There is a well-known and authentic story of Barclay's adventure with a robber, which is often quoted by Friends in support of their belief in non-resistance to evil. He had been to London, and had left one of his sons at Theobalds, where his old friend George Keith had set up a school. One morning his wife noticed that he looked thoughtful, and asked the reason. He replied that he believed some uncommon trial would that day befal the company. They set out on their journey, and met with the not uncommon incident in those days near London--an attack from highwaymen. One of these presented his pistol at Robert Barclay, who with calm self-possession took him by the arm, and asked him how he came to be so rude. The robber dropped his pistol, and became quiet as a lamb. Mrs. Barclay's brother was not so fortunate, he was robbed; and one of the four members of the party, a Dutchman named Sonmans, accidentally received a wound in his thigh from which he died. Surely the father never showed more coolness under fire than did the son when suddenly confronted by such danger.[28] [28] The incident is thus told more fully and picturesquely by Wilson Armistead. "Calm and self-possessed, he looked the robber in the face, with a firm but meek benignity, assured him he was his and every man's friend, that he was willing and ready to relieve his wants; that he was free from the fear of death through a divine hope of immortality, and therefore was not to be intimidated by a deadly weapon, and then appealed to him whether he could find in his heart to shed the blood of one who had no other feeling or purpose but to do him good. The robber was confounded; his eye melted; his brawny arm trembled; his pistol dropped out of his hand on to the ground, and he fled from the presence of the non-resistant hero whom he could no longer confront." Mr. Armistead's memoir was published long after the publication of the contemporary letters which give the simpler narrative; the reader must take his choice.