After consultation with his wife and brother, Mr. Preston concluded to let Oscar go down to Brookdale; and remain until they could make some permanent arrangements for him elsewhere.  He did not think it safe for him to remain longer exposed to the temptations of the city.  He charged Oscar not to speak again to Ned, and not to inform any one of the facts he had learned about him, lest it might thwart the efforts of the police to detect his rogueries.  On second thought, he concluded to take Oscar to the store with him that afternoon, to prevent the possibility of an interview between him and Ned.  Oscar thus remained under the eye of his father through the day.  In the evening he packed his valise for the journey, and the next morning he started for Brookdale with his uncle.

A day or two after Oscar’s departure, Ned was arrested in the act of picking a lady’s pocket at a railroad depot.  Being unable to obtain bail, he was committed for trial.  When his case came up in court, he was brought in guilty; and it appearing, from the testimony of the officers, that, though young, he was quite old in crime, he was sentenced to one year in the House of Correction.

Oscar never ascertained the nature of Ned’s “grand speculation,” and probably it was well for him that he did not.  Had he been let into the secret, and had the scheme been carried into effect at the time it was first talked of, I might have been obliged to add another and a still sadder chapter to the history of “THE BOY WHO HAD HIS OWN WAY.”

[1] The New York Penitentiary.