name he chose to assume? This was incontestable. If
your name be Richard Roe you may purchase land and receive title thereto
under the name of John Doe, and convey it under that name without
violating the law. This as a general proposition is true so long as the
taking of a fictitious name is for an honest purpose and not tainted
with fraud. The Assistant District Attorney felt that the very strength
of his case created, as it were, a sort of "legal weakness," for the
more evidence he should put in against Browne, the clearer it would
become that Hubert was merely Browne himself, and this would necessitate
additional proof that Browne had taken the property in the name of
Hubert for purposes of fraud, which could only be established by going
into the whole history of the property. Of course, if Browne were so
foolish as to put in the defence that Hubert really existed, the case
would be plain sailing. If, however, Browne was as astute as the
District Attorney believed him to be, he might boldly admit that there
was no Hubert except himself, and that in taking title to the property
and disposing thereof under that name, he was committing no violation of
law for which he could be prosecuted.

The case was moved for trial on the twelfth of March, 1906, before Judge
Warren W. Foster, in Part Three of the Court of General Sessions in New
York. The defendant was arraigned at the bar without counsel, owing to
the absence of his lawyer through sickness, and Mr. Lewis Stuyvesant
Chanler, the later Lieutenant-Governor of the State, was assigned to
defend him. At this juncture Browne arose and addressed the Court. In
the most deferential and conciliatory manner he urged that he was
entitled to an adjournment until such time as he could produce William
R. Hubert as a witness; stating that, although the latter had been in
town on December 14th, and had personally given him the deeds in
question, which he had handed to Levitan, Hubert's interests in the West
had immediately called him from the city, and that he was then in
Goldfields, Nevada; that since he had been in the Tombs he, Browne, had
been in correspondence with a gentleman by the name of Alfred Skeels, of
the Teller House, Central City, Colorado, from whom he had received a
letter within the week to the effect that Hubert had arranged to start
immediately for New York, for the purpose of testifying as a witness for
the defence. The prosecutor thereupon demanded the productio