ury took but five minutes to convict Browne of
forgery in the first degree.

A few days later the judge sentenced him to twenty years in State's
prison.

Then other people began to wake up. The Attorney-General guessed that
the Petersen property had all escheated to the State, the Swedish
Government sent a deputy to make inquiries, the Norwegian Government was
sure that he was a Norwegian, and the Danish that he was a Dane. No one
knows yet who is the real owner, and there are half a dozen heirs
squatting on every corner of it. Things are much worse than before
Browne tried to sell the ill-fated lot to Levitan, but a great many
people who were careless before are careful now.

It soon developed, however, that lawyer Browne's industry and ingenuity
had not been confined to the exploitation of the estate of Ebbe
Petersen. Before the trial was well under way the City Chamberlain of
New York notified the District Attorney that a peculiar incident had
occurred at his office, in which not only the defendant figured, but
William R. Hubert, his familiar, as well. In the year 1904 a judgment
had been entered in the Supreme Court, which adjudged that a certain
George Wilson was entitled to a one-sixth interest in the estate of
Jane Elizabeth Barker, recently deceased. George Wilson had last been
heard of, twenty years before, as a farmhand, in Illinois, and his
whereabouts were at this time unknown. Suddenly, however, he had
appeared. That is to say, H. Huffman Browne had appeared as his
attorney, and demanded his share of the property which had been
deposited to his credit with the City Chamberlain and amounted to
seventy-five hundred dollars. The lawyer had presented a petition signed
apparently by Wilson and a bond also subscribed by him, to which had
been appended the names of certain sureties. One of these was a William
R. Hubert--the same William R. Hubert who had mysteriously disappeared
when his presence was so vital to the happiness and liberty of his
creator. But the City Chamberlain had not been on his guard, and had
paid over the seventy-five hundred dollars to Browne without ever having
seen the claimant or suspecting for an instant that all was not right.

It was further discovered at the same time that Browne had made several
other attempts to secure legacies remaining uncalled for in the city's
treasury. In how many cases he had been successful will probably never
be known, but it is unlikely that his criminal