Staying in a house full of things for friends who were away once there was a burglary. I never knew till a day or two after. Well, the things were mostly recovered; it was an old servant and his partner who did it. When we looked around there was an outside adobe store room that would not open and a locksmith said that the door was not locked. After some gymnastics we found through an extremely dusty window that there was something against the door. The crafty George had jammed a crowbar into the floor and leaned it against the door so that when shut the other end of the bar dropped under a crosspiece and held the door like a rock. Wonder where he learned that.

One night, being away from a ranch some one went into my bedroom and took the cash box (only $225 and $50 was mine and $15 A. C. J's). There were two men playing chess in the next room who never went to see what was going on though all the dogs were wild the men say, and the men's quarters are some distance away. We found the broken box on the tennis court, house table, all the money, but $19 church money in an envelope, gone of course. Never knew who did it. Another time, at a little ranch I had five miles from town, I used to walk out sometimes at night. Some one broke in one night as I found the door open but nothing gone. So next Sunday I left everything just the same and came out after dark but earlier and lay down with my gun just opposite the door, at twelve whoever it was came (there was no house near) and I lay trying to hear what they said but could not. They came to the door and then that little fiend Pincher (my fox terrier) turned up from some where and "raised Cain"; they left and I followed a little way; it was a black night; struck one that searching for gentlemen one had not been introduced to, able to see nothing ahead and with the light from the open door in one's rear, was not correct; so I went to bed. Next morning found where they had tied their horses in the willows down by the creek. Mexicans from the mountains probably. Have not had many robbery games. Father went down once long ago with a sawed off shotgun and I went to open the door. I asked him after "what he thought about?" and he said that he thought he should spoil a new carpet.

Another time still further back, when so small that I was sleeping in his room, I woke him to see the shadow of a ladder on the blind in London. There were burglars, but in the next house. He caught one and let him go and the grateful ruffian sent him a paper of written rules as to how to make his house safe.