to rest and
reflect. Confound those Scheimers and all their blood! Was I never to
see the end of the scrapes that family would get me into, or which I was
to get myself into, on account of the Scheimers?

Surely they could not harm Henry. They might have taken him merely in
the hope of drawing me back to try to clear him, or rescue him, and then
they would get hold of the man they wanted. My son had done nothing. He
did not even know of the contemplated abduction till five minutes before
it was attempted, and then he protested against it. He only held the
horse when I pulled the lad into the wagon.

Nothing showed so completely the consciousness of his own entire
innocence in the matter, as the coolness with which he sat down to his
dinner in Belvidere, and insisted upon remaining when I warned him of
our danger. These facts shown, any magistrate before whom he might be
taken, must let him go at once. I thought, perhaps, if I waited a few
hours where I was, he would be sure to rejoin me, and we could then
return to Port Jervis without Sarah's son to be sure; but, otherwise, no
worse off than we were when we set out on this ill-starred expedition
in the morning.

All this seemed so plain to me that I sent over to Belvidere for a
lawyer, who soon came across the bridge to see me, and to him I narrated
the whole circumstances of the case from, beginning to end. I asked him
if I had not a right to carry off the boy whom I knew to be my own? His
reply was that he would not stop to discuss that question; all he knew
was that there was a great hue and cry after me for kidnapping the boy;
that my son was seized and held for aiding and abetting in the attempted
abduction; and he advised me, as a friend, to leave that part of the
country as soon as possible. I gave him fifty dollars to look after
Henry's case. He thought, considering how little, and that little
involuntarily, my son had to do with the matter, he might be got off; he
would do all he could for him anyhow. He then returned to Belvidere, and
I took the road north.

When I arrived at Port Jervis I detailed to my landlord the whole
occurrences of the day--what I had tried to do, and how miserably I had
failed, and asked him what was to be done next. He said "nothing;" we
could only wait and see what happened.

The day following I received a letter from the Belvidere lawyer
informing me that Henry had been examined, had been bound over in
the sum of three hundred