Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequently written Forker, told him about the letters, and suggested that they were for sale. Forker had immediately replied and made various efforts to recover the incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them and continued to extort money from Forker for years, threatening to reveal the letters unless paid. Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on to recite, a demand for five thousand dollars had been made on Forker, who said he could not raise the money, but would come into an inheritance later and would then pay and recover the dangerous evidence. When Forker failed in this undertaking, fresh threats were made, with the result that Forker suggested the kidnapping of his nephew, the demand for ten thousand dollars’ ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way to get the five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding. Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnapping and attended to the matter of having the boy taken from the school. He said that some one else had done this work and delivered the child to him, Boyle, in Warren, Ohio, where the exhausted horse was found. This statement, filling the gap in the motive reasoning as it did, created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediately and indignantly denied the accusation and brought to their support a Youngstown police officer, Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body of Dan Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talking to Reeble on the walk before the building in which Reeble resided, early in the morning of June 8, 1895. Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walking slowly down the street when he heard a thump and groans behind him. Returning to the spot where he had left Reeble, he found his companion of a few minutes before, dying on the walk. Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sitting on his window sill, and that the man had apparently fallen out to his death. He swore that neither Forker, Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when Reeble died. There are, to be sure, some elements which verge upon improbability in this account, but the denials of Forker and Whitla were strongly reinforced by the testimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the livery where the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmly identified Boyle as the man they had seen and dealt with, thus refuting the latter part of Boyle’s accusative statement. Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten years of her long term. Her husband, on the other hand, continued his servitude and died of pneumonia in Riverside Penitentiary on January 23, 1920. X THE MYSTERY AT HIGHBRIDGE