nelope in that
fashion during the war, and as he lit on her deck cleared a space with
his cutlass till the boarding-party joined him."

"With his cutlass?" said I. "Then he was not always a Quaker?"

"No," said our senior: "they don't learn these gymnastics at Fourth and
Arch, though perchance the committee may have a word to say about it."

"Quaker or not," said the wine-taster, "I wish any of you had legs as
good or a heart as sound. Very good body, not too old, and none the
worse for a Quaker fining."

"That's the longest sentence I ever heard Wilton speak," said a young
fellow aside to me; "and, by Jove! he is right."

I went back into the counting-house, and was struck with the grim
sadness of face of our junior partner. He had taken up a paper and
affected to be reading, but, as I saw, was staring into space. Our
senior said something to him about Old Tom, but he answered in an absent
way, as one who half hears or half heeds. In a few moments he looked up
at the clock, which was on the stroke of twelve, and seeing me ready,
hat in hand, to return home for our one-o'clock dinner, he gathered
himself up, as it were, limb by limb, and taking his wide-brimmed hat
brushed it absently with his sleeve. Then he looked at it a moment with
a half smile, put it on decisively and went out and away up Arch street
with swifter and swifter strides. By and by he said, "You do not walk as
well as usual."

"But," said I, "no one could keep up with you."

"Do not try to: leave a sore man to nurse his hurts. I suppose you saw
my folly on the wharf--saw how I forgot myself?"

"Ach!" said Schmidt, who had toiled after us hot and red, and who now
slipped his quaint form in between us--"Ach! 'You forgot yourself.' This
say you. I do think you did remember your true self for a time this
morning."

"Hush! I am a man ashamed. Let us talk no more of it. I have ill kept my
faith," returned Wholesome impatiently.

"You may believe God doth not honor an honest man," said Schmidt; "which
is perhaps a God Quaker, not the God I see to myself."

I had so far kept my peace, noting the bitter self-reproach of
Wholesome, and having a lad's shyness before an older man's calamity;
but now I said indignantly, "If it be Friends' creed to see the poor and
old and feeble hurt without raising a hand, let us pray to be saved from
such religion."

"But," said Wholesome, "I should have spoken to him in kindness first.
Now I have only made of him