In Error to the District Court of the United States for the Northern Division of the Western District of Washington.

The plaintiff in error was convicted upon an indictment drawn under Act April 18, 1884, e. 26, 23 Stat. 11 (U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 3679), which charged that, with intent to defraud one Josephine C. Dabney, he falsely assumed and pretended to be an officer and employé, acting under authority of the United States and of the Treasury Department thereof, to wit, as an officer of the United States Secret Service, and in such pretended character as such officer and employé as aforesaid, did unlawfully, knowingly, and feloniously demand and obtain from said Josephine C. Dabney a thing of value, to wit, etc. There were four counts, charging, respectively: First, that he obtained board and lodging at the house of the prosecuting witness of the amount and value of $30; second, that he obtained of her $2 in money; third, that he obtained of her $5 in money; fourth, that he obtained of her $600 in money. The evidence was that Josephine C. Dabney, with her two daughters, aged 16 and 17 years, conducted a rooming house in Seattle, Wash., for the support of herself and her daughters, and that they had no other means of support. In answer to a matrimonial advertisement which she published in a newspaper, the plaintiff in error appeared at her house, and by way of reference stated that he was an officer of the United States Secret Service, and was then in Seattle to superintend and hasten the work on the Federal building, and other works which the government was then constructing. He made arrangement with Mrs. Dabney for board and lodging at her house at $6 a week. Subsequently he borrowed from her the sum of $2, and later the sum of $5. About four weeks after he first appeared at her house, Mrs. Dabney sold out her lodging house business, obtaining therefor the sum of $950, and upon the application of the plaintiff in error, and his representation that, if he had $600 available at once, he could make an excellent investment, she loaned to hirh $600, for which he gave her a draft on a man in Detroit who, he said, was his father.