Several communications from Upper Canada have reached us between the date of the letter from which the above extract is made and the present time, but none of them contained the desired information as to the particular fate of the prisoner, and the manner in which he was disposed of, until the 8th of September last, 1836.
By a letter from Mr. Augustus Bates, bearing this date, it would appear that the prisoner had not been executed, but had been sentenced to one year’s confinement in the penitentiary. We make the following extract:
“I give you all the information I can obtain respecting the prisoner enquired after. The gaoler, who is also the deputy sheriff, that had him in charge, says he could learn nothing from him; said he called his name Smith, that he was fifty-five years old, but denies that he was ever in Kingston, New Brunswick. The jailer had one of your books and showed it to him, but he denied any knowledge of it, and would not give any satisfaction to the enquiries he made of him. The sheriff says he believes the person to be the same mysterious stranger; that he was condemned and sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. His crime was burglary.”
It would have afforded the writer of these Memoirs great satisfaction, and, no doubt, an equal satisfaction to the reader, had it been in his power to have paid a visit to Upper Canada that he might be able to state from his own certain and personal knowledge of the prisoner at Toronto, that he was indeed the self-same noted individual that was in his custody twenty-two years ago, and whom he had the gratification of seeing and recognizing subsequently at the Simsbury Mines, where he played off his affected fits with such art and consequent advantage.
But although it is not in the writer’s power to close up his Memoir with so important and valuable a discovery—yet, keeping in view the characteristic features of the man—his professed ignorance of Kingston in New Brunswick—his denial of ever having seen the first edition of the Memoirs, and the care which he took to keep himself enveloped in mystery, by utterly declining to give any satisfactory information concerning himself; all these circumstances united, form a combination of features so marked as to carry conviction to the mind of the reader who has traced him through this narrative, that he is no other than the same mysterious Henry More Smith.