But the Quaker has not conquered without struggling, and he has not always conquered at any sacrifice. Twice, the old men of the Revolution used to tell us, the _Pater Patriæ_ was known to vent words of even profane anger--once, when the Continental troops failed him on the day of Long Island, and again, when Lee disappointed his just expectations and almost broke his line of battle at Monmouth. These were the two great exceptions proving the rule of his habitual self-command and his religious purity of speech; and the occasional outburst of anger in the Quaker blood may be held to illustrate the same self-control--to prove its abiding existence by the weight of the shock which momentarily throws it into confusion. The face of Nathan Bladesden showed, as Eleanor Hill spoke the last words already recorded, a mental conflict to which he was evidently little accustomed. The calm cheek flushed, the smooth brow corrugated, and the dark eye was for the moment so nearly fierce that the purity of the Quaker blood might well have been doubted. And when she had finished, the lips of the merchant uttered words, at which words themselves and their tone the speaker would equally have shuddered half an hour before: "Doctor Philip Pomeroy is an infernal scoundrel--unfit to live! He deserves to be killed, and I could kill him with my own hands!" "Ha!" It was something like a cry of joy from the lips of the poor girl. "Oh, I am so glad! You know this man--you hate him--you have only been trying me--you----" and her brow and cheeks glowed with excitement as she looked up in the Quaker's face. Then her eyes fell again, for she did not read there what she had been led to expect by his words. There was anger, but no pity; and even the anger was dying out under the strong habit of self-control, as rapidly as the momentary glow of a slight conflagration goes down under the dense volume of water poured upon it by the engine. "Thee mistakes me, Eleanor Hill!" he said. "I may follow the evil ways of the world's people so far as to hate the bad man who has ruined thee, but I have been speaking to thee in all earnest. I have not been 'trying thee,' as thee calls it. I pity thee, truly, and would help thee, but--" "But in the only way in which you _could_ help me, Nathan Bladesden, by lifting me out of this horrible pit in which my feet are sinking lower and lower every day in defiance of all my struggles and all my prayers--you desert me and leave me to perish. I understand you at last, and God help you and me!" "Thee knows I cannot marry thee, Eleanor Hill, after what has passed," said the Quaker, apologetically.