John
Halifax. We are secure, I think."

Secure? bolts and bars secure against fire? For that was threatening
us now.

"They can't mean it--surely they can't mean it," repeated John, as the
cry of "Burn 'un out!" rose louder and louder.

But they did mean it. From the attic window we watched them light
torch after torch, sometimes throwing one at the house,--but it fell
harmless against the staunch oaken door, and blazed itself out on our
stone steps. All it did was to show more plainly than even daylight
had shown, the gaunt, ragged forms and pinched faces, furious with
famine.

John, as well as I, recoiled at that miserable sight.

"I'll speak to them," he said. "Unbar the window, Jael;" and before I
could hinder, he was leaning right out. "Holloa, there!"

At his loud and commanding voice a wave of up-turned faces surged
forward, expectant.

"My men, do you know what you are about? To burn down a gentleman's
house is--hanging."

There was a hush, and then a shout of derision.

"Not a Quaker's! nobody'll get hanged for burning out a Quaker!"

"That be true enough," muttered Jael between her teeth. "We must e'en
fight, as Mordecai's people fought, hand to hand, until they slew their
enemies."

"Fight!" repeated John, half to himself, as he stood at the now-closed
window, against which more than one blazing torch began to rattle.
"Fight--with these?--What are you doing, Jael?"

For she had taken down a large Book--the last Book in the house she
would have taken under less critical circumstances, and with it was
trying to stop up a broken pane.

"No, my good Jael, not this;" and he carefully replaced the volume;
that volume, in which he might have read, as day after day, and year
after year, we Christians generally do read, such plain words as
these--"Love your enemies;" "bless them that curse you;" "pray for them
that despitefully use you and persecute you."

A minute or two John stood with his hand on the Book, thinking. Then
he touched me on the shoulder.

"Phineas, I'm going to try a new plan--at least, one so old, that it's
almost new. Whether it succeeds or no, you'll bear me witness to your
father that I did it for the best, and did it because I thought it
right. Now for it."

To my horror, he threw up the window wide, and leant out.

"My men, I want to speak to you."

He might as well have spoken to the roaring sea. The only answer was a
shower of missiles, which missed their