldn’t, seemingly, utter the word. Swallowing hard, I asked him to put me in with some of Shinburn’s friends; and thus was forged the first link in the chain that was to fasten me to a criminal career for many years. A few days later Matthews introduced me to George Wilson, a partner of Mark Shinburn. He took me to Wilson’s rooms at 303 Bleecker Street, where there was assembled the first gang of safe burglars I ever set eyes on.

Wilson was forming a prospecting party which was going West in search of banks whose vaults could be cleaned of cash and salable bonds and securities. With him were Big Bill, another of Shinburn’s partners hailing from Canada; Eddie Hughes, alias Miles; and John Utley, a partner of the latter. The trio last named had just returned from a failure to crack a bank at Schuylerville, New York. Surprised in their work by a constable, they would have been arrested had this country official possessed the nerve to tackle them. Finding himself pitted against three big, husky fellows, he retired for reënforcements; but while he was thus engaged, the quarry reached Saratoga, boarded a train, alighted at Troy, and thus clouding the trail, managed to arrive safely in New York.

In the proposed party was another of the crooked fraternity, whom Wilson described as Tall Jim, he making the fifth one—and a mighty fine sort of a fellow he proved to be. Then I was mentioned as the sixth and last member. The introduction of my name precipitated a row, perhaps through the fact that I was a stranger, not only to the party, but to the art of bank “burgling.” However, George Wilson had proposed me for membership, which was sufficient to squelch all the objectors, with the exception of Jack Utley, who seemed to take a dislike to me from the start.

“What does this man know about robbing banks?” growled he. “You’d see his heels showing their color at the first bark of one of them Western dogs.”

I half believe that Wilson would have listened to Utley’s protests, which were many, had it not been for Matthews, who put up a strong argument on my behalf. However, Wilson soon settled the matter by announcing that I must be considered in, whereupon Utley ceased his objections. But he did a lot of grumbling on the side, and I could see that he would not, of his own volition, do me a favor in the future, should I need one even more than at the moment.

All being ready in a few days for the launching of the enterprise, we started out. It was in the middle of April, 1866, and spring had opened up in excellent style as if for our convenience. Big Bill, Eddie Hughes, Tall Jim, and I went to Pittsburg, where we were to begin prospecting for loot. When the first bank selected to fall under our attack had been settled upon, Wilson and Jack Utley were to be notified by telegraph, to follow on immediately with the necessary tools.

No man can tell what my feelings were, when at last I found myself pushing out into the world of crime, hitherto unknown to me, unless he were placed identically where I was. There were moments when I was at the point of abandoning the short road of contemplated crime, which would soon lead me into the absolutely broad road of crime committed. In such moments as these, retrospection would bring up before me the green hills of Vermont, the far-away old homestead I loved so well, the dear old folks at home; the happy days in Stoneham, with its prosperous years, when I could walk forth in God’s free air and be respected and honored by those who knew me, and no hand was raised against me.

All these bright remembrances would come up to me, with powerful influences for good; but when the real present crowded in, and crushed back those dreamlike days, I had to ask where I could go, if I cut away from the men with whom I had cast my lot. Nowhere among those I had known; for was I not a man with a price on my head? I could not return to the Vermont hills and the old place and dwell openly with my dear old folks, nor even in secret be near them; for not then would I be safe from the clutches of the law. Nor could I wend my way back to the later home of my prosperity; for there the same hand, the same hard injustice of the law, would close in on me. No! I was an outlaw, not daring to clasp hands with any one save those of the outlawed men with whom I was now associated. One by one the influences for good were counted and laid away. What could I do—I, an innocent man with the scales of justice weighing against me. And one by one I buried the thoughts of those things, which were no longer to be my stepping-stones along life’s journey, as far as I could tell, and passed on to what the unsolved future held in reserve for me. Come what might, I would accept the gauntlet thrown down to me by a cruel fate.

I put up at the Scott House in Pittsburg. When Big Bill, Eddie Hughes, and Tall Jim concluded to spread out and canvass the surrounding country, they assigned me to look over a small bank in Allegheny City, near by. We were to meet again in five days, at my hotel. I felt that a considerable responsibility had been placed on my shoulders for one so young in the business, therefore I determined to try my best and disprove, if the chance came my way, what Jack Utley had said of me. Somewhat to my disappointment, the bank I inspected proved to be an impracticable undertaking, so the experienced ones said on their return, and I had to wait for another opportunity to show what sort of an inspector of lootable banks I was. When all the reports were in, that of Tall Jim’s seemed to be the most alluring, so it was voted to make a strike at his bank, which was in Wellsburg, a small town in Brooks County, West Virginia, several miles below Steubenville, on the left bank of the Ohio River.

The next day Wilson and Utley, having been notified, joined us, fully prepared for business, whereupon we started by rail to Steubenville, leaving there on foot early in the evening. We followed the railroad track until we reached a point about opposite Wellsburg. Here a boat was borrowed without a consultation with its owner, and in this way we rowed across to the other shore, where we set it adrift. When within three-quarters of a mile of the village, we camped in a piece of woods, thick enough to make a good hiding-place. Being the greenhorn of the party, I was detailed the “chief cook and bottle-washer” of our feeding department, and immediately upon getting into camp I was sent hustling for provender. I made for the village in the fresh hours of the morning and foraged for food, and later prepared our first meal in camp. During the daylight hours Tall Jim and Eddie Hughes took a turn in town to investigate, and when they returned, which was near evening, all hands excepting the cook went away again. They were absent several hours, and when they came back I had prepared a breakfast for them, consisting of cold ham, sardines, bread, and hot coffee.

There was nothing the matter with the appetites of the lads, unless they could be called devouring. Though I had provided a goodly quantity, one meal made a sad inroad on my larder. When the inner man of my associates had been somewhat satisfied, all but the cook stretched themselves out for a sleep. I, not unwilling to do my part, stood at picket duty until they awoke, late in the afternoon, when I managed to get another meal together. I cannot refrain from saying that furnishing food to my comrades was much like shovelling coal into the mouth of a mine, as far as satisfying them was concerned. Never in my hotel days had I come across such hungry two-legged animals. But enough of this, and to the other and more important subject.

CHAPTER II
VISITED BY THE WHITECAPS

Eddie Hughes was to be the leader in the crack at the Wellsburg Bank, and soon he, with suggestions from others, laid out the plan. I took no part except that of the snubbed one at the hands of the snubber, Jack Utley, who lost no opportunity to exercise that much-relished self-constituted right. I don’t know but that I enjoyed it as much as he, for the time had come when I disliked him so much that his snubs were more acceptable to me than would have been his praise.

The bank which we were to break was a single story affair of stone, constructed with the strength of an arsenal. Evidently the bank officials had had some experience with guerilla attacks during the Civil War, just closed, for the building was fortified much like a stronghold and seemed fit to resist any attack, like a miniature Gibraltar. There was a great door of oak, heavily ironed on the inside, while the windows were strongly protected by iron shutters. Besides this resistance, the bank had a robust night watchman whose appearance indicated that he would not sneak in a corner and hide in case of a meeting with some one anxious to get at the funds he was guarding.

Tall Jim said there were two ways of getting in the bank—with a gatling gun being one, and the other an adroit manipulation of a certain amount of duplicity applied to a night watchman.

“There’s a gas-house not far from the bank in charge of a one-armed watchman,” explained Jim, “and he’s a warm friend of the bank watchman. This I know, for I kept my eye on them a long time last night. I think we can use the one-armed fellow to a good purpose; in other words, work the sympathetic dodge on the other fellow.”

Jim was confident that the gas-house man could be captured without any trouble.

“We can run him up to the bank door, and then—”

“Well,” grumbled Jack Utley, “and then what?”

“As I said,” continued Tall Jim, disregarding the interruption, “we have no gatling gun, so we’ll have to use this one-armed man, he being the next best weapon to force a way into the bank.”

As no better means were offered, his plan was accepted, and immediate preparations were made to begin the work at ten that night. We broke camp and moved to the outskirts of the village, hardly half a dozen minutes’ walk from the bank, and close by the river. Tall Jim and Big Bill went after a skiff which they had rounded up previously, but much time was wasted in getting the oars, the owner having taken great pains to stow them away against just such a quest as ours. This means for our escape being provided, we were ready for the start, and hoping for the best for us, which of course would be the worst for the people of the town.

It was what the poetic fellows would call a beautiful night. The moon, big and full, was impudently bright, I thought, for such an undertaking as we had on foot; in which thought I was not alone. But the hour had come when we must strike, as our funds were getting low and food was far from plenty, and as to stealing it, the experienced ones of the party would not do that, such a thing being far below their trade. It got to be half an hour of midnight, when, with our shirts on the outside of our coats and white masks on our faces and feet thrust in rubbers, we, a constituted band of whitecaps, descended upon the one-armed night watchman. Hughes, Jim, and Big Bill got him without a struggle, before he knew what was on foot. I trow he was more than half frightened out of his wits as his eyes lit on the grotesque-looking figures we presented. The poor maimed one was told that the whitecaps had him, and that death would be his, handed him on anything but a golden platter, if our slightest command was disobeyed; while on the other hand obedience would merit his release without harm, presently.

We presented a queer spectacle indeed in the moonlight, as with the watchman in the fore, we started for the bank. Hughes and Tall Jim had him in durance, Big Bill trailed next, while Wilson, Jack Utley, and I formed the tail end of the procession. I shall never forget the ludicrous picture the poor one-armed fellow presented, with his face white as chalk and his teeth chattering like a fast-working sewing-machine needle. He was like so much putty in the hands of his supposed white-capped subjectors.

In the meantime I was reminded that I had to run back to our rendezvous, the moment the bank watchman was secured, after the burglar tools, which it was thought not wise to bring on the scene too early in the game. All we had brought with us was a pair of stout handcuffs, which were in the possession of Jack Utley, ready to be snapped on the bank watchman.

As our one-armed assistant must be instructed in the enforced rôle planned for him, Tall Jim undertook the task, being better able to perform it, he being a handy man with language of the forceful kind. Under the penalty of death the one-armed watchman was told that he must boldly walk up to the bank door, taking no pains to step lightly, while two of our men tiptoed beside him, giving the impression to the watchman inside that no more than one person was at the door. Then he was to rap and ask for admittance. What was told the tool, to be used as a bait to induce the bank watchman to open the door, I will leave for the important moment. If the first attempt failed, it was agreed that some sort of a game would be played, with the whitecap dodge much in evidence.

It was getting to be, as each moment passed, a mighty interesting experience, and I felt fading from me much of the reluctance which from time to time came to the fore and seemed to warn me away from the path I was pursuing, if indeed it had not all gone. I could feel myself really enjoying the situation; a sort of fascination for the work seemed to have taken hold of me. This same attraction, I must relate, ruled my doings the whole of my criminal career, overshadowing any desire for amassing wealth; for I can truly say that a longing for riches never drove me to the commission of crime, and to the breaking of the laws of my country which I loved.

As I recollect the scene of the night, it was better entertainment than many a stage performance I have since witnessed. At the right moment the gas-house watchman, purposely, under the direction of his captors, walked heavily up the bank steps, while Tall Jim and Hughes, treading softly, gave the impression that there was no one with him. The remainder of the party hovered near, but kept well within the shadows of the bank building. When the signal was given, the one-armed man thumped vigorously on the oaken door and called loudly: “Bill, Bill! oh, Bill! I’ve mashed my hand—it’s bleeding bad—let me in!”

There was no response, and Hughes ordered him to rap again, which he did, in a most earnest fashion. I was afraid that some one sleeping in a near-by store might be awakened. If the bank watchman couldn’t hear the pounding, he must be a sound sleeper indeed. Our very pliable tool thumped against the great door again, this time with the result that a voice from within shouted out, “Who’s there?”

“Me, Bill!” answered our one-armed man, in compliance with his promise. “I’ve jammed my hand bad.” Again there was a long silence, so it seemed to me; nothing but silence. I could hear my heart throb with excitement, as loudly, I imagined, as the thumping made by the watchman. Prodded again by Hughes, he rapped once more, and for the third time we listened for an answer, but none came. The watchman called again: “Bill, don’t you hear me? I’ve smashed my hand and I’m bleeding to death. For heaven’s sake open the door!”

“Oh, go to thunder!” came in a roar from within; a most sympathetic response, indeed, to a man in imminent danger of bleeding to death, and the men friendly too, as Tall Jim had informed us.

There was a wait of fully three minutes, which seemed like as many hours to me, but not another sound came from inside the bank. Tall Jim agreed with Hughes that the jig was over, so we retreated cautiously. We didn’t know, but felt inclined to believe, that the bank watchman had seen our approach, and thinking that we really were whitecaps, or perhaps guessing more accurately as to our mission, had remained discreetly inside his stronghold, quite satisfied that his one-armed friend would not bleed to death. I have since concluded that we were mighty lucky that some cold lead did not find a lodgment in the carcass of one or more of us.

The game being over, even before it had begun, we marched the gas-house man to where he had been picked up, and proceeded to dispose of him in a way to insure our safe departure. We certainly had no blame to put on him, for had he been one of us of his own free will, he couldn’t have done better. As a tool, he responded to our bidding with the same directness that a needle responds to the magnet. But for our safety he must be made to believe that we were actually a band of whitecaps, and not a lot of hungry bank looters. Tall Jim was the spokesman:—

“See here, one-armed chap,” said he, in a threatening voice, “our faces are covered, and you don’t know us, though some of us do you. More of us have seen the man in yonder bank, and he’s the feller we’re after. We’ll show him what happens to a man trotting around with another man’s wife, before morning.”

The old man was trembling with apprehension; not over the bank watchman’s doings, as alleged, but for fear of what we might do with him. He managed to gasp out, “I—I—never heard Bill wuz after wimmen; I—I think ye must be mistaken, sirs.”

“But we know, and that’s enough!” Tall Jim hissed the words much like a stage villain; and I laughed to myself, though I’d have felt better could I have roared freely, there was so much earnestness in the poor fellow’s voice.

“Oh, it don’t seem possible, sirs, it don’t,” he said tremblingly.

“He’s been tracing around with the wife of one of my friends here, I tell you, old man; and what’s more, she’s in the bank with him this moment.”

“I didn’t see her go in, sir; and if a wooman did go there, sir, I couldn’t help it, sir.”

“Well, I did,” insisted Tall Jim, with affected fierceness. “I saw my friend’s wife go in that bank, early in the evening, and she’s been there ever since. Now, sir, there’s going to be a little rail-riding done before sunrise, and at the end of the journey there’ll be found a big smoking kettle of tar and a fine fat tick of soft geese feathers; and when we’re through, there’ll be a new sort of a bird in this community, and we’re going to make it out of your friend the watchman. We’ll soon be in the bank, so don’t have any doubt about it.”

“Oh, gentlemen, let me go!” pleaded the poor fellow, at this harangue from Jim. “I h’ain’t been runnin’ ’round with wimmin, and if I had, I h’ain’t got a place t’ take ’em, except this gas-house; and what wooman would come here?”

“We believe you,” replied Tall Jim; “and the only way to prevent two birds, like I’ve described to you, being made, and the last bird is likely to be a dead one, is for you to point your face toward that gas-house door, and going inside, stay there till daylight. Then, when you think of what you’ve heard and seen to-night, just call it all a dream, and be sure to forget the dream so you can’t tell it to any one. What’s your answer, old man?”

“My answer, sir, my answer, sir—yes—yes, sir, I promise you all, everything, sir,” cried the bewildered man. I was glad that he was soon to be out of his trouble.

“Well, then, you’re free, and there’s the door,” said Jim, giving the fellow a shove that sent him hurtling toward the gas-house; “and don’t dare to come out till sunrise, and then don’t be in too much of a hurry about it. In with you!”

Though at times I was filled up to the bursting point with laughter over the ridiculousness of the scene, it seemed a trifle hard to thus treat the poor fellow, maimed as he was; but I presumed our safety depended somewhat upon the close tongue this man kept, at least for a few hours. But as I saw his dark form stagger into the doorway, I was not sorry. Then we lost no time in getting to the skiff and putting ourselves on the other side of the river, where we set out on foot toward Steubenville. Some of the party, particularly Jack Utley, did a lot of grumbling over the dismal failure of our first bank-breaking venture.

Before reaching Steubenville, we decided to camp in a squatty wood through which we had come on our journey out, it seeming to offer a fair hiding-place. At daylight I went to the village and got some provisions. After breakfast the gang went to sleep, while I did picket duty again. About ten o’clock in the morning Tall Jim and Hughes made a trip to Steubenville and canvassed it, but returned shortly, reporting their failure to find any bank there worth tackling. When the question of funds came up, some one suggested taking an inventory, which was done, with the result that our combined capital was a little less than ten dollars. This showed all hands that something must be done forthwith to replenish our treasury; for with the furnishing of each meal the situation was growing worse. I had in mind what my task would be, presently, in the way of supplying food for these gullets, and with little or no cash to do it. It made me faint-hearted to think of it.

With a determination to take immediate action, Tall Jim’s list of banks was consulted earnestly, the outcome being the selection of a rich little bank at Cadiz, Ohio. As we were to lose no time, it was decided that enough of our funds must be used to take us by rail to Cadiz Junction; but from there, for different reasons, it was deemed best, as a precautionary measure, to walk the remainder of the way, some ten miles. Arriving at the junction, we found that Cadiz was at the other end of a spur extending from the main line of the road. When within a safe camping distance, we selected a spot in a dense part of a wood and waited for daylight. Then I set before the hungry ones the remainder of my hard-pressed larder, and that stowed away, all hands, including the cook, fell into a sleep, the need of which I badly felt. Eddie Hughes and Tall Jim awoke about ten o’clock and went to Cadiz. They spent a good part of the morning there prospecting, but on returning I could see a “promised land” sort of a look on their faces; and when Hughes said, “We’ll soon have plenty of money,” I really had a feeling of satisfaction steal over me, which I didn’t think myself capable of possessing under such circumstances; at least not yet. With this news, the gang’s appetites seemed to wax greater; and I, therefore, was compelled to make a trip to town after such a supply of food as I could obtain with my limited pocket-book. I presented myself in camp, pretty soon, with some bacon, a fair quantity of bread, and none too much coffee; but, do my best, I couldn’t make the meal fit the increasing desires of my hungry ones. Whether it was the country air that urged on these appetites to greater accomplishments, or the rapidly decreasing funds with which to renew the larder, made me misjudge these demands, I will not attempt to determine. However, I took hope from Tall Jim and Hughes, and continued to do my best, uncomplainingly. At dark, George Wilson and I remained in camp, while the others walked to Cadiz for further observations, all returning by two in the morning. Tall Jim and Hughes were very much elated over the second visit, but I didn’t hear much of the reason for it then. At dawn I prepared a mighty meagre meal, after which there was more sleeping until two o’clock in the afternoon. Then I was given something to do, which was more to my taste than being chief cook of the gang, though it was no sort of a job a first-class bank burglar would delight in doing. It was to inspect a hand-car shanty near the railway about a mile this side of Cadiz, and to ascertain if it were kept locked, and, in fact, make preparations for a quick escape by rail to Cadiz Junction. I returned in good season, fully satisfying my associates with the report I made them. Before dark I dished out the last round of food, much limited in quantity, which having been eaten, there was a general hustling to get ready for the job, it being decided to do it that night. I would say at this point that it was Saturday, and further, that I did not put another morsel of food in my mouth, save two raw eggs and a nibble at a chicken’s drumstick, until two o’clock in the morning of the following Thursday. While this fast was at its height I had the roughest experience of all my eventful life.

CHAPTER III
THE CADIZ BANK LOOT

We were to be ready at ten o’clock that night to begin our work, and the hour having come upon us almost too soon, there was not a little hurrying to the various points at which each man had his part to perform. I, having been assigned to the car shanty, proceeded there, my purpose being to break through the lock and have the car ready to be pushed on to the track the moment my companions came to me. I was cautioned to make no mistake; not to be misled, by any one else walking on the track, into the belief that my time had come to act, and thus spoil the scheme for our escape. It is needless to say that I quite realized my inexperience; nevertheless I, with rising spirits, assured all hands, more for Jack Utley’s ears than any one else, that I would perform my part well, and that I was no fool. I think my self-assurance rather pleased George Wilson, for he smiled toward me in an approving way.

It was dark that night, so I picked my steps to the railway cautiously, while the others started for Cadiz, which was the last I saw of them for four hours. Arriving at the car shanty, I soon had nothing to do but wrestle with my own thoughts, for I was absolutely alone, with nothing to divert me for two hours at least. It was so much different from being in the company of one or more of the gang. Then I was either busy at some menial work for them, or asleep, and had no time for my thoughts to run riot. Now I began to feel the lack of that assurance of which I had so recently boasted. Away from Utley’s sneers and jeering words, I felt none of that antagonism which usually ruled me. Instead of it, the past came back—first my wrongs, then my younger days, when life was like a dream; and I thought that, no matter what had befallen me, no matter how much injustice had been served out to me, I should have stood up against it, and proclaimed to the very last my innocence; and, that availing me naught, to have suffered martyrdom, as others much better than I had suffered. How I was tortured with these reflections as the moments dragged by! Once I did resolve, that, getting safely back to New York and well out of the life I was now leading, I would renounce my companions forever, and make another and more persistent effort to travel in a better path. While reason remains with me I will never forget the mental racking that I endured as those four long hours crawled on.

The part I had to do had been well performed, so far as I could proceed, and it was, I imagined, not far from two o’clock when it seemed to me I heard the distant beating of feet coming from the direction of Cadiz. The wind was blowing rather heavily toward the village, now and then, one gust stronger than another, so my ears may have been attuned to its fitfulness, and I had really heard no more than that. But listening intently for the least indication of the approach of my companions, I could detect no repetition of the tread of feet. At the moment, however, I caught the tones of a distant bell striking out two o’clock. Four hours had passed and not a sign of them—my associates. I thought of the word “associates.” They were mine in crime of a truth, for already I was, if nothing more, criminally implicated before the fact. If at the moment the bank had actually been robbed, then I was one of a band of bank robbers, with my part in the enterprise, though small, as fully played, and I was equally guilty. With this phase of the situation so clearly before me, I turned to another, and perhaps more important one. Where were these associates? Had they come to grief; fallen into the hands of the law, and would I not be sought for as their accomplice in the crime? Perhaps the authorities had been warned that a lot of safe burglars were waiting in the neighborhood of Cadiz for game, the fiasco in the West Virginian village having been the means of spreading the information. All sorts of unreasonable and strange things flashed through my confused brain. Nor will I state that I was not, for a moment, on the very verge of forsaking my post, and, putting forth my best speed, placing between me and the present situation all the distance I was able to before the coming of dawn. While this impulse was with me, my ears again caught the sounds of fast-moving feet, just as I had heard them a few minutes before. I listened yet more intently, if that were possible. Yes, I could hear more than one person running toward me, though I could not see a form fifteen feet away. I reasoned that no one, save those for whom I was waiting, would be abroad in that manner and at that hour, so I took the chance, and, with all the strength I had, the hand-car, which stood in the doorway of the shanty, was shoved down to the track. The rough hemlock planking cracked and creaked and splintered as the iron wheels ground across them, and I was on the point of lifting the car to the rails, or rather attempting to, when a man rushed up to me, almost breathless, and threw a satchel on the car. I had made no mistake, for it was Eddie Hughes. A glance at the bag showed me that it was bulging with its contents, and I knew right away that the Cadiz job had been successful. Tall Jim, Big Bill, Wilson, and Jack Utley came up, in this order, a few minutes later, blowing like steam-engines. The latter was so shy of breath that for once in his life he could not grumble. No time was lost in catching vagrant breath and less in talk, so in a jiffy the car was lifted to the track, and off we went as fast as the crank could be turned. My blood, which had been seemingly at a low ebb, began to flow hotly with the excitement, and soon the depressed spirits which had so greatly tormented me were left far behind with the old car shanty. In reality I was now the pal of crooks, actually had taken part in a bank robbery, and, for the first time in my life, was fleeing from a burglary of which I was guilty. In fact, I began to feel that it was better to have the “game” with the “name,” than otherwise. If any one condemn me for this, I pray it may be put down to an intoxication of the moment and not to a callous heart. These brain flittings gave way to thoughts of the propulsion of our “bumpous” vehicle, for in shifts of four we did our best, two men at each handle. When one pair showed signs of weariness, they were relieved by two fresh men, and so we six, in turn, kept at the work. In this manner, at least two pairs of fairly fresh arms were at the handles all the time. Notwithstanding our energetic efforts, the rails being rough and sadly out of repair, we made far from the speed we desired; so the first streak of dawn was flashing in the east when we got to Cadiz Junction, which was only ten miles on our race to safety. But, shifting the car to the main line, we pushed on eastward toward Steubenville, for about two miles. Here we put on brakes and paused for a consultation, all hands agreeing it was getting almost too light for further use of the car, and besides, we didn’t have any idea of the schedule of trains on that line. At any moment we might meet a locomotive, which, to say the least, would cause us great concern in getting out of its way, if, indeed, nothing worse resulted.

We didn’t stop long to consider any question, time being too precious, but while five of us were discussing these subjects, Tall Jim had tried unsuccessfully to destroy any telegraphic communication that might, uninterrupted, aid in our capture. Not being equipped with the right sort of tools, he was compelled to give up the task, having severed only a few of the wires. He had climbed telegraph poles and done all sorts of stunts, but could not sever all the wires; therefore he might as well have spared his efforts. But, for a fact, he did his best, and I praised him for it.

By this time we had concluded that we might go on a little farther; at least until we heard a train approaching. As we might get separated at any moment and each of us have to work out his own problem of escape, Hughes handed us five hundred dollars a man, with the understanding that we keep together, if possible, until a safe hiding-place was found, where we could remain until nightfall. In the temporary refuge a plan of escape could be calmly discussed and the final division of the spoils made.

We hadn’t been on the fresh start long when it was discovered that we were just ahead of the running time of a passenger train. Tall Jim chanced to recall that it was due at Steubenville a minute or so before or after five A.M. As near as Jim could tell, it was possible to run the car to the village before the train reached there, in which event we could board it and sooner get away from the neighborhood. Nevertheless there was the chance that we would not make Steubenville in season, therefore I declared that I would not endanger, not only my neck by a possible collision with a wildcat engine or the passenger train, but my freedom as well, by proceeding on an uncertainty. I argued that it had been a useless task to break a bank successfully and then throw away the spoils through a reckless disregard of caution.

“I agree with the young feller,” put in Tall Jim, “and I’ll not go another foot on this car.”

That settled it, for Wilson and Hughes fell into our way of thinking also; and for the first time I scored one against Jack Utley, though at the moment it did not enter my head. We had been moving at a fair rate of speed while this talk was going on, and had rounded several sharp curves, blind to what we were to meet beyond them, when my strong protest bore fruit. The car was stopped and dumped over the bank with a “heave ho”; whereupon I came to the fore again, which must have seemed very much the upstart in me, and proposed what next we’d better do.

“Boys,” said I, “we’d find it to our advantage not to quit the railroad here, for the bank is nothing but mellow ground. We must not leave a trail. Let our pursuers believe that we have kept to the rails. I know we can find a grassy bank near, and over it we can get to the fields without leaving any footprints.”

I have no doubt that my advice would have been taken, had it not been for Utley, who would not, this time, pause for an argument.

“What’s the odds,” he roared, as he trotted down the soft bank, his shoes sinking into the mellow earth, half-ankle deep. I loudly entreated the others not to follow him.

“The hand-car will be missed,” I cried, so vexed that I felt the hot tears burning in my eyes; “it will be known, right away, that we took it. And what then? If the people of the bank have any gumption, they’ll have a special engine, with the sheriff on board, after us in no time. I’m surprised that we are not under arrest already.”

“Tush,” yelled Utley, who stood at the foot of the incline, “are you fools going to stand and listen to that kid? Come on out of this. Are you looking for trouble?”

I still held the attention of the boys, they feeling that my words were worth considering. I urged them to prevail with Utley, whom I knew had much influence with most of them, owing to his skill as a safe-breaking expert.

“Boys,” I insisted, with all the earnestness I could master, “it will mean our undoing to follow Utley. See! he’s already in that fresh-ploughed field. What better guide do we want to leave for those after us to follow?”

“Are you fools still listening to that green kid?” Utley shouted. “Come on, I say. He chatters like a parrot. Less talk and more get-away is my plan. Never mind how.”

It was useless for me to protest further now. I was overruled. The party stalked down the soft bank and on after Utley, who piloted them for some distance through the sinking earth, which left a fine trail after us. I turned to look at it, more to satisfy my wounded feelings, I guess, than anything else. It was so apparent to me that our escape was in jeopardy, that I, after taking in the full significance of the danger, determined to make another appeal. If that was of no avail, why, I would quit the party and shift for myself, regardless of the division of the money.

“Stop for a moment, lads,” said I, “and listen to me before I leave you. Most of you have been good to me and took me in when I didn’t know where to turn, but I’m not going to jail with my eyes wide open, and I hate to see you do it. As for me, I’m going to cut to that nearest field to the right of us, and get to grass. The field we’re in leads to the woods; so does that pasture lot.”

At this emphatic stand, a halt was called by Tall Jim, with the result that all but Utley came to my way of thinking, and followed my lead to the pasture; and he too, after much swearing, seeing he was in the minority, trailed along. But the mischief had been done, as I have remarked. After reaching the grass, where our course could not be traced to a certainty, we made for the woods, which, to my regret, proved to be a shallow ravine, with trees, none too thickly placed for our purpose, on either side. I announced that this was no spot for us to dally in a minute; but Jack Utley went up in opposition again, and producing a weapon in the shape of a luscious-looking apple pie, as an argument with which to beat the others into his way of thinking, sat down at the bottom of the ravine, close by a brook, and began to devour a part of it. This was too much for the others, even Tall Jim, and they sat down and joined in the pie-eating.

“In the name of common sense, lads, are you all crazy?” I exclaimed angrily. “Will you invite trouble? Mark my words, the constables will be on our track in less than an hour. Will you plan for days, win, and then throw all overboard for the lack of a little reason?”

They would not heed me, even in earnest as I was, but, with appetites more than keen, continued to greedily munch pie. I would have done the same thing had I not fully realized the danger, being hungry enough; but I ventured one more plea: “Let’s get out of this trap, boys, and find a thick woods, no matter how far we have to go. This place will be the first to be searched, seeing that we have made a beaten path almost to it. If we are discovered, where, I put it up to you, will we find cover? There’s nothing but open country on both sides of us now.”

With his big, cavernous mouth—though all together he was a good-looking chap, priding himself much on being a ladies’ man—filled to overflowing with pie, Utley managed to say: “Blather all you want to, greeny; we’re going to stay right here till night comes. We’re not fools enough to steer out into the open country by daylight, and you might as well smoke up.”

If it would have availed me anything, I might have still argued; but as everything indicated to the contrary, I stopped here, though I felt that a real outpouring of hot anger upon the whole lot of them would have lifted a great pressure from my mind. Up to the moment of getting the money the lads had used excellent judgment, but since then all but Tall Jim had seemed to lack even the brains of an idiot. And as for Jim, I saw that a big appetite had suddenly clouded his intellect.

“Stay here if you like,” I said, as calmly as I was able; “stay here and lose all you’ve gained, but do it at your own risk, and don’t think, when it is too late, that you’ve not been warned. As for me, I’m going to strike for safety.”

Thus firing my last warning gun, I left them at their pie-eating, and began a search for a hiding-place suited to my own ideas. After much diligent scouring over several acres of land, about an eighth of a mile farther down the ravine, and a little from it, I found a shelving ledge below which was a sort of cave, where I believed a dozen men could stow themselves away by a little squeezing. Though not much of a cave to my mind, it seemed to be a place that might not be discovered, though a right good search of the neighborhood was made. Its mouth was pretty well hidden in all directions by a scrubby growth of bushes, though any one in hiding in it could without much trouble see the ravine and hear any one approaching from that quarter. So, returning, I, with renewed arguments and armed with the possibilities of my discovery, induced the lads, including the pig-headed Utley, to occupy the new refuge, they in the meantime having taken my advice not to leave the slightest trace of our course from the ravine. Having accomplished this, I experienced a grim satisfaction I could not conceal from Utley. I felt confident that I had warded off, in a measure, the danger which he had brought upon us by his headstrong plunging down the railroad bank and in the ploughed field.

I had been deceived as to the space in the cave, for I must tell it, that I may be truthful on all points, that when all hands were inside, and well out of the casual view of any one of the expected searching party, there was scarcely an inch left in which to move or change one’s position. But it was, at all events, a real hiding-place.

It may appear rather of the dime-novel order, but in chronicling this most thrilling experience of my life I must tell that we had not been in our retreat more than an hour when we were set a-tremble by hearing voices in the ravine. When they were near enough to be distinguished, we heard sufficient to make us know who the disturbers were and what they were after. Our feelings can be imagined as we, remaining almost breathless, listened to the shouts and heard the searchers beating into every nook and corner of the ravine. And as the moments passed we could hear them getting nearer and nearer. Presently the pursuers were not more than a dozen feet away.