get it? I go for
educating the non-electors, so I put myself in the way of my pupils - my academy
is the beer-house. I'll walk with you to-morrow with great pleasure.«
    »Do so, do so,« said Mr Lyon, shaking hands with his old acquaintance. »We
shall understand each other better by-and-by, I doubt not.«
    »I wish you good-evening, Miss Lyon.«
    Esther bowed very slightly, without speaking.
    »That is a singular young man, Esther,« said the minister, walking about
after Felix was gone. »I discern in him a love for whatsoever things are honest
and true, which I would fain believe to be an earnest of further endowment with
the wisdom that is from on high. It is true that, as the traveller in the desert
is often lured, by a false vision of water and freshness, to turn aside from the
track which leads to the tried and established fountains, so the Evil One will
take advantage of a natural yearning towards the better, to delude the soul with
a self-flattering belief in a visionary virtue, higher than the ordinary fruits
of the Spirit. But I trust it is not so here. I feel a great enlargement in this
young man's presence, notwithstanding a certain licence in his language, which I
shall use my efforts to correct.«
    »I think he is very coarse and rude,« said Esther, with a touch of temper in
her voice. »But he speaks better English than most of our visitors. What is his
occupation?«
    »Watch and clock making, by which, together with a little teaching, as I
understand, he hopes to maintain his mother, not thinking it right that she
should live by the sale of medicines whose virtues he distrusts. It is no common
scruple.«
    »Dear me,« said Esther, »I thought he was something higher than that.« She
was disappointed.
    Felix, on his side, as he strolled out in the evening air, said to himself:
»Now by what fine meshes of circumstance did that queer devout old man, with his
awful creed, which makes this world a vestibule with double doors to hell, and a
narrow stair on one side whereby the thinner sort may mount to heaven - by what
subtle play of flesh and spirit did he come to have a daughter so little in his
own likeness? Married foolishly, I suppose. I'll never marry, though I should
have to live