The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-28

It was too good for comfort. Now, I'm telling you that it was so good that later on. at the trial of the counter feiters, the Government experts got the exhibits mixed up and they couldn't tell which was the counter felt and which was the genuine Government bill until they compared the numbers on both with the Govern ment record.
 There wouldn't have been any trial at all if it hadn't been for my re- membering that trout-ishing article.
 When the counterfeit began to bother us man after man was put out on the case. What we had to do in reality was not merely to catch the counterfeiters; we had to find the commercials. You will appreciate this when, I tell you that they. were $10 bills, so that a gang could easily pass enough of them to get rich forever, seeing they were such good imita- tions that only mere speck in one. line on the counterfeit betrayed it; and not one man in ten thousand would have been able to see that.
 Well. catching the men was easy enough. We know about who it is that can engrave we'll enough to produce such fine piece of work as was that $l0 bill. So we watched a few sus- oected engravers and soon knew who was the guilty man in this case. And it was still more easy, of course, to find his associates.
 "Very quietly one day we hauled them all in-arresting one in New Haven, another in New Jersey, another sso on, almost at the same mi''rte N that not a man of the gang engaged in the actual counterfeiiihg got .m4s.
 But we didn't find.fthe commercials, and yet we knew that the gang had al- ready printed something like $50,0O0 worth of them, and of that quantity they had circulated only about $1,Ooo worth.
 We held the gang in the various cities where they had been arrested Iand took great care not to let them communicate with each other. And in the meanwhile was started on a red- hot search for the bills. You can see that it would never do to let S49,000 in excellent commercials lie around loose. Well I won't tell you how many trails followed or now often missed. But at last, in the third week, I found myself in the Berkshires, bound on the errand Of looking up some old-time companions of one of the counter feiters. I may as well tell you now thas it was a blind clue. Everyone of them turned out to be perfectly inno- cent, not one having seen the coun- terfeitef since he was a boy in that region.
 While I was knocking around in the hotel in one of the villages an elegant | little tourist chap came in with a lot oi l fish rods and registered. He asked the hotel keeper to call him early next morning, as he wished to fish a certain stream
 | Well, it seemed to me right away as | if had heard the name of that stream
 before. And soon remembered that I | trout fishing. And I remembered. also | that the article said that the brook hat
 been tished out years before
 T asked the hotel man and h, 1 laughed and said that there hadn'i I been a trout in the stream in five or si, years. So I thought things over ant decided to get up early enough tc watch the tourist
 He trotted off, whistling, with hi!
 rod over his shoulder, shortly aftel dawn. I slipped along behind him con cealing myself behind hedges ant things.
 "When he got to the brook he began to cast, and fished for an hour at least so made up my mind, that had beer wrong. But I waited on genera principles, and before long my man be gan to work up the stream and soon h
 stepped casting entirely. I followed
 cautiously, and all at once saw hin stoop near an old willow that grey about 50 feet above the brookside H goped under it's roots and finall, pulled out bundle, which he ,shovet hastily into his basket. Then h wandered back lazily to the hotel.
 'As soon as he was out of sight dug into the hole under the roots in
 big hurry. And l pulled out tn counterfeits-$4O 900 worth of them packed away in a hole that had beel dug under the roots of the old tree T loaded myself with all that I coul Econceal in my pocket and hustled bacl to the hotel. My man was sitting ol the veranda telling the hotel nlal about his fishing
 q walked up to him, asked 'Wha
 luck?' and before he could move I go
 his basket and disclosed fine mes of $1O commercials. He had $500
 worth of them showed away there.
 Well, I put the handcuffs on hir
 quickly. He turned out to be tn cousin of one of the counterfeiters an
 he had been tipped off by him to ge
 some of the money and use it to rais T funds for defense. He was caught a lyou see, because remembered a trout ling article that had read long befor,
 ,'Yes, sir! That's why I say that man can never learn anything tha
 won't prove of use to him sometime C ! T oo da,