urred?"

"A substitution of prisoners," guessed the chief.

"Precisely," said Britz. "I sweated a confession out of the substitute.
He's a poor, sorrowful creature, named Timson. Two weeks ago he was down
and out, broke, jobless, starving. He was shuffling dejectedly along
Broadway when a man tapped him on the shoulder and asked a few minutes'
conversation with him. As Timson had nothing to lose but time, he
offered no resistance when the stranger led him in the direction of a
restaurant.

"'Here's a fifty-dollar bill just to show I mean business,' the host
opened the conversation. Timson nearly went into hysterics at sight of
the bill. 'Now tell me all about yourself--if you're the right man, I
can put you in the way of a lot of money,' said the host. Well, Timson
told all about himself and gave the stranger his address. Two days later
he was sent for by a man named Beard. He visited Beard at his home, and
there the scheme for the substitution of prisoners was unfolded.

"It seems that soon after Whitmore's arrest, Beard made a deal with the
deputy marshal whereby the deputy was to receive fifty thousand dollars
to permit the substitution to be made on board the train on the way to
Atlanta. Of course, the warden of the prison had never seen Travis,
hadn't the slightest idea what he looked like. But in order to be on the
safe side, the deputy insisted that Beard get someone who resembled
Whitmore, alias Travis, in general appearances. For a week Beard
searched and finally lit on Timson. Although the resemblance between
Timson and Whitmore is not sufficient to have fooled anyone who knew
Whitmore, nevertheless a description of the merchant as he appeared in
court, might easily pass for a description of the substitute.

"For one hundred thousand dollars Timson agreed to go to jail in place
of Whitmore. The money was placed in trust for him, so as to net him an
income of five thousand dollars a year for life. Beard found it
comparatively easy to induce the man to fall in with the scheme. In the
first place, Timson was that unhappiest of all living creatures, the
middle-aged failure. So far as he could see, the future loomed dark and
forbidding, his old age was to be attended by the most bitter poverty.
Not being a drinking man and being cursed with an active imagination,
his plight was doubly hard. Under the circumstances, it could make
little difference to him whether he spent his remaining years in jail or
the poor-