However early Nance arose, and she was no sluggard, the old man, who had begun to outlive the earthly habit of slumber, would usually have been up long before, the fire would be burning brightly, and she would see him wandering among the ruins, lantern in hand, and talking assiduously to himself.  One day, however, after he had returned late from the market town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that indefatigable early riser.  The kitchen was all blackness.  She crossed the castle-yard to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost.  A scathing breeze blew out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of black and tattered clouds over the face of heaven, which was already kindled with the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter of the ruins, the flame of her candle burned steady.  The extreme cold smote upon her conscience.  She could not bear to think this bitter business fell usually to the lot of one so old as Jonathan, and made desperate resolutions to be earlier in the future.

The fire was a good blaze before he entered, limping dismally into the kitchen.  ‘Nance,’ said he, ’I be all knotted up with the rheumatics; will you rub me a bit?’ She came and rubbed him where and how he bade her.  ’This is a cruel thing that old age should be rheumaticky,’ said he.  ’When I was young I stood my turn of the teethache like a man! for why? because it couldn’t last for ever; but these rheumatics come to live and die with you.  Your aunt was took before the time came; never had an ache to mention.  Now I lie all night in my single bed and the blood never warms in me; this knee of mine it seems like lighted up with rheumatics; it seems as though you could see to sew by it; and all the strings of my old body ache, as if devils was pulling ’em.  Thank you kindly; that’s someways easier now, but an old man, my dear, has little to look for; it’s pain, pain, pain to the end of the business, and I’ll never be rightly warm again till I get under the sod,’ he said, and looked down at her with a face so aged and weary that she had nearly wept.

‘I lay awake all night,’ he continued; ’I do so mostly, and a long walk kills me.  Eh, deary me, to think that life should run to such a puddle!  And I remember long syne when I was strong, and the blood all hot and good about me, and I loved to run, too—­deary me, to run!  Well, that’s all by.  You’d better pray to be took early, Nance, and not live on till you get to be like me, and are robbed in your grey old age, your cold, shivering, dark old age, that’s like a winter’s morning’; and he bitterly shuddered, spreading his hands before the fire.

‘Come now,’ said Nance, ’the more you say the less you’ll like it, Uncle Jonathan; but if I were you I would be proud for to have lived all your days honest and beloved, and come near the end with your good name:  isn’t that a fine thing to be proud of?  Mr. Archer was telling me in some strange land they used to run races each with a lighted candle, and the art was to keep the candle burning.  Well, now, I thought that was like life:  a man’s good conscience is the flame he gets to carry, and if he comes to the winning-post with that still burning, why, take it how you will, the man’s a hero—­even if he was low-born like you and me.’