considered this absurd; for, said he, if the man lives 

 and serves out his term, he will he considerably over 

 eighty years of age. 



The inspectors would not give way. Mr. Wood had 

 not told the man of this decision, and preferred that 

 I should do so, in hopes that by showing him the dies, 

 and the preparations that had been made, he might 

 be induced to talk more freely than he had done. As 

 this was the last interview I had with him, and what 

 was learned and resulted from it so far exceeded our 

 expectations, that to be understood it seems necessary 

 to state some things that had been learned in regard 

 to the man and his work, through Mr. Biddle's 

 amateur detective, and one of the hair-breadth escapes 

 he made when in this pursuit, and the mode by which 

 the man was finally secured. 



Reliable facts learned were that, although the man 

 was living among counterfeiters, and with them 

 frequently shifting from place to place, he confined 

 himself to certain portions of the work on the spurious 

 plates, for fixed considerations, always exacting his 

 pay in genuine money; that, when flush, he would 

 sometimes go on protracted sprees until his money 

 was exhausted, when he would return to his work; 

 that, when on these spells of reckless dissipation, the 

 counterfeiters kept a strict surveillance over him, 

 fearing that in his drunken orgies he might divulge 

 important secrets; that at that time he was with part 

 of the gang working in a shanty on an island on the 

 St. Lawrence River; there the bank officer went, 

 accompanied by a member of the band, and armed 

 with a forged letter of introduction, purporting to have 

 been written by the master spirit of the gang as he was 

 leaving the country for an absence of some weeks, 

 representing him to be an expert penman, who 

 would prove to be a valuable auxiliary. After a few 

 exhibitions of his ability, he was heartily received 

 among them, and for some days worked alongside 

 of the man he had ventured so much to secure. 



He soon made himself familiar with all their 

 appliances, and learned many important secrets; but 

 he failed to find any way of convicting without his own 

 testimony, and to give that, divulging his identity as 

 a bank officer, would simply be signing his own death 

 warrant; for such was the desperate character of the 

 gang. 



Feeling greatly discouraged, not knowing which 

 way to turn, early one evening he threw himself into 

 his bunk, in the working room, only separated from 

 the living room by a thin board partition. He fell 

 into a troubled sleep, from which he was awakened 



by unusual sounds from the adjoining room. He was 

 soon aware that there was an unexpected arrival; he 

 distinctly heard an unfamiliar voice say: "This letter 

 is a forgery; I gave no one an introduction; the man 

 is a fraud or a detective, and we must run no risks; 

 we must 'fix' him at once, so he can tell no tales." 



This was hint enough; and he was not slow to act 

 on it. He slipped out of a window, and although the 

 river was running full of cakes of floating ice, he 

 threw his boots and hat on the bank and took to the 

 water. It was a desperate swim. But fortune favored 

 him; for after over an hour battling with the cakes of 

 ice, he landed on the Canadian shore, fully two miles 

 below, nearly frozen to death, but, fortunately, near 

 a cabin, to which he dragged himself, and found 

 shelter for the night. A spurious story of wreck of 

 boat and loss of companion satisfied the simple 

 people, who gave him a bed, and while he slept 

 dried his clothes. In the early morning, a store at a 

 near railroad station furnished boots, hat and a 

 rough overcoat — a little money paid for services 

 rendered him, and before night he was comfortable 

 in the St. Lawrence Hotel at Montreal, where he had 

 left his baggage, when he started on this desperate 

 island adventure. 



For safety it was necessary that the counterfeiters 

 should have evidence of his having been drowned. 

 Keeping his room for a few days, consulting with 

 the head of the police and a prominent member of 

 the medical faculty, a corpse was procured, dressed 

 in the clothes he wore on his escape from the island. 

 In the pockets were put such small tools as would 

 identify the body, which was represented as having 

 been taken from the ice in the river. 



The knowledge obtained on the island enabled 

 the police to make a certainty of having some of 

 the gang view it, as well as the clothes and pocket 

 findings. This being done, the bank officer was safe, 

 as the sequel proved; for, within a year, in the guise 

 of a manufacturer of spurious money, and an expert 

 in raising notes to a higher denomination, he was 

 again in contact with the man — this time at Charles- 

 ton, S.C. He then, by a liberal advance of money 

 and promises of high price for work, induced the 

 man to come to Philadelphia, where he represented 

 that he had rooms in which the work could be done, 

 so arranged as to defy detection. 



The first lathe work required was for a Sio bill 

 of the L T nited States Bank. This he refused to do, 

 but would execute entire a $5 bill, saying that by 

 the Bank charter they were prohibited using notes 



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