externals of humility and rotten with innate malignity, groaned audibly
through his clenched teeth; and with shut eyes and crossed hands, as in
prayer, sought to pass a practical rebuke upon the less devout
exhibitions of those around him. The cant and the clatter, as it
prevails in the crowded mart, were here in miniature; and Charity would
have needed something more than a Kamschatka covering to have shut out
from her eyes the enormous hypocrisy of many among the clamorous
professors of that faith of which they felt little and knew less. If she
shut her eyes to the sight, their groans were in her ears; and if she
turned away, they took her by the elbow, and called her a backslider
herself. Forrester whispered in the ears of Ralph, as his eye
encountered the form of Miss Munro, who sat primly amid a flock of
venerables--

"Doesn't she talk like a book? Ah, she's a smart, sweet girl; it's a
pity there's no better chance for her than Guy Rivers. But where's
he--the rascal? Do you know I nearly got my fingers on his throat last
night. I felt deusedly like it, I tell you."

"Why, what did he to you?"

"Answered me with such impudence! I took him for the pedler in the dark,
and thought I had got a prize; it wasn't the pedler, but something
worse--for in my eyes he's no better than a polecat."

But, the preacher had risen in his place, and all was silence and
attention. We need scarcely seek to describe him. His appearance was
that of a very common man; and the anticipations of Colleton, as he was
one of those persons apt to be taken by appearances, suffered something
like rebuke. His figure was diminutive and insignificant; his shoulders
were round, and his movements excessively awkward; his face was thin and
sallow, his eyes dull and inexpressive, and too small seemingly for
command. A too-frequent habit of closing them in prayer contributed, no
doubt, greatly to this appearance. A redeeming expression in the high
forehead, conically rising, and the strong character exhibited in his
nose, neutralized in some sort the generally-unattractive outline. His
hair, which was of a deep black, was extremely coarse, and closely
cropped: it gave to his look that general expression which associated
him at once in the mind of Ralph, whose reading in those matters was
fresh, with the commonwealth history of England--with the puritans, and
those diseased fanatics of the Cromwell dynasty, not omitting that
profound hypocrite himself