dollars to take his trial on a charge of
kidnapping, and he was then in the county jail. I at once showed this
letter to the landlord, and he offered to go down with another man to
Belvidere and see about the bail. I gave him three hundred dollars,
which he took with him and put into the bands of a resident there who
became bail, and in a day or two Henry came back with them to Port
Jervis.

My son was frantic; he had been roughly treated; and to think, he said,
that he should be thrust into the common jail and kept there two days
with all sorts of scoundrels, when he had done actually nothing! He
would go back there, stand his trial, and prove his innocence, if
he died for it. He reproached me for attempting to carry off the boy
against his advice and warning; he knew we should into trouble; but he
would show them that he had nothing to do with it; that's what he would
do.

Now this was precisely what I did not wish to have him do. A trial of
this case, even if Henry should come off scott free, would be certain to
revive the whole of the old Scheimer story, which had nearly died away,
and which I had no desire to have brought before the public again in
any way whatever. The bail bond I was willing, eager even to forfeit, if
that would end the matter. But Henry was sure they couldn't touch him,
and he meant to have the three hundred dollars returned to me.

Seeing how sensitive the boy was on the subject, and how bent he was
on proving his innocence, I thought it best to draw him away from the
immediate locality, and so, in the course of a week, I persuaded him to
go to New York with me, and we afterward went to Maine for a few weeks
to sell my medicines. This Maine trip was a most lucrative one, which
was very fortunate, for the money I made there, to the amount of
several hundred dollars, was shortly needed for purposes which I did not
anticipate when I put the money by.

We returned to New York, and I supposed that Henry had given up all idea
of attempting to "prove his innocence;" indeed we had no conversation
about the kidnapping affair for several weeks. But he slipped away from
me. One day I came back to the hotel, and, inquiring for him, was told
at the office he had left word for me that he had gone to Belvidere. A
letter from him a day or two afterward confirmed this, to me, unhappy
intelligence. The time was near at hand for his trial, and he had gone
and given himself up to the authorities. He wrote to m