and I dare say my face may have shown it, for, glancing at me, he said
demurely, "Thee has seen in thy lifetime how hard it is to get rid of
what thee liked in thy days of boyhood." After which he added no more in
the way of explanation, but walked along with swift strides and a dark
and troubled face, silent and thoughtful.

Sometimes in the early morning I walked to my place of business with Mr.
Schmidt, who was a man so altogether unlike those about him that I found
in him a new and varied interest. He was a German, and spoke English
with a certain quaintness and with the purity of speech of one who has
learned the tongue from books rather than from men. I learned after a
while that this guess of mine was a good one, and that, having been bred
an artist, he had been put in prison for some political offence, and had
in two years of loneliness learned English from our older authors. When
at last he was set free he took his little property and came away with a
bitter heart to our freer land, where, with what he had and with the
lessons he gave in drawing, he was well able to live the life he liked
in quiet ease and comfort. He was a kindly man in his ways, and in his
talk gently cynical; so that, although you might be quite sure as to
what he would do, you were never as safe as to what he would say;
wherefore to know him a little was to dislike him, but to know him well
was to love him. There was a liking between him and Wholesome, but each
was more or less a source of wonderment to the other. Nor was it long
before I saw that both these men in their way were patient lovers of the
quiet and pretty Quaker dame who ruled over our little household, though
to the elder man, Mr. Schmidt, she was a being at whose feet he laid a
homage which he felt to be hopeless of result, while he was schooled by
sorrowful fortunes to accept the position as one which he hardly even
wished to change.