"Well, dear, if father _had_ insisted and had sent thee away, I can't say
but life would have been a very different thing to me."

"I thank thee for saying it, Rachel." Friend Barton's head drooped. "Thee
has suffered much through me; thee's had a hard life, but thee's been well
beloved."

The flames leaped and flickered in the chimney; they touched the wrinkled
hands whose only beauty was in their deeds; they crossed the room and lit
the pillows where, for three generations, young heads had dreamed and gray
heads had watched and wearied; then they mounted to the chimney and struck
a gleam from the sword.

"Well, father," said Rachel, "what answer is thee going to give Walter
Evesham?"

"I shall say no more, my dear. Let the young folks have their way. There's
strife and contention enough in the world without my stirring up more. And
it may be I'm resisting the Master's will. I left her in his care; this may
be his way of dealing with her."

Walter Evesham did not take down his grandfather's sword. Fifty years later
another went up beside it, the sword of a young Evesham who never left the
field of Shiloh; and beneath them both hangs the portrait of the Quaker
grandmother, Dorothy Evesham, at the age of sixty-nine.

The golden ripples, silver now, are hidden under a "round-eared cap;" the
quick flush has faded in her cheek, and fold upon fold of snowy gauze and
creamy silk are crossed over the bosom that once thrilled to the fiddles of