on my book.« Here his
large eyes looked discerningly through the spectacles.
    »'Tis the quality of the page you care about, not of the candle,« said
Felix, smiling pleasantly enough at his inspector. »You're thinking that you
have a roughly-written page before you now.«
    That was true. The minister, accustomed to the respectable air of provincial
townsmen, and especially to the sleek well-clipped gravity of his own male
congregation, felt a slight shock as his glasses made perfectly clear to him the
shaggy-headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed person of this questionable young man,
without waistcoat or cravat. But the possibility, supported by some of Mrs
Holt's words, that a disguised work of grace might be going forward in the son
of whom she complained so bitterly, checked any hasty interpretations.
    »I abstain from judging by the outward appearance only,« he answered, with
his usual simplicity. »I myself have experienced that when the spirit is much
exercised it is difficult to remember neckbands and strings and such small
accidents of our vesture, which are nevertheless decent and needful so long as
we sojourn in the flesh. And you too, my young friend, as I gather from your
mother's troubled and confused report, are undergoing some travail of mind. You
will not, I trust, object to open yourself fully to me, as to an aged pastor who
has himself had much inward wrestling, and has especially known much temptation
from doubt.«
    »As to doubt,« said Felix, loudly and brusquely as before, »if it is those
absurd medicines and gulling advertisements that my mother has been talking of
to you - and I suppose it is - I've no more doubt about them than I have about
pocket-picking. I know there's a stage of speculation in which a man may doubt
whether a pickpocket is blame-worthy - but I'm not one of your subtle fellows
who keep looking at the world through their own legs. If I allowed the sale of
those medicines to go on, and my mother to live out of the proceeds when I can
keep her by the honest labour of my hands, I've not the least doubt that I
should be a rascal.«
    »I would fain inquire more particularly into your objection to these
medicines,« said Mr Lyon, gravely. Notwithstanding his conscientiousness and a
certain originality in his own mental disposition, he was too little used to
high principle quite dissociated from sectarian phraseology to be as immediately
in sympathy with