in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance
of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least, the
weight of a silent voter in the government of his community. Marner was highly
thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling
in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent
faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen,
at a prayer-meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness,
which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To have sought
a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas himself,
as well as by his minister and fellow-members, a wilful self-exclusion from the
spiritual significance that might lie therein. Silas was evidently a brother
selected for a peculiar discipline, and though the effort to interpret this
discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision
during his outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its
effect was seen in an accession of light and fervour. A less truthful man than
he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the form
of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but
Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men,
culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and so it spread
itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from
his mother some acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparation - a
little store of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest - but
of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this knowledge,
believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer
might suffice without herbs; so that his inherited delight to wander through the
fields in search of foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him
the character of a temptation.
    Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older than
himself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that it was the
custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and Jonathan. The real
name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too, was regarded as a shining
instance of youthful piety, though somewhat given to over-severity towards
weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser
than his teachers. But