they'll come in all weathers with dirty shoes. If it's madness, Mr. Lyon, it's no use your talking to him."

"We shall see. Perhaps it may even be the disguised working of grace within him. We must not judge rashly. Many eminent servants of God have been led by ways as strange."

"Then I'm sorry for their mothers, that's all, Mr. Lyon; and all the more if they'd been well-spoken on women. For not my biggest enemy, whether it's he or she, if they'll speak the truth, can turn round and say I've deserved this trouble. And when everybody gets their due, and people's doings are spoke of on the housetops, as the Bible says they will be, it'll be known what I've gone through with those medicines - the pounding and the pouring, and the letting stand, and the weighing up early and down late - there's nobody knows yet but One that's worthy to know; and the pasting o' the printed labels right side upwards. There's few women would have gone through with it; and it's reasonable to think it'll be made up to me; for if there's promised and purchased blessings, I should think this trouble is purchasing 'em. For if my son Felix does n't have a strait waistcoat put on him he'll have his way. But I say no more. I wish you good morning, Mr. Lyon, and thank you, though I well know it's your duty to act as you're doing. And I never troubled you about my own soul, as some do who look down on me for not being a church

member."

"Farewell, Mistress Holt, farewell. I pray that a more powerful teacher than I am may instruct you.”

The door was closed, and the much-tried Rufus walked about again, saying aloud, groaningly,

"This woman has sat under the Gospel all her life, and she is as blind as a heathen, and as proud and stiffnecked as a Pharisee; yet she is one of the souls I watch for. "Tis true that even Sara, the chosen mother of God's people, showed a spirit of unbelief, and perhaps of selfish anger; and it is a passage that bears the unmistakeable signet, 'doing honour to the wife or woman, as unto the weaker vessel.' For therein is the greatest check put on the ready scorn of the natural man."

CHAPTER V

1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth
That makes a vice of virtue by excess.

2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins
Be loss of virtue?

1ST CITIZEN.

All things cool with time
The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find

A general level, nowhere in excess.

2D CITIZEN. "Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought,
That future middlingness.

́N the evening, when Mr. Lyon was expecting the

he occupied his cushionless armchair in the sittingroom, and was skimming rapidly, in his short-sighted way, by the light of one candle, the pages of a missionary report, emitting occasionally a slight "Hm-m that appeared to be expressive of criticism rather than of approbation. The room was dismally furnished, the only objects indicating an intention of ornament being a bookcase, a map of the Holy Land, an engraved portrait of Dr. Doddridge, and a black bust with a coloured face, which for some reason or other was covered with green gauze. Yet any one whose attention was quite awake must have been aware, even on entering, of certain things that were incongruous with the general air of sombreness and privation. There was a delicate scent of dried rose-leaves; the light by which the minister was reading was a wax candle in a white

earthenware candlestick, and the table on the opposite side of the fireplace held a dainty work-basket frilled with blue satin.

Felix Holt, when he entered, was not in an observant mood; and when, after seating himself, at the minister's invitation, near the little table which held the workbasket, he stared at the wax candle opposite to him, he did so without any wonder or consciousness that the candle was not of tallow. But the minister's sensitiveness gave another interpretation to the gaze which he divined rather than saw; and in alarm lest this inconsistent extravagance should obstruct his usefulness, he hastened to say,

"You are doubtless amazed to see me with a waxlight, my young friend; but this undue luxury is paid for with the earnings of my daughter, who is so delicately framed that the smell of tallow is loathsome to her."

"I heeded not the candle, sir. I thank Heaven I am not a mouse to have a nose that takes note of wax or tallow."

The loud abrupt tones made the old man vibrate a little. He had been stroking his chin gently before, with a sense that he must be very quiet and deliberate in his treatment of the eccentric young man; but now, quite unreflectingly, he drew forth a pair of spectacles, which he was in the habit of using when he wanted to observe his interlocutor more closely than usual.

"And I myself, in fact, am equally indifferent," he said, as he opened and adjusted his glasses, “so that I have a sufficient light on my book." Here his large eyes looked discerningly through the spectacles.

Residence of the Rev. Rufus Lyon