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.