worship God after their own fashion within
those walls for more than two hundred years.

* * * * *

Before ever this had come to pass, and while the Quakers of Newcastle
were still without an assembling place on their own side of the river,
it happened that a certain man among them, named Robert Jeckel, being
nigh unto death (though as yet he knew it not), was seized with a
vehement desire to behold George Fox yet once more in the flesh, since
full sixteen years had gone by since his visit to the town.

Wherefore this same Robert Jeckel, hearing that his beloved friend was
now again to be found at Swarthmoor, dwelling there in much seclusion,
seeking to regain the strength that had been sorely wasted in long and
terrible imprisonments,--this man, Robert Jeckel, would no longer be
persuaded or gainsaid, but set out at once with several others, who
were like-minded and desirous to come as speedily as might be to
Swarthmoor.

In good heart they set forth, but that same day, and before they had
come even as far as unto Hexham, Robert Jeckel was seized with a sore
sickness, whereat his friends entreated him to return the way he came
to his own home and tender wife. But he refused to be dissuaded and
would still press forward. At many other places by the way he was ill
and suffering, yet he would not be satisfied to turn back or to stop
until he should arrive at Swarthmoor. And thither after many days of
sore travel he came.

The Mistress of Swarthmoor was now no longer Margaret Fell but
Margaret Fox. Eight full years after the death of her honoured
husband, Judge Fell, and after long waiting to be sure that the thing
was from the Lord, she had been united in marriage with her beloved
friend, George Fox, unto whom she was ever a most loving and dutiful
wife. Therefore, when Robert Jeckel arrived with his friends before
the high arched stone gateway that led into the avenue that
approacheth Swarthmoor Hall, it was Mistress Fox, who, with her
husband, came to meet their guests. Close behind followed her youngest
daughter, Rachel Fell, the Seventh Sister of Swarthmoor Hall. She, the
Judge's pet and plaything in her childhood, was now a woman grown.
Seeing by Robert Jeckel's countenance that he was sorely stricken,
Mistress Fox led him straight to the fair guest chamber of Swarthmoor,
where she and her daughter nursed him with their wonted tenderness and
skill, hoping thus, if it might be, to