Just before I fell for my third and most terrible term, I met Lottie, and thought of marrying. I did not love her, but liked her pretty well, and I was beginning to feel that I ought to settle down and have a decent woman to look after me, for my health was bad and I had little ambition. Lottie seemed the right girl for the place. She was of German extraction, and used to shave me sometimes at her father's barber shop, where I first met her. She seemed to me a good, honest girl, and I thought I could not do better, especially as she was very fond of me. Women like the spruce dips, as I have said before, and even when my graft had broadened, I always retained the dress, manners and reputation of a pickpocket. Lottie promised to marry me, and said that she could raise a few hundred dollars from her father, with which I might start another barber shop, quit grafting, and settle down to my books, my hop and domestic life. One day she gave me a pin that cost nine dollars, she said, and she wouldn't let me make her a present. All in all, she seemed like a sensible girl, and I was getting interested in the marriage idea. One day, however, I discovered something. I was playing poker in the office of a hotel kept by a friend of mine, when a man and woman came down stairs together and passed through the office. They were my little German girl and the owner of a pawn-shop, a Sheenie of advanced years. Suddenly I realized where she had got the pin she gave me; and I began to believe stories I had heard about her. I thought I would test her character myself. I did, and found it weak. I did not marry her! What an escape! Every man, even a self-respecting gun, wants an honest woman, if it comes to hitching up for good. Soon after I escaped Lottie, I got my third fall for the stir. The other times that I had been convicted, I was guilty, but on this occasion I was entirely innocent. Often a man who has done time and is well-known to the police is rounded up on suspicion and convicted when he is innocent, and I fell a victim to this easy way of the officials for covering up their failure to find the right person. I had gone one night to an opium joint near Lovers Row, a section of Henry Street between Catherine and Oliver Streets, where some guns of both sexes were to have a social meeting. We smoked hop and drank heavily and told stories of our latest touches. While we were thus engaged I began to have severe pains in my chest, which had been bothering me occasionally for some time, and suddenly I had a hemorrhage. When I was able I left the joint to see a doctor, who stopped the flow of blood, but told me I would not live a month if I did not take good care of myself. I got aboard a car, went soberly home to my furnished room, and--was arrested.