g them, of course, was the widow Lynch, who was quick to note that
events were taking a favourable turn. Springing boldly to the side of
the smith, and, in her wild dishevelment of hair and attire, seeming a
not unfit companion, she cried--

"Don't spare them, John! sure there's another inimy close at yer back."

Nobbs had sense enough left to observe something of the ludicrous in the
woman and her advice. He turned at once, uttered a wildly jovial laugh,
and driving in the head of another cask, overturned it. As before, the
spirit rushed down the hill and was set ablaze, but the poor madman did
not pause now to look at the result. His great enemy was in his power;
his spirit was roused. Like one of the fabled heroes of old, he laid
about him with his ponderous weapon right and left until every cask was
smashed, and every drop of the accursed liquid was rushing down the
hillside to the sea, or flaming out its fierce existence in the air.

The people looked on awe-stricken, and in silence, while the madman
fought. It was not with the senseless casks or the inanimate liquor
that poor John Nobbs waged war that night; it was with a real fiend who,
in days gone by, had many a time tripped him up and laid him low, who
had nearly crushed the heart of his naturally cheerful little wife, who
had ruined his business, broken up his home, alienated his friends, and,
finally, driven him into exile--a fiend from whom, for many months,
under the influence of "the pledge," he had been free, and who, he had
fondly hoped, was quite dead.

This sudden revival of the old foe, and this unexpected surprise and
fall, had roused this strong man's spirit to its utmost ferocity, and in
mighty wrath he plied his hammer like a second Thor. But the very
strength and nervous power of the man constituted his weakness, when
brought under the subtle influence of the old tempter, and it is
probable that on his recovery, with nerves shaken, old cravings
awakened, and self-respect gone, he would have fallen again and again if
God had not made use of the paroxysm of rage to destroy the opportunity
and the cause of evil. Nobbs did not know at that time, though he
learned it afterwards, that safety from the drink-sin--as from all other
sin--lies not in strong-man resolutions, or Temperance pledges, though
both are useful aids, but in Jesus, the Saviour _from sin_.

Some of those who witnessed the wholesale destruction of the liquor
would fain hav