ted means not allowing him to
wander far from the scene of his crimes. He was brought back to town
and held pending the discovery of Wilson and Rivers, for whom
detectives were searching in every direction. The former was never
found, but at the end of about two weeks, the latter was run to earth
in an eastern city, where he was masquerading in snow-white wig and
beard and colored eye-glasses, as a retired and invalid clergyman,
living in great seclusion.

Blaisdell and Rivers were tried on the charge of murder, the most
important witnesses for the prosecution being Everard Houston and
Morton Rutherford; the latter testifying as to the nature of the final
and fatal dispatch sent on that eventful day, in which he was
corroborated by the telegraph operator of the Silver City office, who
had been found and secured as a witness, and who verified Rutherford's
statements regarding the message, but at the same time cleared Mr.
Blaisdell from all connection therewith; the message having been sent
by Rivers in Blaisdell's absence, whether with his knowledge and
consent, they were unable to ascertain. The charge against Blaisdell
was therefore dismissed through lack of evidence, while in Rivers'
case, a verdict was returned for manslaughter, and he was given the
extreme limit of the law, imprisonment for ten years.

Blaisdell was then speedily arraigned for a new trial on the charge of
embezzlement, the date on which his case was set for hearing being the
same as that upon which his partner in crime was to be transferred to
the state penitentiary.

On that morning, however, the guard on going to the cell occupied by
Rivers, found him just expiring, having succeeded in smuggling into
his cell a quantity of morphine, how or when, no one could ascertain.
He left a letter in which he stated that no state penitentiary had
ever held him, or ever would, but that "as the game was up" he would
give them a few particulars regarding his past life. He gave his true
name, the name of a man who, twenty-five years before, had been wanted
in the state of New York for a heavy bank robbery and murder. For
years, under an alias, he had belonged to a gang of counterfeiters in
Missouri, but upon the discovery and arrest of the leaders of the
band, he had assumed his present alias and had come west.

As Blaisdell took his place that morning in the prisoner's box, he was
a pitiable object. Haunted almost to madness by the awful fate of his
associa