imself, with whom he had long lived in such close friendship that
it was the custom of their Lantern Yard brethren to call them David and
Jonathan. The real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too,
was regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though somewhat
given to over-severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by
his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever
blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was
faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting
natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean
on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's
face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that
defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was
strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppression of inward
triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes and compressed lips of
William Dane. One of the most frequent topics of conversation between
the two friends was Assurance of salvation: Silas confessed that he
could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and
listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had
possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his
conversion, he had dreamed that he saw the words "calling and election
sure" standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible. Such
colloquies have occupied many a pair of pale-faced weavers, whose
unnurtured souls have been like young winged things, fluttering
forsaken in the twilight.

It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship had
suffered no chill even from his formation of another attachment of a
closer kind. For some months he had been engaged to a young
servant-woman, waiting only for a little increase to their mutual
savings in order to their marriage; and it was a great delight to him
that Sarah did not object to William's occasional presence in their
Sunday interviews. It was at this point in their history that Silas's
cataleptic fit occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the
various queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his
fellow-members, William's suggestion alone jarred with the general
sympathy towards a brother thus singled out for special dealings. He
observed that, to him, this trance looked more like a visitation of
Satan than a proof of divine favour, and exhorted his f