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hesitating and confused; then walked slowly away.
But after taking a few steps, he turned back and said, ‘Where can I find you, if I should ever be able to make restitution for the wrong I have done?’
Charles replied, ‘I trust thou dost not intend to jest with me, after all the trouble thou hast caused me?’
‘No, indeed I do not,’ answered the stranger.
‘I hope to repay you, some time or other.’
‘Very well,’ rejoined the Friend, ‘if thou ever hast anything for me, thou canst leave it with Isaac T. Hopper, at the corner of Walnut and Dock streets.’
Thus they parted, and never met again.
About a year after, Friend Hopper found a letter on his desk, addressed to Charles Carey.
When it was delivered to him, he was surprised to find that it came from the man who had stolen the horse, and contained twenty dollars. A few months later, another letter containing the same sum, was left in the same way. Not long after, a third letter arrived, enclosing twenty dollars; the whole forming a sum sufficient to repay both principal and interest of the money which the kind-hearted Quaker had lost by his dishonesty.
This last letter stated that the writer had no thoughts of stealing the horse ten minutes before he did it. After he had sold him, he was so haunted by
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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