Being reclaimed by the government from his Canadian perils, he appeared again before the Court after the testimony had been closed and the summing up of all the prisoners' counsel had been completed (June 27th); when he testified that his affidavit had been extorted from him by the Confederates in Canada by threats of death at the point of a pistol. This man Conover was subsequently (in 1867) tried and convicted of perjury and sent to the penitentiary; and with him the whole structure of perjured testimony, fabricated for reward by him and Montgomery and their co-spies, fell to the ground. Secretary Seward testified before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, in 1867, that, "the testimony of these witnesses was discredited and destroyed by transactions in which Sanford Conover appeared and the evidence of the alleged complicity of Jefferson Davis thereupon failed." But, at the period of the trial, when the passionate desire for vengeance was at its height, any plausible scoundrel, whose livelihood depended on the rewards for wholesale perjury, and who was sure to be attracted to Washington by the scent of his favorite game, was thrice welcome to the Bureau of Military Justice. Any story, no matter how absurd or incredible, provided it brought Jefferson Davis within conjectural fore-knowledge of the assassination, was greedily swallowed, and, moreover, was rewarded with money and employment. These harpies flocked, like buzzards, around the doors of the old Penitentiary, and all--black and white, from Richmond, from Washington and from Montreal--were eager, for a consideration, to swear that Davis and Benjamin were the instigators of Booth and Surratt. And such testimony as it was! For the most part the sheerest hearsay! The private impressions of the witness! In one instance, his recollection of the contents of a letter the witness had heard read or talked about, the signature of which, although he did not see it himself, he heard was the signature of Jefferson Davis!! Testimony wholly inadmissible under the most elementary rules of evidence, but swept before the Commission in the absence of counsel for the parties implicated and under the immunity of a secret session. For example: a blind man, who had been, at an undated period during the war, a hanger-on around the camp at Richmond, being asked whether he had heard any conversations among the rebel officers in regard to the contemplated assassination, answered: "In a general way, I have heard sums offered, to be paid with a Confederate sum, for any person or persons to go North and assassinate the President." Being pressed to name the amount and by what officers, he answered: "At this moment, I cannot tell you the particular names of shoulder-straps, &c. "Q.--Do you remember any occasion--some dinner occasion?