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 respectable air of provincial townsmen,
felt a slight shock, when his spectacles made clear to him the shaggy-
headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed person of this questionable young man,
without waistcoat or cravat.