Stealing a watch.
--Two white men, named Chomas Collier and Mike Walsh, was before the Mayor on Saturday, charged with entering the room of Gen. J. P. McCown, on the Sunday night previous, and stealing one gold watch belonging to him. It appears that on the night in question two men entered the room occupied by Gen. McC., at Mrs. Barnes's, on Grace, between 8th and 9th streets, one of them with a lighted candle in his hand. Gen. McC., having just gotten in bed, was not asleep, and immediately raised up and demanded to know the business they had in his room. The fellows apologized and left, but soon after returned, when they were for the second time ordered to leave, the General at the same time jumping out of bed and following them to the door, when they, instead of going to some other room in the house, proceeded down the steps into the street. This conduct excited his suspicions with regard to their intentions, and he immediately felt under the head of the bed, where he had put his watch, but found that it had been taken out. Nothing more was heard of the affair until a few days thereafter, when his watch was found in the possession of Collier. The counsel for the accused introduced a Miss Belia Macarthy, who testified that on Monday night last Collier and a man named Jas. Denay came to her house, where they met a man named Fraydeen, who proposed to sell Collier a watch, which he decided to buy as soon as he could go home and get the money from his mother, which he did, and returned in a short time with it. She did not see the watch, and therefore could not swear that the one claimed by the General was the one which Collier had bought from Fraydeen James Denay, who has been in jail for some days on another charge, was brought into Court as an accomplice of the prisoner, and to see whether Gen. McC. could not recognize him as one of the parties who entered his room. The General thought he was one of them, but could not swear as to Collier. The Mayor, after hearing the evidence, sent all of them on to the Grand Jury for indictment. [The accused, as well as Denay, already stand charged with having committed several robberies recently at the Linwood House, and among others, with stealing a watch from Dr. Fisher. Walsh and Denay are particularly notorious, as having concocted a plan to liberate some prisoners from the city jail some time last summer, and also participating in several other exploits, which stamp them as bad characters.]
