We told him we did intend, if he did not otherwise dispose of us, to spend that night with our friend Isaac Penington, and would, if the Lord gave us leave, be there in the morning, ready to answer his requirings. Whereupon he dismissed us all, willing, as we thought, to be rid of us; for he seemed not to be of an ill temper, nor desirous to put us to trouble, if he could help it. Back then we went to Isaac Penington’s. But when we were come thither, oh the work we had with poor John Ovy! He was so dejected in mind, so covered with shame and confusion of face for his cowardliness, that we had enough to do to pacify him towards himself. The place he had found out to shelter himself in was so commodiously contrived, that undiscovered he could discern when the soldiers went off with us, and understand when the bustle was over and the coast clear. Whereupon he adventured to peep out of his hole, and in a while drew near by degrees to the house again; and finding all things quiet and still, he adventured to step within the doors, and found the Friends who were left behind peaceably settled in the meeting again. The sight of this smote him, and made him sit down among them. And after the meeting was ended, and the Friends departed to their several homes, addressing himself to Mary Penington, as the mistress of the house, he could not enough magnify the bravery and courage of the Friends, nor sufficiently debase himself. He told her how long he had been a professor, what pains he had taken, what hazards he had run, in his youthful days, to get to meetings; how, when the ways were forelaid and passages stopped, he swam through rivers to reach a meeting; and now, said he, that I am grown old in the profession of religion, and have long been an instructor and encourager of others, that I should thus shamefully fall short myself, is matter of shame and sorrow to me. Thus he bewailed himself to her. And when we came back he renewed his complaints of himself to us, with high aggravations of his own cowardice; which gave occasion to some of the Friends tenderly to represent to him the difference between profession and possession, form and power. He was glad, he said, on our behalfs, that we came off so well, and escaped imprisonment. But when he understood that George Whitehead and I were liable to an after-reckoning next morning, he was troubled, and wished the morning was come and gone, that we might be gone with it. We spent the evening in grave conversation and in religious discourses, attributing the deliverance we hitherto had to the Lord. And the next morning, when we were up and had eaten, we tarried some time to see what the Justice would do further with us, and to discharge our engagement to him; the rest of the Friends, who were before fully discharged, tarrying also with us to see the event.