morning, he walked away with a strange look of energy and determination
on his face. What the meaning of it was did not come out until his
mother reached home, after her hard day’s work. She was very tired and
for once she actually complained and said how hard it was.
“Mother!” instantly burst from Rodney. “That’s it. I guess you won’t
have to work so hard, any more----”
“Why Rodney, what do you mean?”
“I’ve been at it, all day, mother. I’ve found people,--found ’em
easy,--that’ll let us have things to sell. Don’t you see? You own your
store, and you’ve cash to start with, and you don’t pay rent or clerk
hire. Your credit’s good and they want to see you about it.”
“Rodney!” she exclaimed. “Of course we can! But what made you think of
it?”
“It was Jim,” said Rodney. “I thought if he could find a way out, I
could.”
“I won’t go out to work any more----” and Mrs. Nelson almost cried as
she and her boy went over the particulars of it and she saw how easy it
would be.
There were days and days, after that, during which nothing exciting
happened, but in each of which a great deal of work was done. Aunt
Betty Bronson, in her farmhouse home, passed them in a state of half
nervous expectation. There was a kind of daily disappointment, too,
until one broad, bright noon when she met Uncle John, at the door, with
a face that was almost blazing.
“Letter from Jim!” she exclaimed. “He’s safe and they can’t catch him.”
“Stop right there, Betty,” he said. “I don’t want to know where he is.
I’m glad he’s doing well. Don’t say any more, now.”
“I won’t, then,” she replied, but it was hard to keep her word.
As for Uncle John, there was something heavy on his mind, for he sat
down to his dinner with a face that looked very much as if he were
about to be taken sick.
“I know it kind o’ hurts him,” thought Aunt Betty, “but he ought never
to have been so hard on Jim about that money. I never believed Jim took
it!”
If Uncle John doubted it, he did not say so, but that was an important
day for all of them. Just a little after dinner time, Rodney and his
mother were in their store. It was getting to look very business like
and several customers had been waited on and had gone out, while Billy
looked hard at the things in the show window and remarked, repeatedly:
“Ba-a-a-beh!”
Nobody else was there, therefore, when Millie came hurrying up the
back stairs and dashed in, exclaiming:
“Mrs. Nelson! Rodney! One of the men told father the police have found
out! Jim’s up in the back room, now. They’ve caught three of the other
boys that were with him. Father says he mustn’t come back to the shop!”
“He must get out of town!” said Mrs. Nelson, excitedly. “Rodney can go
along and help!--He must jump!”
“So they all say,” gasped Millie, all out of breath. “Father and the
men gave him ten dollars. He hasn’t any time to spare. They’re watching
the shop!”
Rodney had rushed for the back room and there was Jim, looking pretty
cool but with a very determined expression gathering around his mouth.
“Jim!” exclaimed Rodney. “I’ll be ready in a minute. I can show you how
to get out, if we’re quick about it.”
“All right,” said Jim, and he added, to himself: “I want to see Aunt
Betty once more, and tell her I didn’t do it. Then I’ll go somewhere
else, where they don’t know me. I won’t let them take me back to the
Island.”
In the store, Millie was saying:
“I’ve come to ’tend shop while Rod’s gone. I’d rather, a hundred times,
any day, than stand and set type.”
“You stay here, then,” said Mrs. Nelson, “while I go and get a
luncheon-tin filled for them to take along. They mustn’t catch Jim!”
It was hardly any time at all before all was ready, but the good-byes
were said in a hurry, for Rodney remarked to Jim:
“We can do it, if we’re off before any of ’em see us go. We can catch a
train and then we’re all right.”
They had evidently talked it all over before hand, because it was
likely to happen, and so they were not altogether taken by surprise
when it came.
It was not very late in that afternoon when a pair of young fellows
were walking along a country road and one of them turned to the other,
saying:
“This road takes us right around the village, Rodney. I guess we won’t
meet anybody but we can cut across a field if we do.”
“We can cut before they know who it is,” said Rodney, but he felt a
great deal more nervousness than Jim was showing, and he looked at him
with open admiration.
“I say, Rodney,” remarked Jim, half a mile further on, “this isn’t
night, it’s daytime, but it kind o’ feels as if the House of Refuge
dormitory was only a little way behind me----”
“Hope it isn’t catching up,” said Rodney.
Jim said nothing, but it was not long before he led the way through a
front gate, around through a shrubberied houseyard, and right in at a
kitchen door.
“Aunt Betty?” he exclaimed.
“Jim!” almost screamed Mrs. Bronson, Springing forward to throw her
arms around his neck. “You? Here?--O, my boy! My boy! I’m so glad! What
would your mother say, if she were alive!--They didn’t catch you, did
they?”
“No, Aunt Betty,” said Jim. “This is Rodney Nelson. He isn’t one of the
House of Refuge boys. He and his folks helped me. I’ll tell you all
about it----”
“Not now!--Not now!” she said, excitedly. “O dear! What shall I do with
you! What shall I say to your uncle? It’s awful!”
“I’d say it was!” suddenly broke in a deep, strong voice in the
doorway. “Worst thing could ha’ happened to me! Mrs. Bronson, I just
don’t want to know it’s Jim. Wish I hadn’t happened to come----”
“Why, Squire,” she said, “it is Jim, and he’s got away from all of ’em.”
“I don’t want to do any such duty,” groaned the Squire. “It’s hard
on me to have to take him. I knew his father and his mother.--Wish I
wasn’t a justice-peace! Who cares what he stole!--That money----”
“That money----” came like an echo, from a voice that was drawing
nearer, in the next room.
“John!” shouted Aunt Betty. “You won’t have the Squire take Jim?”
“O, Betty!” exclaimed Uncle John. “Why, Squire, I don’t know what to
say. It’s awful!--Tell you what.--I can’t, but I must.--Jim never stole
a cent.--Betty, do you mind those old, blue jeans overalls?--I had ’em
on, that day. When the money was missed, I was so torn up by it, I
didn’t remember where I’d put ’em. I found ’em, hangin’ up in the barn,
three days ago, and there was the fifty dollars, in one o’ the pockets.
I was most sick. O, Jim, I’m a poor, old, miserable sinner! I’m glad
you got out----”
“Thank God!” ejaculated the Squire. “I haven’t got to do it! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” shouted Rodney, but Jim could not have said a word, if he had
tried, for Aunt Betty was almost choking him.
“It’s all right, Bronson,” said the Squire. “I’ll telegraph to the
New York authorities. ’Twon’t really hurt Jim, in the long run. I’m
going----”
“I’ll go, too,” said Rodney. “I want to send word to our folks.”
“Come right back, Rodney,” said Jim.
“I will,” said Rodney, but he was hurrying away with the Squire and one
of the consequences was that when, just before supper time, Mr. and
Mrs. Kirby came over to the Nelson store to ask if there was any news,
a telegraph messenger went in with them.
“Read it aloud! What is it?” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby. “Is it from Rod?”
“O, do hear!” said Mrs. Kirby, and she read:
“Mother. We got here. They found the money. Jim’s all right. He didn’t
do it. Tell Millie. Tell everybody.”
“Whoop!” shouted Mr. Kirby, but his wife was reaching out after the
telegram that Mrs. Nelson was waving, like a flag, and Millie was
dancing.
“Ba-a-a-beh!” remarked a bearded friend of the family, in the doorway.
Away over on Randall’s Island, in the main office of the House of
Refuge, a bright-faced officer was reading a very much longer telegram.
When it was completed, he remarked, to a pair of his blue uniformed
associates and to another pair who were not in uniform:
“I’m glad he is innocent. I’m glad we did our duty by him.--Well, after
all, I’m glad the right boy got away.”
* * * * *
Only a few years have gone by. Only long enough for the new avenue to
be built up on both sides. In the middle of the western side is a sign
that reads “R. Nelson,” and the Nelson family live under that store.
They have frequent visits from a young man they call “Jim,” who runs
a printing office, in a village about fifty miles up the Hudson. He
lives at the Bronson farm, near the village, and when he comes to the
city he spends a great deal of his time at the house of Mr. Kirby, the
printer, on the other avenue, for he worked in Kirby’s shop, once. He
told them, at his last visit, of a grand time he had had with a friend
of his named Joe, a junior officer on one of the Sound Steamers, who
came all the way up there to let him know how well three of their old
friends were doing. Boys who once climbed over walls with them and were
now sailors in the Navy.
“Rodney,” said Jim, “I’m glad, for me and for them, that it turned
out just as it did. It was best for all of us. But somehow the whole
business makes me think of what I heard the Superintendent say, once,
to some of those Managers:
“In prison, and ye visited ME.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.