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.