ed such a definite form that Friend Mitchenor brought them to the
notice of his family.

"I met Josiah Comly in the road," said he, one day at dinner. "He's
just come from Philadelphia, and brings bad news of Richard Hilton. He's
taken to drink, and is spending in wickedness the money his father left
him. His friends have a great concern about him, but it seems he's not
to be reclaimed."

Abigail looked imploringly at her husband, but he either disregarded
or failed to understand her look. Asenath, who had grown very pale,
steadily met her father's gaze, and said, in a tone which he had never
yet heard from her lips--

"Father, will thee please never mention Richard Hilton's name when I am
by?"

The words were those of entreaty, but the voice was that of authority.
The old man was silenced by a new and unexpected power in his daughter's
heart: he suddenly felt that she was not a girl, as heretofore, but a
woman, whom he might persuade, but could no longer compel.

"It shall be as thee wishes, Asenath," he said; "we had best forget
him."

Of their friends, however, she could not expect this reserve, and she
was doomed to hear stories of Richard which clouded and embittered her
thoughts of him. And a still severer trial was in store. She accompanied
her father, in obedience to his wish, and against her own desire, to the
Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. It has passed into a proverb that the
Friends, on these occasions, always bring rain with them; and the period
of her visit was no exception to the rule. The showery days of "Yearly
Meeting Week" glided by, until the last, and she looked forward with
relief to the morrow's return to Bucks County, glad to have escaped a
meeting with Richard Hilton, which might have confirmed her fears and
could but have given her pain in any case.

As she and her father joined each other, outside the meeting-house, at
the close of the afternoon meeting, a light rain was falling. She took
his arm, under the capacious umbrella, and they were soon alone in the
wet streets, on their way to the house of the Friends who entertained
them. At a crossing, where the water pouring down the gutter towards
the Delaware, caused them to halt a man, plashing through the flood,
staggered towards them. Without an umbrella, with dripping, disordered
clothes, yet with a hot, flushed face, around which the long black hair
hung wildly, he approached, singing to himself with maudlin voice a
song that woul