Publisher's Synopsis
"No boy has ears keen enough to hear a woman who is speaking fifty miles away from him. Nevertheless, Jim might have been glad to hear what a woman was saying, in a farmhouse away up the Hudson, at the very moment when the battalion he was in was halted in front of the wall. She was a kindly faced, middle aged woman, and she was speaking with more energy than seemed naturally to belong to her, for she did not look energetic."John Bronson," she said, "I suppose you did what you thought was right, but I never did believe Jim took that money!""Well!" sharply responded a large, heavy looking man, who sat near her. "You are all wrong! Nobody else could possibly have taken it. The court said so. Jim was the[21] only one who could have got at it, anyhow. Besides, he was seen a spending money in the village, too. He took it.""I'll never believe it!" she said. "I don't care how they made it look. He never confessed it, either.""Jim always was obstinate, and you know it," said her husband, sternly. "He never would give in. The House of Refuge men'll bring him to his senses, though. He'll learn something, there.""He has been there a whole year," she said, sadly enough. "O, how I want to see him, sometimes!"Something else cut off the talk about Jim, at that point. He did not hear the remarks of Aunt Betty, or Uncle John, but it was just as impossible for any boy or girl on Randall's Island, -for there were many girls there, -to have heard what people were saying, over in the great city, so near at hand. Part of that city of New York is on Manhattan Island, but a larger part, with not[22] nearly so many people in it, is on the mainland, above the arm of the sea known as Harlem River. It begins just above the upper end of Randall's Island
