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Chapter 2 In Town l As they walked through town, Eli was very aware of people stopping, staring, and pointing. He was glad Jim didn’t abandon him. He could remember more than once, when he was a boy, being abandoned by friends when things got rough. He could especially remember when some friends had talked him into throwing eggs at the carriage of the duke and, when all of them got caught, the other boys blamed it all on him and let him take it alone. His father met with the duke and worked out a deal for him to clean out the duke’s stables as punishment. None of his friends helped him then, either. But Jim was more than a friend. He was almost family. Jim didn’t ever seem to care what people thought of him. He had an ability to take what people said and ignore it more than anyone Eli knew. Of course, Eli knew Jim had the ability to ignore advice that he probably should listen to. Eli could remember the day he, himself, had stepped off of the ship in Newfoundland. He had planned to go to Pennsylvania and join the Quakers, like his mother had wanted, but their ship had gotten into a major storm that had blown them far off course. Upon entering port, he wasn’t even sure where he was, but, somehow, he felt God had brought him here, and, if God wanted him here, here he would stay. He had no food to continue on to Pennsylvania, anyway. His food had run out during the last few days of the voyage while 25