“We found him in a little cell, about twelve feet by eight, engaged in reading a newspaper, which some one had distributed among the prisoners. He did not appear very glad to see his father, and spoke in a surly manner to him. I really pitied the poor man, for he felt so badly that he could hardly keep from crying, when he saw the situation of his son. Oscar did not know me, I suppose. I believe I never saw him before, although I had often heard Willie speak of him. Mr. Preston told him that I was a lawyer whom he had engaged to manage his case, and he then proceeded to tell him the conclusion we had arrived at. ‘I shan’t do it,’ he instantly replied; ‘I aint guilty, and I wont say I am.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘this is very foolish in you, for here are the clearest proofs of your guilt, and you can’t rub them out.’ ‘I don’t care,’ he said, ‘I wont cave in now, any how. I mean to stick it out to the last.’ I then told him we were afraid he would be sentenced to the House of Correction, whereas, if he confessed his guilt, we could probably get the judge to send him to the Reform School. ‘I don’t want to go to the Reform School,’ he replied; ‘of the two, I’d rather go to the House of Correction. That would be all over with, in two or three months; but if I’m sent to the Reform School, I shall have to stay three or four years, and I wont do it—I’ll run away first.’ So he continued to talk, and we continued to reason with him, but all in vain; and finally we left him, in no pleasant mood. This forenoon, I called on him again, thinking he might have altered his mind, by this time; but he was as obstinate as ever, and so I must defend him to the best of my ability, when the trial comes on, next month. Poor boy! I’m afraid he will find the way of the transgressor is hard, before he is many months older. He appears to be pretty intelligent, and does not look like a bad boy, but he seems bent on his vicious courses. I tried to appeal to his feelings, to-day, but could not produce any effect upon him. I’ll try to let you know how his case turns out, when it comes to trial.
“Your Aunt Lizzy sends her love to you and to your father, and mother, and dear little Annie. Willie says, ‘Tell Clinton I’m going down to see him this summer’—but as this is the first I have heard of it, I guess it will pass only for a rumor. Sissy sends ’a bushel of love,’ and Bouncer, Willie’s big bouncing dog that I mentioned before, sends a wag of his tail. Here it is:—
There, now, I forgot to put in the wag—but no matter, you can imagine that. Well, I’ve got to the end of my sheet, and have only room to subscribe myself,
Your affectionate
Uncle Clinton.”
After running over the letter, Clinton read it aloud to his father and mother. The intelligence it gave concerning Oscar, did not much surprise any of them, though they felt sorry for him and his parents.
“I have seldom known a bad beginning to make a good ending,” remarked Mr. Davenport. “Oscar seems to have made a very poor start in life, and I’m afraid he will not turn out any too well. It’s too bad, for I always thought he was a bright, capable sort of a boy, if he would only keep out of mischief. But I suspect his parents never had much control over him, and if that’s the case, they are as much to be blamed as pitied.”
After conversing a while longer on Oscar’s case, Mr. Davenport told Clinton he had better not mention the subject out of the family, as it might reach the ears of Jerry’s mother, and make her feel unpleasantly. He also told Clinton he had concluded to let him go to Boston in October, and that he might write to either his Uncle Clinton or to his Cousin Willie, and inform them of the fact. He also directed him to invite Willie to come and spend his summer vacation with him, and to extend the same invitation to the rest of the family. Clinton accordingly wrote, a few days after, directing the letter to his uncle, whose long epistle, he thought, was entitled to an answer.
Clinton continued his daily labors in the garden, which now began to give tokens of a fair harvest. He set apart a portion of each day to this business, and was always to be found engaged at his work, when the set hour arrived. While weeding the beds, and hoeing the corn and potatoes, and training the pea and bean vines, his thoughts often wandered far away,—sometimes to Jerry, now probably near the end of his voyage; and sometimes to the little stone cell in which Oscar was awaiting his trial.