It was not till some days afterwards, I being then much stronger, and my arm having sunk to something like its normal size, and I feeling little after effects from my wound, save a most voracious appetite that Ruth condescended to tell me her reasons for acquitting the Bill's o' Jack's folk of having part or parcel in the attack I had been so rudely treated. It seemed that on the afternoon of the day I had been discovered propped against the Manse, Ruth had sallied forth in a blinding snowstorm to fetch from Dr. Dean's surgery in Slaithwaite the potions and lotions he had prescribed. And not far from Pole Moor, evidently waiting about on the chance of waylaying anyone who left the parson's house, she had come across the shrinking form of Miriam, looking, as Ruth declared, more like a sheeted ghost than a human being, so shrouded was she in the fallen flakes, white her face, so piteous and "feart" her eyes. "Oh, Ruth, at last, at last; I thought no one would ever come! How is he, how is he? Will he get better? What does the doctor say?" Miriam had cried. "And how do you know our Abe's badly, I should like to know," Ruth had answered tartly, for one may be sure she was in none the best of tempers, and small blame to her. "Oh, Ruth, dear, dear Ruth, don't speak unkindly to me. I'm sure I've enough to bear without you turning on me," and here, it seemed, poor Miriam, who was not one of your crying sort, had fairly broken down, and Ruth, all there on the lone road and in the blinding snow, had put her arm round the swaying form, and Miriam had sobbed out her story on Ruth's gentle breast.