at his new friend knew and
understood everything that had happened to him, all his life long;
that there was no need to tell him anything, or to explain anything.

Of an older friendship between two men it was written, 'Thy love to me
was wonderful, passing the love of women.' Thus it proved once more in
that crowded dungeon. No details remain of the interview; no record of
what James said, or what George said. No one else could have reported
what passed between them, and, though each of them has left a mention
of their first meeting, the silence remains unbroken.

The Journal says merely: 'While I was in ye dungeon at Carlisle, a
little boy, one James Parnell, about fifteen years old, came to me,
and he was convinced and came to be a very fine minister and turned
many to Christ.'

The boy's own account is shorter still. He does not even mention
George Fox by name. 'I was called for,' he says, 'to visit some
friends in the North part of England, with whom I had union before I
saw their faces, and afterwards I returned to my outward
dwelling-place.'

His 'outward dwelling-place': the lad's frail body might tramp back
along the weary miles to Retford; his spirit remained in the North,
freely imprisoned with his friend.

'George' and 'James' were brothers in heart, ever after that short
interview in Carlisle Gaol: united in one inseparable purpose. While
George was confined, James, the free brother, must carry forward
George's work. Triumphantly he did it. By the following year he had
earned his place right well among the 'Valiant Sixty' who were then
sent forth, 'East and West and South and North,' to 'Publish Truth.'

The Eastern Counties, hitherto almost unbroken ground, fell to James's
share. Assisted by two other 'Valiants,' Richard Hubberthorne and
George Whitehead, the seed was scattered throughout the length and
breadth of East Anglia. Within three short years 'gallant Meetings'
were already gathered and settled everywhere.

James Parnell was the first Quaker preacher to enter the city of
Colchester, which was soon to rank third among the strongholds of
Quakerism. This boy of eighteen, still so small and delicate in
appearance that his enemies taunted him with the name of 'little
Quaking lad,' has left an account of one of his first crowded days of
work in that city. In the morning, he says, he received any of the
townspeople who were minded to come and ask him questions at his
lodgings. He was a guest, at