“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 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.