“That noon I caught an interurban car for Racine at Clinton street. Watts was on the car. He came and sat with me.
“‘We come off pretty clean,’ he said. ‘There can’t be no “rap” to this.’ I told him it was a fool trick to carry so much silver as I had in my bundle.
“The whole bunch was on the car. When the car stopped at a corner in Racine we all got off and scattered.
“In a minute I decided that I was being trailed. I caught up to Oates and told him so. He told me to go in a saloon and find out. I did, and the fellow trailing me came in too. I went out of the saloon, saw Watts and told him I was trailed.
“‘Ding that and duck,’ he said, pointing to my bundle.
“‘Cover up and give me a chance,’ I said.
“He did, and I ducked down a side street, but that fellow was still trailing me. After walking about a quarter mile I stepped into a cigar store, for I’d made up my mind to duck that fellow. I got the proprietor to take me out in the back yard. Then I climbed over two fences and hid in a shed until dusk.
“Detective Sullivan nailed me about 9 o’clock that night.”
On cross-examination, Wilson freely told his long criminal record, which includes several convictions. He gave his age as 53 years. He said that Joseph Wilson is his real name, but that he has used three aliases.
District Attorney A. C. Backus announced that he would file information charging Watts with a second offense, for which the penalty may be twenty-five years in prison.
Some 20 years ago a ragged little newsboy stood shivering on a busy corner in the heart of St. Louis. His last paper was yet to be sold and his free hand jingled a pocketful of loose coins. A hurrying pedestrian snatched the final copy and thrust a nickel in the hand of the boy. He did not wait for change. Five minutes later the ragged and cold and hungry boy stood with his nose buried in a volume of “First Steps for Chemists” in the musty atmosphere of a second-hand book store.
Wednesday morning the same boy, now grown to manhood, stood before the federal court in Detroit and heard a stern judge sentence him to 10 years in the federal prison at Leavenworth and affix a fine of $5,000 on three counts charging counterfeiting. It was the cause and the effect.