After listening to the circumstances, and the motives which led to the detention of these men, and to the testimony of one of the police officers at Albany, in relation to their treatment while there, the Judge summarily dismissed the case, remarking that, in the first place no "imprisonment" had been proven, and that, even if it had, he should probably have sustained the officers in the discharge of what they considered their duty, in endeavoring to ferret out and punish the authors of important crimes against the laws of the land. The trial I have just described was but one of many incidental occurrences which took place in the course of the attempts made to arrest Pat R.; occurrences, both tragical and comical, which would here find a place, did not the limited space render that impossible. In closing the history of this case, it will be sufficient to say that, in the course of our investigations, the innocence of many suspected persons was established; restitution made to the sufferers by Pat's villany, so far as their losses could be satisfactorily traced to him; and the Post-Office Department were rid of one of the most daring and unscrupulous mail robbers that ever disgraced the service. He is not even now as secure in his hiding place as he perhaps imagines himself to be. If there are those (as there is reason to suspect) who shared with him in such of the spoils as were not recovered, they also, even if they escape the punishment which they merit from their fellow men, will not always elude the pursuit of conscience, nor avoid the retribution which she will most surely inflict upon them. CHAPTER V. An infected District--A "fast" Route Agent--Heavy Bank Losses--Amateur Experiments--Dangerous Interference--A Moral Lecture--The Process discovered--An unwelcome Stranger--Midnight Watching--Monopoly of a Car--Detected in the Act--The Robber searched--His Committal--A supposed Accomplice--The Case explained--Honesty again triumphant--Drafts and Letters--A long Sentence--Public Sympathy--A Christian Wife--Prison Scenes--Faithful to the last--An interesting Letter. The literary reputation of one of the oldest and most celebrated seats of learning in New England, was once temporarily overshadowed by the "bad eminence" that it attained in the eyes of all within a distance of fifty miles in every direction, who attempted to transmit valuable matter through the mails. The period during which this state of things existed, was in the months of January and February, 1854. Throughout those months a fatality attended all money-letters designed to pass through the place referred to; the like of which has seldom been known in the history of the Post-Office.