of this process. He copied it, with a second transfer, electrotyped this, and had a fine copper-faced plate that worked to a charm, precisely like the original. The two conspirators now had plate, press, and ink. They lacked only bank paper, to complete their contemplated job. The printer procured this by degrees, and finally got sufficient to work off twenty thousand impressions of the $5 note—equalling $100,000 in money!
This huge amount was nicely prepared, and then the notes had only to be signed fairly, and their fortunes were made. Brockway was a good penman, and at it they went. In a few days, the pile was ready to "shove." And within a few weeks, the whole of it found its way into markets in different directions. It was so precisely like the genuine (of the old style of Bank notes,) that it was not questioned, but passed as freely from hand to hand, in trade, through the banks —and especially at a distance—that the enterprise proved a prime success, and even the New Haven Bank people themselves received these notes for a time, unchallenged. But the forged signatures of the officers at last roused suspicion.
These notes were then examined, compared with the genuine, and the impressions were pronounced to have been taken from the genuine plates, sure. There were now found a good many of them. How had they been printed? was the query. The original plate was in the Bank vault, intact. The mystery was inexplicable. The two watchful Directors had performed their duty faithfully, and no one had had access to the genuine plates, save themselves. It was a very strange result. And finally it was determined that an exact copy of the $5 plate must have been obtained by the printer; nobody could say how, or when.
The Bank thenceforth did their printing in their own
