e non-conformist of that
period. Esther's renunciation of a brilliant fortune for a
humbler lot with the man she loved and admired, was quite in
accord with the teaching George Eliot inculcated all her life.
The scene of the story is laid in the Midlands, and the
action, covering about nine months, begins in 1832.

_I.--The Minister's Daughter_

The Rev. Rufus Lyon, Minister of the Independent Chapel, in the
old-fashioned market town of Treby Magna, in the County of Loumshire,
lived in a small house, adjoining the entry which led to the Chapel
Yard.

He sat this morning, as usual, in a low upstairs room, called his study,
which served also as a sleeping-room, and from time to time got up to
walk about between the piles of old books which lay around him on the
floor. His face looked old and worn, yet the curtain of hair that fell
from his bald crown and hung about his neck retained much of its
original auburn tint, and his large, brown short-sighted eyes were still
clear and bright. At the first glance, everyone thought him a very
odd-looking, rusty old man, and the free-school boys often hooted after
him, and called him "Revelations." But he was too short-sighted and too
absent from the world of small facts and petty impulses to notice those
who tittered at him.

He was meditating on the text for his Sunday morning sermon, when old
Lyddy, the minister's servant, opened the door to tell him that Mrs.
Holt was wanting to see him. "She says she comes out of season, but
she's in trouble."

The minister bade her send Mistress Holt up, and a tall elderly woman
dressed in black entered.

Mrs. Holt, Mr. Lyon said to himself, is a woman who darkens counsel by
words without knowledge, and angers the reason of the natural man; and
he prayed for patience while his visitor rambled on concerning her late
husband and her son Felix.

The minister made out that Felix objected to the sale of his father's
quack medicines, Holt's Elixir and Cancer Cure, and wanted Mr. Lyon to
talk to him.

"For after we'd been to chapel, he spoke better of you than he does of
most: he said you was a fine old fellow, and an old-fashioned Puritan--
he uses dreadful language, Mr. Lyon; but I saw he didn't mean you ill,
for all that; he calls most folks' religion rottenness."

Mrs. Holt departed, and in the evening, when Mr. Lyon was in the
sitting-room, Felix Holt knocked at the door.

The minister, accustomed to the