There was another guard in an adjoining room, with an open door between. Therefore Shinburn quietly gathered up his own clothes, taking also his jailer’s overcoat and gun, and slipped out into the hall and there dressed himself. He then dropped to the ground from a window, walked to Pittston, boarded a gravity railroad coal car, and rode to Waymart. From here he was driven to Great Bend on the Erie Railroad, where he boarded a train and landed safely in New York.
And now comes the sequel, which proves that crooks of a certain grade are as careful of their promises as are the most honored business men. Shinburn did not find it convenient to pay the promised two thousand dollars until July, 1869. Then he sought to reach his whilom jailer, but learned that he had left Wilkesbarre. All inquiries as to where he had gone failed to locate him. Thereupon Shinburn inserted a personal in the _New York Herald_, so worded that the person for whom it was intended, and he alone, would understand it. After weeks of advertising, the man was heard from. He came on to New York at Shinburn’s expense, where he was paid the promised two thousand dollars.
I was present when he received this money, and I can tell you he was a happy man. He said:--
“It’s lucky that I did not get this money when you escaped. If I had, it would all be gone with the rest of my money. I lost everything I had in a deal I went into, and have been dead broke ever since. This money will start me to going again.”
I wish I could say that with that money he built up an enormous fortune; but as a matter of fact I never heard of him after he left us, so do not know what finally became of him.
“Who’s that pale-looking chap at the first table to the left?” asked Chelsea George, one of Jack Hartley’s coterie of misfit burglars. His remark was addressed to a faro dealer at his side.
“The feller that’s just cashin’ in his last case?” whispered the dealer.
“Yes--he’s got the look of a farmer not long used to city ways and clothes,” said Chelsea George.
“You’re half right, sir; he’s a bank clerk. He came from Montreal way not long ’go,” volunteered the faro dealer. “But he’s a good thing here, though he was a greeny for sure when he first come in. He’s buckin’ in the game fast, sir, these days. Got the gamblin’ fever very much alive in ’im.”