Reading Time: 3 minutes [378 words]

986 X, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS,

you can find good men and women in all strata of life, and
yet the detectives, working with microscopes and with the aid
of my friend, Dorsey, excited almost beyond peradventure,
found only two to swear against Frank, They found Dalton
and they found Conley. Well, I'll take up Conley at a more
fitting time, but Dalton, who is Dalton? God Almighty writes
on & man’s face and he don’t always write a pretty hand, bat
he writes a legible one. When you see Dalton you put your
hand on your pocketbook.

‘When Dalton took the stand Mr. Arnold and I had never
had the pleasure of seeing his sweet countenance before, but
Mr. Arnold leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘‘There’s
a thief if there ever was one.’’ I smelt about him the odor of
the chaingang, and I began to feel him out. I asked him if
he had ever been away from home for any length of time, and
he knew at once what I meant and he began to dodge and to
wriggle, and before he left the stand I was sure he was a thief.

Dalton waa on, three times in Walton county and then in
enother county where he probably went to escape further
trouble in Walton, he got into trouble again. It wasn’t just
the going wrong of a young man who falls once and tries to
get over it, but it was the steady thievery of a man at heart a
thief. Of course, Dalton comes here to Atlanta and reforma.
Yes, he joined a Godly congregation and persuaded them that
he had quit his evil ways. That’s an old trick of thieves and
they use it to help their trade along.

I believe in the divine power of regeneration; I believe that
you can reform, that there’s always time to turn back and do
right, but there’s one kind of man whom J don’t believe ean
ever reform. Once a thief, always a thief.

Our Master knew it. He recognized the qualities of a thief.
You remember when they crucified Him and He hung on the
erosa there on the hill) Well, He had a thief hanging beside
Him, and Ho said to that thief, “This day thon shalt be with
Me in Paradise’? He didn’t dare asy tomorrow. He knew
He'd better say today, because by tomorrow that thief would
be stealing again in Jerusalem. Dalton disgraced the name

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