le I put out my hands to pull the boy into the carriage. Two of
the men who were watching me came at once, one of them taking the horse
by the head, and the other coming to me and demanding:

"What are you going to do with that boy?"

"Take him with me; he is my son."

"No you don't," said the man, and he laid hold of the boy and attempted
to pull him out of the wagon. I also seized the lad who began to scream.
In the struggle for possession, I caught up the whip and struck the man
with the handle, felling him to the ground. All the while the other man
was shouting for assistance. The crowd gathered. The boy was roughly
torn from me, in spite of my efforts to retain him. Henry was thoroughly
alarmed; and while the mob were trying to pull us also out of the
carriage he whipped the horse till he sprang through the crowd and was
well off in a moment.

"Get out of town as fast as you can drive," said I to Henry.

We were not half an hour in reaching Belvidere. There I stopped
to breathe the horse a few minutes, and Henry insisted that he was
starving, and must have something to eat; he would go into the hotel he
said, and get some dinner. I told him it was madness to do it; but he
would not move an inch further on the road till he had some dinner. He
went into the dining room, and I paced up and down the piazza, nervous,
anxious, fearing pursuit, dreading capture, well knowing what would
happen when those Jerseymen should get hold of me and find out who I
was. At that moment I saw the pursuers coming rapidly up the road. I
called to my son:

"Henry, Henry! for God's sake come out here, quick!"

But he thought I was only trying to frighten him so as to hurry him away
from his dinner, and get him on the road, and he paid no attention to my
summons. I knew that I was the man who was wanted, and, without waiting
for Henry, I jumped into my wagon and drove off. I just escaped, that's
all. The moment I left, my pursuers were at the door. I looked back and
saw them drag my son out of the house, and take him away with them. I
turned my horse's head towards the Belvidere Bridge. All the country
about there was as familiar to me as the county I was born in. I knew
every road, and I had no fear of being caught. Once across the bridge
and in Pennsylvania, and I was comparatively safe, unless I myself
should be kidnapped as I was at midnight, only a little way from this
very spot, eleven years before. Here was an opportunity now