There was a Chinese laundry in the town and I had often thought of going into it for a smoke to kill off the dull hours, and now, both dull and despondent, I made my way to it and into the confidence of the boss Chinaman, who made me welcome. He was hospitable and kindly as all Chinese are who have not become sour and suspicious under the impositions of their white brothers. A moderate quantity of opium will not inflame or distort the imagination. I do not say it is an aid to clear thinking, but it is a fact that I left the laundry with what I thought, and still think, was nothing less than an inspiration. The next day I went over the town thoroughly and looked at every “box” in it. There was not one that I couldn’t beat. My “inspiration” told me that if I could put the depot safe out of business a few days before the payroll arrived again, the agent would be forced to lock it in one of the other safes in the town and I might get a chance at it. After traveling the great distance and spending so much time and money, I hated to quit without making a try for this money. I jumped fifty miles farther east, where I got dynamite and drills, stealing them at a mine, and returned to wait another month before I could do anything more. A week before the payroll was due, I went into the depot one night with a sledge hammer, knocked the combination knob off the “box,” battered the spindle in, and smashed the handle on the door. Adding another touch to the “burglary,” I left a couple of crowbars behind, broke open the till, smashed things generally, and threw cigarette and cigar snipes and pipe scrapings on the floor. When the station man opened up the next morning, his office looked as if it had been raided by a tribe of yeggs that had tried to wreck it when they failed to open the “box.” There was a tremendous hue and cry, and a fruitless man hunt. An inspector of police came, looked at the safe, and declared the job was done by a band of thieves that had been ravaging depots and post offices farther east. The battered safe was shipped to Toronto to be opened and repaired by its makers. I waited with much anxiety and not a little curiosity to see what would be done with the leather pouch when it arrived at the end of the month. Two days after the safe and express office were wrecked, a “redcoat,” as the Mounted Police are called, was killed by a drunken Indian. Every idle able-bodied man in town joined the man hunt that lasted ten days, and my “burglary” was forgotten in the new excitement. I kept a careful watch on the depot agent, and saw he was taking the day’s small receipts home with him every night. I looked over his house and prepared to enter it in case he did the same with the payroll instead of leaving it in one of the safes. My most careful check on his residence showed he had no children, no dog, no old people in it. He and his wife were all I would have to contend with.