The weeks went by, and the Bank Ring succeeded in preventing the employment of the Pinkertons. One day I went down to Staten Island and drove up to where our plant was. Right over the spot where our cans lay buried was a tramp, stretched out, fast asleep. I left at once, but in great trepidation. The next day I returned and dug down to the treasure. It was all there, safe and sound. As everything seemed to be safe so far as the Pinkertons were concerned, I took up the cans, placed them in my wagon, and carried them back to town, where I put them in our box in the Safe Deposit Company’s vaults. A few days after this a terrific storm swept over the lower Hudson valley, uprooting trees, throwing down buildings, and washing away hillsides. Shinburn and I feared that the rain might have washed bare our plant at Peekskill. Therefore we visited the plant and found it undisturbed; but we dug the cans up and took them back to New York, and put their contents in the deposit vault along with the rest. This burying of the treasure proved to have been an unnecessary precaution; but if the Pinkertons had been put to work on the job, this burial would no doubt have saved us from being caught with the goods on us. However, we were never molested, nor was suspicion ever directed to Shinburn or myself on account of this robbery, great as it was. For weeks the press of the country teemed with items about it. Many and wild were the speculations as to who were the robbers, whence they had come and whither they had gone. But the truth has never been known until revealed in these pages--except to the robbers themselves and to the members of the police Bank Ring. Furthermore, we sold all the government bonds without attracting the least attention to ourselves, though Detective George Elder was at one time pretty hot on the scent. However, his brother officers steered him off. Yes, he was even sent on several wild-goose chases after “suspected men” to keep him from interfering with us and our plans. The disposing of these bonds will make a good story. I may tell it later. All of the non-negotiable paper that we took, amounting to eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, turned up mysteriously one night on the steps of Captain Jourdan’s station-house, in Franklin Street, enclosed in the paying teller’s trunk, and was by the captain returned to the bank. Therefore the par value of the property that we actually realized on amounted to one million seven hundred thousand dollars. The government bonds, though, were worth at that time about one hundred and sixteen, if I remember rightly, which would make the real value of the entire property one million nine hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars. We did not realize this sum, however, as we had to sell the bonds at some discount. The proceeds of the robbery were distributed as follows:--