Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/133

 establishment. They redeemed the spurious notes, (for they were evidently from the true plate which at that period was not so elaborately executed or printed as those at the present day,) and the affair remained unexplained, and unexplainable.

There were but two or three persons in this secret. The printer swindled Brockway out of his share of profits, in the foul undertaking, but gave him the $5 plate, at last. Bill then got out a five on the North River Bank, and one of $2 on the N. Y. State Bank. This last was poorly executed, and the shovers of it got into trouble, directly; Brockway himself being among the parties indicted by the Grand Jury for uttering this forgery. $260 reward was offered for Bill's arrest, and the Police run him out of New York into the Jersey woods, back of Bergen Hill; where he skulked for several days, and well nigh starved to death. He was caught, and was almost famished, when taken.

Upon his capture, he was fed and secured in quod, where he subsequently gave up all the counterfeit plates he had. But the New Haven Bank officers would not believe the tale about the transfer plate, until it was placed in their hands, and informed of the name of the young man in whose possession it had been found. He was convicted soon afterwards upon the $5 North River Bank plate charge, and sent to the State Prison for six years. This was Bill's first appearance publicly as forger and counterfeiter.

He got out of prison years afterwards, and went to work at his old business, immediately. Since then a variety of exploits are credited to him—among the chief of which was his stated connection with the great United States 7.30 Bond counterfeit, of which $90,000 in value found their way, through the hands of our first American bankers, directly back to the Treasury at Washington, before any one suspected that exquisite imitation of the original.