time, place, and means to the crime itself, the question of individuals is the important one to be determined. It often happens that there is no concealment of identity, the problem to be solved being simply the way to catch the guilty parties; but, on the other hand, the greatest skill, experience, patience, and perseverance are sometimes required to discover, first of all, the persons engaged in the crime. Indeed, an operation is often divisible into two distinct methods of action, the first being to find out the identity of the criminals, the second to follow up and capture them.

In the course of a blind trail, such as we were obliged to travel in the case of this express robbery, it was impossible to know whence the men had come or whither they had gone; hence, I was forced to take up every trifling clue and follow it to the end. Even after I was satisfied in my own mind of the identity of the criminals, the agents and officers of the express company were continually finding mares' nests which they wished investigated, and the operation was sometimes greatly hindered on this account. As an example of the number of discouragements which the detective must always expect to encounter, I propose to mention some of the false scents which we were forced to follow during this operation.

Three or four days after William's arrival in Union City, he was informed by the superintendent of the express company having charge of the operation, that there was a young man in Moscow who could give important information relative to the first robbery at that place. This young man, Thomas Carr by name, was a lawyer who had once had fine prospects, but he had become very dissipated, and he finally had been taken seriously ill, so that he had lost his practice. On recovering his health he had reformed his habits, but he had found great difficulty in winning back clients, and his income was hardly enough to support him. On learning that this impecunious lawyer had valuable information, William strongly suspected that it would amount to little more than a good lie, invented to obtain money from the express company; nevertheless, he sent for the young man and heard his story.

According to Carr, a man named John Witherspoon had visited him about six weeks before, and had asked him whether he would like to get a large sum of money. Carr replied affirmatively, of course, and wished to know how it could be obtained. Witherspoon had said that the express company could be robbed very easily by boarding a train at any water-tank, overpowering the messenger, and making him open the safe. Witherspoon also had said that he and several others had robbed a train at Moscow some weeks before, and that they had got only sixteen hundred dollars, but that they should do better next time. He had asked Carr to go to Cairo and find out when there would be a large shipment of money to the South; then Carr was to take the same train and give a signal to the rest of the party on arriving at the designated spot.

On hearing Carr's story, William sent him back to Moscow with instructions to renew his intimacy with Witherspoon, and to report any news he might learn at once; in case it should prove to be of any value, the company would pay him well for his services. It is hardly necessary to add that Mr. Carr, having failed to get, as he had hoped, a roving commission as detective at the company's expense, was not heard from again, his bonanza of news having run out very quickly on discovering that no money was to be paid in advance.

The next case was a more plausible one, and William began its investigation with the feeling that something might be developed therefrom. It was learned that a former express messenger named Robert Trunnion, who had been discharged several months before, had been hanging around Columbus, Kentucky, ever since. While in conversation with the clerk of a second-class hotel, Trunnion had spoken of the ease with which a few determined men could board an express car, throw a blanket over the messenger's head, and then rob the safe. The clerk said that Trunnion had made the suggestion to him twice, and the second time he had given Trunnion a piece of his mind for making such a proposition. Trunnion had then said he was only fooling, and that he did not mean anything by it. William learned that Trunnion was then engaged in selling trees for a nursery at Clinton, Kentucky, and that he was regarded as a half-cracked, boasting fool, who might be anything bad, if he were influenced by bold, unscrupulous men. William therefore paid a visit to Mr. Trunnion, whom he found to be a very high-toned youth, too fiery-tempered and sensitive to submit to any questioning as to his words or actions. In a very brief space of time, however, his lordly tone came down to a very humble acknowledgment that he had used the language attributed to him; but he protested that he had meant nothing; in short, his confession was not only complete, but exceedingly candid; he admitted that he was a gas-bag and a fool, without discretion enough to keep his tongue from getting him into trouble continually; and, having clearly shown that he was nowhere in the vicinity of either robbery, he asked humbly not to be held responsible for being a born idiot. William was satisfied that the fellow had told the truth, and, after scaring him out of all his high-toned pride, he let him go, with a severe lecture on the danger of talking too much.

On the nineteenth of November, when the identity of the robbers had been fully established, William was called away to Iuka, Mississippi, on information received from Mr. O'Brien, the general superintendent of the express company, that a man named Santon had seen the leader of the party in that place, just a week before. Santon represented that he knew the man well, having been acquainted with him for years in Cairo, and that he could not be mistaken, as he had spoken with him on the day mentioned. William found that the man Santon was a natural liar, who could not tell the truth even when it was for his interest to do so. The descriptions of the various robbers had been scattered broadcast everywhere, and none of them were represented as over thirty-five years of age; yet Santon said that his man was over fifty years old, and that he had been a pilot on the Mississippi for years. This was a case—not an infrequent one, either—where people talk and lie about a crime for the sole purpose of getting a little temporary notoriety. Owing to various accidents and railway detentions, William lost three days in going to hunt up this lying fellow's testimony.

Perhaps the most impudent of all the stories brought to the express company's officers was that of a man named Swing, living at Columbus, Kentucky. He sent a friend to Union City to tell them that he could give them a valuable clue to the identity of the robbers, and William accompanied this friend back to Columbus. On the way, William drew out all that Swing's friend knew about the matter, and satisfied himself that Swing's sole object in sending word to the officers of the company was to get them to do a piece of detective work for him. It appeared that his nephew had stolen one of his horses just after the robbery, and he intended to tell the company's officers that this nephew had been engaged in the robbery; then if the company captured the nephew, Swing hoped to get back his horse. A truly brilliant scheme it was, but, unfortunately for his expectations, William could not be misled by his plausible story; and, if he ever recovered his horse, he did so without the assistance of the express company. Nevertheless, he took William away from his work for nearly a whole day, at a time when his presence was almost