genuineness. It was carefully and critically compared with the original, but it was so battered that no decided opinion could be arrived at, nor could anybody divine why it was thus disfigured—which to say the least of it was very extraordinary. Why, and by whom had this plate been so bruised and defaced?
Brockway having been seized in New Jersey, he was transported to and from Newark several times, which cost him some $5000 or $10,000 during the course of the examination into the mystery. But finally "Charley Adams," who was an old "pal" of Bill's, was arrested down in Maine, was convicted of burglary, and sent to the State Prison, there. "Charley" declared that Brockway could have saved him—but his old chum declined to come to Adams' aid, and he went up. For this neglect, the latter was very bitter in denouncing Brockway.
Upon the Jay Cooke trial, the Jury decided the Bonds were "counterfeit." On this verdict being rendered, Brockway was again arrested in New York, and committed to Ludlow Street jail, in default of furnishing bail on that occasion in the required sum of $30,000.
Wm. Brockway had two aliases, and was known to the authorities and the coney fraternity as "Billy Spencer," and "Long Bill." When he was arrested in 1870, Bill had his own story of this very foggy affair, which he declared to be a course of persecution towards him, throughout! He asserts that certain parties picked him up, and from the start, attempted to "beat him" out of a pile of hush-money, in consideration of the payment of which he was to be set at liberty. He says he lived in Philadelphia, and was arrested there in '67, and taken thence to Taylor's Hotel, in Jersey City, whence he was afterwards removed to and from Newark, nominally for trial, on a charge of being a counter-
