Here was an opportunity now 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.
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