grudged my two-pence a week for schooling.
However, to school I went. It was a different
place to what I had thought it before I went
inside. The girls sat on one side and the boys
on the other; so I was not near Nelly. She
too was in the first class; I was put with the
little toddling things that could hardly run
alone. The master sat in the middle, and kept
pretty strict watch over us. But I could see
Nelly, and hear her read her chapter; and
even when it was one with a long list of hard
names, such as the master was very fond of
giving her, to show how well she could hit
them off without spelling, I thought I had
never heard a prettier music. Now and then
she read other things. I did not know what
they were, true or false; but I listened
because she read; and, by and by, I began to
wonder. I remember the first word I ever
spoke to her was to ask her (as we were
coming out of school) who was the Father of
whom she had been reading, for when she
said the words "Our Father," her voice
dropped into a soft, holy kind of low sound,
which struck me more than any loud reading,
it seemed so loving and tender. When I
asked her this, she looked at me with her
great blue wondering eyes, at first shocked;
and then, as it were, melted down into pity
and sorrow, she said in the same way, below
her breath, in which she read the words " Our
Father,"
" Don't you know? It is God."
" God?"
" Yes; the God that grandmother tells me
about."
" Tell me what she says, will you ? " So
we sat down on the hedge-bank, she a little
above me, while I looked up into her face, and
she told me all the holy texts her grandmother
had taught her, as explaining all that
could be explained of the Almighty. I listened
in silence, for indeed I was overwhelmed with
astonishment. Her knowledge was principally
rote-knowledge; she was too young for much
more; but we, in Lancashire, speak a rough
kind of Bible language, and the texts seemed
very clear to me. I rose up, dazed and
overpowered, I was going away in silence, when
I bethought me of my manners, and turned
back, and said "Thank you," for the first time
I ever remember saying it in my life. That
was a great day for me, in more ways than one.

I was always one who could keep very
steady to an object when once I had set it
before me. My object was to know Nelly. I
was conscious of nothing more. But it made
me regardless of all other things. The master
might scold, the little ones might laugh; I bore
it all without giving it a second thought. I
kept to my year, and came out a reader and
writer; more, however, to stand well in Nelly's
good opinion, than because of my oath. About
this time, my father committed some bad
cruel deed, and had to fly the country. I was
glad he went; for I had never loved or cared
for him, and wanted to shake myself clear of
his set. But it was no easy matter. Honest
folk stood aloof; only bad men held out their
arms to me with a welcome. Even Nelly
seemed to have a mixture of fear now with
her kind ways towards me. I was the son of
John Middleton, who, if he were caught,
would be hung at Lancaster Castle. I thought
she looked at me sometimes with a sort of
sorrowful horror. Others were not forbearing
enough to keep their expression of feeling
confined to looks, The son of the overlooker
at the mill never ceased twitting me with my
father's crime; he now brought up his poaching
against him, though I knew very well
how many a good supper he himself had
made on game which had been given him to
make him and his father wink at late hours
in the morning. And how were such as my
father to come honestly by game?

This lad, Dick Jackson, was the bane of my
life. He was a year or two older than I was,
and had much power over the men who
worked at the mill, as he could report to his
father what he chose. I could not always
hold my peace when he " threaped " me with
my father's sins, but gave it him back some-
times in a storm of passion. It did me no
good; only threw me farther from the
company of better men, who looked aghast and
shocked at the oaths I poured out—blasphemous
words learnt in my childhood, which
I could not forget now that I would fain have
purified myself of them; while all the time
Dick Jackson stood by, with a mocking smile
of intelligence; and when I had ended,
breathless and weary with spent passion, he would
turn to those whose respect I longed to earn,
and ask if I were not a worthy son of my
father, and likely to tread in his steps. But
this smiling indifference of his to my miserable
vehemence was not all, though it was the
worst part of his conduct, for it made the
rankling hatred grow up in my heart, and
overshadow it like the great gourd-tree of the
prophet Jonah. But his was a merciful shade,
keeping out the burning sun; mine blighted
what it fell upon.

What Dick Jackson did besides, was this.
His father was a skilful overlooker, and a
good man; Mr. Peel valued him so much,
that he was kept on, although his health was
failing; and when he was unable, through
illness, to come to the mill, he deputed his
son to watch over and report the men. It
was too much power for one so young—I
speak it calmly now. Whatever Dick Jackson
became, he had strong temptations when
he was young, which will be allowed for
hereafter. But at the time of which I am
telling, my hate raged like a fire. I believed
that he was the one sole obstacle to my
being received as fit to mix with good and
honest men. I was sick of crime and
disorder, and would fain have come over to a
different kind of life, and have been
industrious, sober, honest, and right-spoken, (I had
no idea of higher virtue then), and at every