Almost every member, young and old, showed by his manner or some little act of attention that their sympathies were with the exile.

While a few strait-laced old Quakers maintained that it was criminal to blaze away at your fellow-man with the firm intention of blowing the top of his head off, and that Harry should have been hung had Willits died, there were others more discerning--and they were largely in the majority--who stood up for the lad however much they deplored the cause of his banishment.

Harry, they argued, had in his brief career been an unbroken colt, and more or less dissipated, but he at least had not shown the white feather.

Boy as he was, he had faced his antagonist with the coolness of a duellist of a score of encounters, letting Willits fire straight at him without so much as the wink of an eyelid; and, when it was all over, had been man enough to nurse his victim back to consciousness.

Moreover--and this counted much in his favor--he had refused to quarrel with his irate father, or even answer him.