As the time for pronouncing sentence came on, petitions for mercy were circulated in Buffalo and Rochester. The members of the jury which had found the accused guilty were labored with separately to sign a recantation. Only six succumbed and signed a statement that the prisoners were found guilty, not because they had conspired to blow up their rival's refinery, but because they had enticed away Albert. This recantation was in the face of the judge's charge, which had made the plot to blow up the Buffalo works the chief and the important inquiry in this case, and the verdict had been given under the influence of this view of the case. Six of the jury saw the impropriety of making this statement after they had disbanded and passed from under the legal and moral restraints they felt when sitting under their oath of office, and refused to sign it. When the paper from the complaisant six jurors was handed in, the District Attorney said in court: "These jurors received money for making these affidavits. If required to do so I will prove the statement." He was not called upon to do so. "These affidavits," he said afterwards, "were procured for the purpose of influencing the Court to administer the lighter punishment, since they tended to show that the verdict was directed against the lighter offence. One of the jurors told me he had been offered money to sign one of these affidavits, and he knew of one juror who had received $10 for signing one." When the last possibility in the way of proceedings for a stay or for a new trial had been exhausted, except argument of an appeal in the Court of Appeals, which was known to be useless, sentence was pronounced. The penalty provided in the statutes was imprisonment for one year in the penitentiary, or a fine of $250, or both. The lawyers pleaded that the elder of the convicted men was old, that the younger had just returned from a wedding tour in Europe, that some of the wealthiest and most prominent citizens of Rochester had petitioned for mercy, and that six of the jury had done likewise. Each was sentenced to pay a fine of $250. Notice of appeal was given by the convicted, and a year was consumed on both sides in preparations to fight the case to a bitter finish. But the appeal was abandoned. A new trial and new sentence might have ended worse. The fine was paid, and these employés of the trust, upon whose record as reputable and inoffensive citizens for all the years of their business career no shadow had fallen till they entered its employ, took thereby the place assigned them by the jury--that of convicts guilty of crime.