I was not proud; nay, I was most thankful. I took the meat, and boiled some broth for my poor Nelly. She was in a sleep, or a faint, I know not which; but I roused her, and held her up in bed, and fed her with a teaspoon, and the light came back to her eyes, and the faint moonlight smile to her lips; and when she had ended, she said her innocent grace, and fell asleep with her baby on her breast. I sat over the fire, and listened to the bells, as they swept past my cottage on the gusts of the wind. I longed and yearned for the second coming of Christ, of which Nelly had told me. The world seemed cruel, and hard, and strong, too strong for me; and I prayed to cling to the hem of his garment, and be borne over the rough places when I fainted and bled, and found no man to pity or help me, but poor old Jonah the publican and sinner. All this time my own woes and my own self were uppermost in my mind, as they are in the minds of most who have been hardly used. As I thought of my wrongs and my sufferings, my heart burned against Dick Jackson; and as the bells rose and fell, so my hopes waxed and waned, that in those mysterious days of which they were both the remembrance and the prophecy, he would be purged from off the earth. I took Nelly's Bible, and turned, not to the gracious story of the Saviour's birth, but to the records of the former days when the Jews took such wild revenge upon all their opponents. I was a Jew--a leader among the people. Dick Jackson was as Pharaoh, as the King Agag, who walked delicately, thinking the bitterness of death was past--in short, he was the conquered enemy over whom I gloated, with my Bible in my hand--that Bible which contained our Saviour's words on the Cross. As yet, those words seemed faint and meaningless to me, like a tract of country seen in the starlight haze; while the histories of the Old Testament were grand and distinct in the blood-red color of sunset. By-and-by that night passed into day; and little piping voices came round, carol-singing. They wakened Nelly. I went to her as soon as I heard her stirring. "Nelly," said I, "there's money and food in the house; I will be off to Padiham seeking work, while thou hast something to go upon."