by the man who had struck him.  In the short struggle which ensued the plank was pulled away from the ship’s side, and fell just as Wholesome was about to move down it.  He uttered an oath, caught at a loose rope which hung from a yard, tried it to see if it was fast, went up it hand over hand a few feet, set a foot on the bulwarks, and swung himself fiercely back across the ship, and then, with the force thus gained, flew far in air above the wharf, and dropping lightly on to a pile of hogs-heads, leapt without a word to the ground, and struck out with easy power at the man he sought, who fell as if a butcher’s mallet had stunned him—­fell, and lay as one dead.  The whole action would have been amazing in any man, but to see a Quaker thus suddenly shed his false skin and come out the true man he was, was altogether bewildering—­the more so for the easy grace with which the feat was done.  Everybody ran forward, while Wholesome stood a strange picture, his eyes wide open and his pupils dilated, his face flushed and lips a little apart, showing his set white teeth while he awaited his foe.  Then, as the man rallied and sat up, staring widely, Wholesome ran forward and looked at him, waving the crowd aside.  In a moment, as the man rose still bewildered, his gaze fell on Wholesome, and, growing suddenly white, he sat down on a bundle of staves, saying faintly, “Take him away!  Don’t let him come near!”

“Coward!” said I:  “one might have guessed that.”

“There is to him,” said Schmidt at my elbow, “some great mortal fear; the soul is struck.”

“Yes,” said Wholesome, “the soul is struck.  Some one help him”—­for the man had fallen over in something like a fit—­and so saying strode away, thoughtful and disturbed in face, as one who had seen a ghost.

As he entered the counting-house through the group of dignified old merchants, who had come out to see what it all meant, one of them said, “Pretty well for a Quaker, friend Richard!”

Wholesome did not seem to hear him, but walked in, drank a glass of wine which stood on a table, and sat down silently.

“Not the first feat of that kind he has done,” said the elder of the wine-tasters.

“No,” said a sea-captain near by.  “He boarded the Penelope 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.”