While I was eating dinner the mine superintendent came to my cell and said if I would give up the money I could go free. I threatened to sue him for false imprisonment when I got out. He went away mad. I decided they wanted me to get a local lawyer in hopes I would unbosom myself to him so he could do the same with them. At two o’clock I was back in court. The judge was a brusque, businesslike little old man with the brisk, aggressive air of a terrier. His hair was clipped short and his cropped beard grew in every direction. He wore a coarse suit of tweeds, hobnailed shoes, and a cheap flannel shirt, with a linen collar and no tie. He had two sheets of paper in his hand, looking at them. “Have you anything more than this?” he asked the Crown counsel. “Nothing, Your Lordship.” “And do you expect me to try a man on this ragged rot?” Throwing the papers on his desk, he turned toward me. “Defendant discharged.” I walked out and over to the jail, where I got my belongings—forty dollars, a pocketknife, and a lead pencil. The constable who made the arrest followed me all over town—to the barber’s, the restaurant, and at last to the depot. A train came in going in the opposite direction from the scene of the burglary, and I boarded it without buying a ticket. He watched the train leave, but did not get on. At a junction I got off and traveled south to a stage-line connection, where I took the stage back in the direction of my money. After ten days of maneuvering and detouring, I reached a settlement off the railroad about thirty miles away from where I was arrested. Hiring a saddle horse there, I jogged away in high spirits, timing myself to get into the town about midnight, when I could lift the plant and be far away before daylight. Everything favored me as I rode into the town. There wasn’t a stray dog or cat on the back streets, and every soul was in bed asleep. Turning a corner, I came in sight of the big, vacant lot. Yes, there it was. My eye took in the row of leaning, rotten posts down one side and across the front, then to the inner line of the lot where I put the leather pouch in its post hole. There seemed to be a change there. Was I at the right lot? Yes, there, a block away, was the house I entered, plain in the moonlight. My eye followed the route I took from the house to the lot. I pulled up the tired horse, certain I was at the right spot; and I was. But on top of the spot, directly on top of it, stood a long, wide, well-built, substantial, two-story frame building. That hour when I saw the money was lost to me was probably the saddest of my life. I never got a greater shock. I am telling this story because it is an interesting incident, not to cause anybody misery or mirth. Yet I know that any thief reading it will groan in sympathy with me. The honest reader will laugh and say: “It served him right.”