nding
through the partition?

"Well, sir, that policeman was a long time a-coming with the old Quaker.
I never knowed why; but Friend Amelia she set down again and turned over
the leaves of Barclay and begun oncet more to read about Salutations and
Recreations while, strange as it may seem to you, sir, I felt that I'd
rather see the policeman and be locked up in a dungeon than to hear more
of it.

"But, howsomdever, after a while in comes the Quaker and the officer
with him, and the very first minute the officer seen me he says:

"'I reckernize him as an old offender.'

"'No you don't!' says I; 'I'm no old offender nor a young offender. I'm
a perfeckly honest Baptist plumber, and I kin prove it, too.'

"'How kin you prove it?' says the officer.

"'By William Jones,' says I, 'who is a-setting in that kitchen right
next door, a-wooing the hired girl.'

"I was bold about it, sir, because I knowed William Jones daresn't
strike at me while the officer was there.

"'We'll see about that,' says the officer, and in he goes to Mr.
Muffitt's yard next door and comes back with William Jones. I have no
use for a man like William Jones. What do you think he does, sir? Why,
he looks me over, from head to foot, in a blank sort of a way, and then,
turning to the policeman, he says: 'I don't know the man, officer; never
seen him before'; then that low-down plumber walks out and leaves me
there and goes back, and in a minute I hear him and Bella Dougherty
a-laughing worse than ever.

"'I thought not,' says the officer, slipping the handcuffs on me, 'and
so now you come right along.' And Friend Amelia looked mournful at me
and says to me she would come around regular and read Barclay to me in
my cell after I was convicted.

"And so, sir, to make a long story short, I was took up before the
magistrate and held for burglary, and my mate, George Watkins, went my
bail and so I was let go.

"I might stop here, sir, but I must tell you that the following Thursday
I met William Jones up a kind of a blind alley where I was working,
while he was working in a house on the opposite side. He had me in a
corner where there was no chance to run, so I put on a bold face and
went right up to him and says:

"'William, there's been some differences betwixt us, but I'm not the man
to bear grudges and I forgive you."

"'What's that?' says he, savage.

"'Why,' says I, 'the whole thing is just one of them unpleasant
misunderstandings'; and t