a worse beast, and taught him more hatred.
And he of all men!"

"There is much salvation in some mistakes," said Schmidt smiling.

Just then we were stopped by two middle-aged Friends in drab of orthodox
tint, from which now-a-days Friends have much fallen away into gay
browns and blacks. They asked a question or two about an insurance on
one of our ships; and then the elder said, "Thee hand seems bleeding,
friend Richard;" which was true: he had cut his knuckles on his
opponent's teeth, and around them had wrapped hastily a handkerchief
which showed stains of blood here and there.

"Ach!" said Schmidt, hastening to save his friend annoyance. "He ran
against something.--And how late is it! Let us go."

But Wholesome, who would have no man lie ever so little for his benefit,
said quietly, "I hurt it knocking a man down;" and now for the first
time to-day I observed the old amused look steal over his handsome face
and set it a-twitching with some sense of humor as he saw the shock
which went over the faces of the two elders when we bade them
good-morning and turned away.

Wholesome walked on ahead quickly, and as it seemed plain that he would
be alone, we dropped behind.

"What is all this?" said I. "Does a man grieve thus because he chastises
a scoundrel?"

"No," said Schmidt. "The Friend Wholesome was, as you may never yet
know, an officer of the navy, and when your war being done he comes
here. There is a beautiful woman whom he must fall to loving, and this
with some men being a grave disorder, he must go and spoil a good
natural man with the clothes of a Quaker, seeing that what the woman did
was good in his sight."

"But," said I, "I don't understand."

"No," said he; "yet you have read of Eve and Adam. Sometimes they give
us good apples and sometimes bad. This was a russet, as it were, and at
times the apple disagrees with him for that with the new apple he got
not a new stomach."

I laughed a little, but said, "This is not all. There was something
between him and the man he struck which we do not yet know. Did you see
him?"

"Yes, and before this--last week some time in the market-place. He was
looking at old Dinah's tub of white lilies when I noticed him, and to me
came a curious thinking of how he was so unlike them, many people having
for me flower-likeness, and this man, being of a yellow swarthiness and
squat-browed, 'minded me soon of the toadstool you call a corpse-light."

"Perhaps we shall