and tired out
some one with his noise, he would go off in triumph, and say to the
bystanders as he went, "There, lads, you see he hadn't a word to say for
himself"; and truly a clever fellow must he have been who could have got
a word in edgeways when Johnny had once fairly got his steam up, and was
shrinking and storming like a cat-o'-mountain.

Yet had anybody told Johnny that he was no Quaker, he would have
"threeped them down" that they did not know what a Quaker meant. What!
were not his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather
before him all Quakers? Was not he born in the Society, brought up in
it? Hadn't he attended first-day, week-day, preparative, monthly,
quarterly, and sometimes yearly meetings too, all his life? Had not he
regularly and handsomely subscribed to the monthly, and the national,
and the Ackworth School Stocks? Had he not been on all sorts of
appointments; to visit new members, new comers into the meeting; to warn
disorderly walkers; nay, had he not sate even on committees in London at
yearly meetings? Had he not received and travelled with ministers when
they came on religious visits into these parts? Had he not taken them in
his tax-cart to the next place, and been once upset in a deep and dirty
lane with a weighty ministering friend, and dislocated his collar-bone?

What? He not a Quaker! Was George Fox one, did they think; or William
Penn, or Robert Barclay, indeed?

Johnny Darbyshire _was_ a Quaker. He had the dress, and address, and all
the outward testimonies and marks of a Quaker; nay, he was more; he was
an overseer of the meeting, and broke up the meetings. Yes, and he would
have them to know that he executed his office well. Ay, well indeed;
without clock to look at, or without pulling out his watch, or being
within hearing of any bell, or any other thing that could guide him, he
would sit on the front seat of his meeting where not a word was spoken,
exactly for an hour and three quarters to a minute, and then break it up
by shaking hands with the Friend who sate next to him. Was not that an
evidence of a religious tact and practice? And had not the Friends once
when he was away, just like people in a ship which had lost both rudder
and compass, gone drifting in unconsciousness from ten in the morning
till three in the afternoon, and would not then have known that it was
time to break up the meeting, but that somebody's servant was sent to
see what had happened, and wh