About seven o’clock in the morning of a Sunday in February, two associates and I were waiting near the bank. I had with me Tall Jim and Little Dick Moore, both of whom I could depend upon in almost any emergency. I had the Chestnut Street door key, and the surroundings were such that I felt confident of soon having in my possession the long-contrived-for cash. But it is the unexpected that is always popping up to make one glad or disappointed, as the case may be. I had schemed to overcome one watchman or possibly more, inside the bank, but I hadn’t looked for interference from a watchman on the outside who had no connection whatsoever with the bank. It so happened that Tom Davis, in the joint employ of several warehouses not far from the bank, was on his way home that morning after a night’s work. Confound his eyes, I would that they’d been full of sleep, but they weren’t! Upon seeing three strange-looking men lingering at different points near the bank, he became curious. The greater his curiosity, the more dangerous he was to our game, for soon he grew suspicious. It wasn’t policy for any of my party to run, for that would set afloat the rumor, or even worse, the truth, that an attempt was being made to rob the bank, so we stood our ground. It didn’t avail my associates--they couldn’t bluff it through. I did--somehow. They were charged with being suspicious characters and locked up. When Tall Jim was searched, a pair of handcuffs and a set of false whiskers, the latter very much like those worn by one of the night watchmen of the bank, were found on him. This, as I feared, gave rise to the impression that the prisoners were plotters against the bank. To make matters worse, a few days later another suspiciously acting stranger was arrested in the neighborhood of the bank. He proved to be Big Kid Wheeler, an escaped convict from the state prison at Auburn, New York. He was a well-known crook among the grafting fraternity. The trio went to prison, and thus was my force depleted. But I didn’t let the lads go to prison without an effort to save them. The day after Little Dick and Tall Jim’s arrest I went to my influential friends, who introduced me to Colonel Bill Mann, the district attorney. I had been told he was a very pleasant gentleman and usually open to a deal. I had twenty thousand dollars, one half of it for him and the other to put up as cash bail, but he declared it was impossible to accommodate me. The bank officials, he said, were pressing him too hard, and that to consent to bail for the prisoners would seem like tampering with justice. With evident regret, he said:-- “I need the money, young man, but I can’t take it.” I urged him with all the persuasiveness I possessed to come to my relief, but he, with repeated regrets, said he must not. So Tall Jim and Little Dick went to prison for two and a half years, and the Big Kid was returned to Auburn prison.