Friends' meeting."

"Considering that the old fellow was eighty and probably felt like
quitting, seems as if your father was rubbing it in just a little."

"Perhaps he was a mite harsh, but there is another side of it. There
were only three of us left of the Friends' society to go to the old
meeting-house on First Day so that it might not be said that after one
hundred years we had allowed the society of the fathers to perish in
our town. Thee may have noted that my father and I still use the plain
language, keeping up the ways of the founders. My father sat at the head
of the meeting, my Uncle Joachim was next to him on the facing seat. I
am the only worshiper. I am not fitted to be a minister. My father, when
Joachim died, had no one with whom to exchange the hand-shake at the end
of the meeting."

"And now he's losing his congregation?"

"Yes, my friend, and so my father blames me for going, just as he blamed
Uncle Joachim for dying. He has the meeting much at heart."

"What will he do for a crowd after you go away?"

"He will continue to sit at the head of the meeting, sir."

There was silence between them for some time. The blacksmith clanked on
his way sturdily.

"He will still sit at the head of the meeting! Only a little fire is
left there, sir, but he will not allow it to go out as long as he is