or
David keeping his sheep among the folds of Bethlehem.

When my father came home he found me waiting in my place at table. He
only said, "Thee art better then, my son?" But I knew how glad he was
to see me. He gave token of this by being remarkably conversible over
our meal--though, as usual, his conversation had a sternly moral tone,
adapted to the improvement of what he persisted in considering my
"infant" mind. It had reference to an anecdote Dr. Jessop had just
been telling him--about a little girl, one of our doctor's patients,
who in some passionate struggle had hurt herself very much with a knife.

"Let this be a warning to thee, my son, not to give way to violent
passions." (My good father, thought I, there is little fear.) "For,
this child--I remember her father well, for he lived at Kingswell here;
he was violent too, and much given to evil ways before he went
abroad--Phineas, this child, this miserable child, will bear the mark
of the wound all her life."

"Poor thing!" said I, absently.

"No need to pity her; her spirit is not half broken yet. Thomas Jessop
said to me, 'That little Ursula--'"

"Is her name Ursula?" And I called to mind the little girl who had
tried to give some bread to the hungry John Halifax, and whose cry of
pain we heard as the door shut upon her. Poor little lady! how sorry I
was. I knew John would be so infinitely sorry too--and all to no
purpose--that I determined not to tell him anything about it. The next
time I saw Dr. Jessop I asked him after the child, and learned she had
been taken away somewhere, I forgot where; and then the whole affair
slipped from my memory.

"Father," said I, when he ceased talking--and Jael, who always ate her
dinner at the same time and table as ourselves, but "below the salt,"
had ceased nodding a respectful running comment on all he
said--"Father?"

"Well, my son."

"I should like to go with thee to the tan-yard this afternoon."

Here Jael, who had been busy pulling back the table, replacing the long
row of chairs, and re-sanding the broad centre Sahara of the room to
its dreary, pristine aridness, stopped, fairly aghast with amazement.

"Abel--Abel Fletcher! the lad's just out of his bed; he is no more fit
to--"

"Pshaw, woman!" was the sharp answer. "So, Phineas, thee art really
strong enough to go out?"

"If thou wilt take me, father."

He looked pleased, as he always did when I used the Friends' mode of
phraseology--f