SILAS MARNER................................................................................................................................................1

George Eliot .............................................................................................................................................1

In the days when the spinningwheels hummed busily in the farmhouses and even great ladies, clothed in

silk and threadlace, had their toy spinningwheels of polished oakthere might be seen in districts far

away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of

the brawny countryfolk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely

when one of these alienlooking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what

dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious

burden. The shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxen

thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of

weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that

faroff time superstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted, or even

intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knifegrinder. No one knew where

wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least knew

somebody who knew his father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct

experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their untravelled thought a state of wandering was a

conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a settler, if he

came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, which would have

prevented any surprise if a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission of a

crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness,

whether in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other art unfamiliar to villagers,

was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or

cleverat least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather; and the process by which

rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of

conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered linenweaversemigrants from the town into the

countrywere to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric

In the early years of this century, such a linenweaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone

cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a

deserted stonepit. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the

winnowingmachine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a halffearful fascination for the Raveloe boys,

who would often leave off their nutting or birds'nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage,

counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful

superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent, treadmill attitude of the

weaver. But sometimes it happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became aware

of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend

from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to make them take to

their legs in terror. For how was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas

Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their

dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They

had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a

mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the

cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demonworship might perhaps even now be

caught by the diligent listener among the greyhaired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates

the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to

refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men

who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been

illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of

possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire

and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. "Is there anything you can

fancy that you would like to eat?" I once said to an old labouring man, who was in his last illness, and who

had refused all the food his wife had offered him. "No," he answered, "I've never been used to nothing but

common victual, and I can't eat that." Experience had bred no fancies in him that could raise the phantasm of

And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes lingered, undrowned by new voices. Not that it was

one of those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilizationinhabited by meagre sheep and

thinlyscattered shepherds: on the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are pleased to call

Merry England, and held farms which, speaking from a spiritual point of view, paid highlydesirable tithes.

But it was nestled in a snug wellwooded hollow, quite an hour's journey on horseback from any turnpike,

where it was never reached by the vibrations of the coachhorn, or of public opinion. It was an

importantlooking village, with a fine old church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or three

large brickandstone homesteads, with wellwalled orchards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close

upon the road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which peeped from among the trees on the

other side of the churchyard:a village which showed at once the summits of its social life, and told the

practised eye that there was no great park and manorhouse in the vicinity, but that there were several chiefs

in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their ease, drawing enough money from their bad farming, in those

war times, to live in a rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly Christmas, Whitsun, and Easter tide.

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man,

with prominent shortsighted brown eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing strange for people of

average culture and experience, but for the villagers near whom he had come to settle it had mysterious

peculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation, and his advent from an

unknown region called "North'ard". So had his way of life:he invited no comer to step across his doorsill,

and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheelwright's: he

sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries;

and it was soon clear to the Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them to accept him against her

willquite as if he had heard them declare that they would never marry a dead man come to life again. This

view of Marner's personality was not without another ground than his pale face and unexampled eyes; for

Jem Rodney, the molecatcher, averred that one evening as he was returning homeward, he saw Silas Marner

leaning against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the bag on the stile as a man in his

senses would have done; and that, on coming up to him, he saw that Marner's eyes were set like a dead man's,

and he spoke to him, and shook him, and his limbs were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as if they'd been

made of iron; but just as he had made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came all right again, like, as

you might say, in the winking of an eye, and said "Goodnight", and walked off. All this Jem swore he had

seen, more by token that it was the very day he had been molecatching on Squire Cass's land, down by the

old sawpit. Some said Marner must have been in a "fit", a word which seemed to explain things otherwise

incredible; but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk of the parish, shook his head, and asked if anybody was

ever known to go off in a fit and not fall down. A fit was a stroke, wasn't it? and it was in the nature of a

stroke to partly take away the use of a man's limbs and throw him on the parish, if he'd got no children to look

to. No, no; it was no stroke that would let a man stand on his legs, like a horse between the shafts, and then

walk off as soon as you can say "Gee!" But there might be such a thing as a man's soul being loose from his

body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back; and that was how folks got overwise, for

they went to school in this shellless state to those who could teach them more than their neighbours could

learn with their five senses and the parson. And where did Master Marner get his knowledge of herbs

fromand charms too, if he liked to give them away? Jem Rodney's story was no more than what might

have been expected by anybody who had seen how Marner had cured Sally Oates, and made her sleep like a

baby, when her heart had been beating enough to burst her body, for two months and more, while she had

been under the doctor's care. He might cure more folks if he would; but he was worth speaking fair, if it was

It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted for protecting him from the persecution that his

singularities might have drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, the old linenweaver in the

neighbouring parish of Tarley being dead, his handicraft made him a highly welcome settler to the richer

housewives of the district, and even to the more provident cottagers, who had their little stock of yarn at the

year's end. Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted any repugnance or suspicion which was not

confirmed by a deficiency in the quality or the tale of the cloth he wove for them. And the years had rolled on

without producing any change in the impressions of the neighbours concerning Marner, except the change

from novelty to habit. At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things about Silas

Marner as at the beginning: they did not say them quite so often, but they believed them much more strongly

when they did say them. There was only one important addition which the years had brought: it was, that

Master Marner had laid by a fine sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men" than

But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly stationary, and his daily habits had presented scarcely

any visible change, Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as that of every fervid

nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned, to solitude. His life, before he came to Raveloe, had

been filled with the movement, the mental activity, and the close fellowship, which, in that day as in this,

marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman has the

chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very least, the weight of a silent voter in

the government of his community. Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as

the church assembling in Lantern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent

faith; and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayermeeting, into a

mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken

for death. To have sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would have been held by Silas himself,

as well as by his minister and fellowmembers, a wilful selfexclusion from the spiritual significance that

might lie therein. Silas was evidently a brother selected for a peculiar discipline; and though the effort to

interpret this discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his part, of any spiritual vision during his

outward trance, yet it was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in an accession of light and

fervour. A less truthful man than he might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a vision in the

form of resurgent memory; a less sane man might have believed in such a creation; but Silas was both sane

and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his sense

of mystery, and so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and knowledge. He had inherited from

his mother some acquaintance with medicinal herbs and their preparationa little store of wisdom which she

had imparted to him as a solemn bequestbut of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of

applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might

suffice without herbs; so that the inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and

Among the members of his church there was one young man, a little older than himself, 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 overseverity 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 selfdoubting 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, deerlike

gaze which belongs to large prominent eyes, was strongly contrasted by the selfcomplacent 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 palefaced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been

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 servantwoman,

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 prayermeeting; and amidst the various queries

and expressions of interest addressed to him by his fellowmembers, 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 friend to see that

he hid no accursed thing within his soul. Silas, feeling bound to accept rebuke and admonition as a brotherly

office, felt no resentment, but only pain, at his friend's doubts concerning him; and to this was soon added

some anxiety at the perception that Sarah's manner towards him began to exhibit a strange fluctuation

between an effort at an increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of shrinking and dislike. He

asked her if she wished to break off their engagement; but she denied this: their engagement was known to

the church, and had been recognized in the prayermeetings; it could not be broken off without strict

investigation, and Sarah could render no reason that would be sanctioned by the feeling of the community. At

this time the senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless widower, he was tended night

and day by some of the younger brethren or sisters. Silas frequently took his turn in the nightwatching with

William, the one relieving the other at two in the morning. The old man, contrary to expectation, seemed to

be on the way to recovery, when one night Silas, sitting up by his bedside, observed that his usual audible

breathing had ceased. The candle was burning low, and he had to lift it to see the patient's face distinctly.

Examination convinced him that the deacon was deadhad been dead some time, for the limbs were rigid.

Silas asked himself if he had been asleep, and looked at the clock: it was already four in the morning. How

was it that William had not come? In much anxiety he went to seek for help, and soon there were several

friends assembled in the house, the minister among them, while Silas went away to his work, wishing he

could have met William to know the reason of his nonappearance. But at six o'clock, as he was thinking of

going to seek his friend, William came, and with him the minister. They came to summon him to Lantern

Yard, to meet the church members there; and to his inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only

reply was, "You will hear." Nothing further was said until Silas was seated in the vestry, in front of the

minister, with the eyes of those who to him represented God's people fixed solemnly upon him. Then the

minister, taking out a pocketknife, showed it to Silas, and asked him if he knew where he had left that

knife? Silas said, he did not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket but he was trembling

at this strange interrogation. He was then exhorted not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife

had been found in the bureau by the departed deacon's bedside found in the place where the little bag of

church money had lain, which the minister himself had seen the day before. Some hand had removed that

bag; and whose hand could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged? For some time Silas was

mute with astonishment: then he said, "God will clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the

money being gone. Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but three pound five of my own

savings, which William Dane knows I have had these six months." At this William groaned, but the minister

said, "The proof is heavy against you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the night last past, and no

man was with our departed brother but you, for William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden

sickness from going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he had not come; and, moreover,

"I must have slept," said Silas. Then, after a pause, he added, "Or I must have had another visitation like that

which you have all seen me under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was not in the body, but

out of the body. But, I say again, search me and my dwelling, for I have been nowhere else."

The search was made, and it endedin William Dane's finding the wellknown bag, empty, tucked behind

the chest of drawers in Silas's chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to hide his sin

any longer. Silas turned a look of keen reproach on him, and said, "William, for nine years that we have gone

"Brother," said William, "how do I know what you may have done in the secret chambers of your heart, to

Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came over his face, and he was about to speak

impetuously, when he seemed checked again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and made him

William said, "I know nothing of what you mean." The other persons present, however, began to inquire

where Silas meant to say that the knife was, but he would give no further explanation: he only said, "I am

On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any resort to legal measures for ascertaining the

culprit was contrary to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to which prosecution was

forbidden to Christians, even had the case held less scandal to the community. But the members were bound

to take other measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and drawing lots. This

resolution can be a ground of surprise only to those who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life

which has gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his brethren, relying on his own innocence

being certified by immediate divine interference, but feeling that there was sorrow and mourning behind for

him even thenthat his trust in man had been cruelly bruised. _The lots declared that Silas Marner was

guilty._ He was solemnly suspended from churchmembership, and called upon to render up the stolen

money: only on confession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received once more within the folds of the

church. Marner listened in silence. At last, when everyone rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and

"The last time I remember using my knife, was when I took it out to cut a strap for you. I don't remember

putting it in my pocket again. _You_ stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door.

But you may prosper, for all that: there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies,

William said meekly, "I leave our brethren to judge whether this is the voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing

Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soulthat shaken trust in God and man, which is little short of

madness to a loving nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, "_She_ will cast me off

too." And he reflected that, if she did not believe the testimony against him, her whole faith must be upset as

his was. To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feeling has incorporated

itself, it is difficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have

never been severed by an act of reflection. We are apt to think it inevitable that a man in Marner's position

should have begun to question the validity of an appeal to the divine judgment by drawing lots; but to him

this would have been an effort of independent thought such as he had never known; and he must have made

the effort at a moment when all his energies were turned into the anguish of disappointed faith. If there is an

angel who records the sorrows of men as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that

Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned by despair, without any impulse to go to Sarah and

attempt to win her belief in his innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief, by

getting into his loom and working away as usual; and before many hours were past, the minister and one of

the deacons came to him with the message from Sarah, that she held her engagement to him at an end. Silas

received the message mutely, and then turned away from the messengers to work at his loom again. In little

more than a month from that time, Sarah was married to William Dane; and not long afterwards it was known

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on

their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are

a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know

nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas where their mother earth shows another lap, and

human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been

unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past

becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked

with no memories. But even _their_ experience may hardly enable them thoroughly to imagine what was the

effect on a simple weaver like Silas Marner, when he left his own country and people and came to settle in

Raveloe. Nothing could be more unlike his native town, set within sight of the widespread hillsides, than this

low, wooded region, where he felt hidden even from the heavens by the screening trees and hedgerows. There

was nothing here, when he rose in the deep morning quiet and looked out on the dewy brambles and rank

tufted grass, that seemed to have any relation with that life centring in Lantern Yard, which had once been to

him the altarplace of high dispensations. The whitewashed walls; the little pews where wellknown figures

entered with a subdued rustling, and where first one wellknown voice and then another, pitched in a peculiar

key of petition, uttered phrases at once occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit where

the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a long

accustomed manner; the very pauses between the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the recurrent

swell of voices in song: these things had been the channel of divine influences to Marnerthey were the

fostering home of his religious emotionsthey were Christianity and God's kingdom upon earth. A weaver

who finds hard words in his hymnbook knows nothing of abstractions; as the little child knows nothing of

parental love, but only knows one face and one lap towards which it stretches its arms for refuge and nurture.

And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world than the world in Raveloe?orchards looking lazy

with neglected plenty; the large church in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at their own

doors in servicetime; the purplefaced farmers jogging along the lanes or turning in at the Rainbow;

homesteads, where men supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women

seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to come. There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word

could fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense of pain. In the early ages of the world, we

know, it was believed that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own divinities, so that a man could

cross the bordering heights and be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was confined to the

streams and the groves and the hills among which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was vaguely

conscious of something not unlike the feeling of primitive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness,

from the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him that the Power he had vainly trusted in among the

streets and at the prayermeetings, was very far away from this land in which he had taken refuge, where

men lived in careless abundance, knowing and needing nothing of that trust, which, for him, had been turned

to bitterness. The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain

His first movement after the shock had been to work in his loom; and he went on with this unremittingly,

never asking himself why, now he was come to Raveloe, he worked far on into the night to finish the tale of

Mrs. Osgood's tablelinen sooner than she expected without contemplating beforehand the money she

would put into his hand for the work. He seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without

reflection. Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge

over the loveless chasms of his life. Silas's hand satisfied itself with throwing the shuttle, and his eye with

seeing the little squares in the cloth complete themselves under his effort. Then there were the calls of

hunger; and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water

from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire; and all these immediate promptings helped, along with the

weaving, to reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the thought of the past;

there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the strangers he had come amongst; and the

future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him. Thought was arrested by utter

bewilderment, now its old narrow pathway was closed, and affection seemed to have died under the bruise

But at last Mrs. Osgood's tablelinen was finished, and Silas was paid in gold. His earnings in his native

town, where he worked for a wholesale dealer, had been after a lower rate; he had been paid weekly, and of

his weekly earnings a large proportion had gone to objects of piety and charity. Now, for the first time in his

life, he had five bright guineas put into his hand; no man expected a share of them, and he loved no man that

he should offer him a share. But what were the guineas to him who saw no vista beyond countless days of

weaving? It was needless for him to ask that, for it was pleasant to him to feel them in his palm, and look at

their bright faces, which were all his own: it was another element of life, like the weaving and the satisfaction

of hunger, subsisting quite aloof from the life of belief and love from which he had been cut off. The weaver's

hand had known the touch of hardwon money even before the palm had grown to its full breadth; for twenty

years, mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He

had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the _purpose_

then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a

sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire; and as Silas walked

homeward across the fields in the twilight, he drew out the money and thought it was brighter in the gathering

About this time an incident happened which seemed to open a possibility of some fellowship with his

neighbours. One day, taking a pair of shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler's wife seated by the fire,

suffering from the terrible symptoms of heartdisease and dropsy, which he had witnessed as the precursors

of his mother's death. He felt a rush of pity at the mingled sight and remembrance, and, recalling the relief his

mother had found from a simple preparation of foxglove, he promised Sally Oates to bring her something that

would ease her, since the doctor did her no good. In this office of charity, Silas felt, for the first time since he

had come to Raveloe, a sense of unity between his past and present life, which might have been the beginning

of his rescue from the insectlike existence into which his nature had shrunk. But Sally Oates's disease had

raised her into a personage of much interest and importance among the neighbours, and the fact of her having

found relief from drinking Silas Marner's "stuff" became a matter of general discourse. When Doctor Kimble

gave physic, it was natural that it should have an effect; but when a weaver, who came from nobody knew

where, worked wonders with a bottle of brown waters, the occult character of the process was evident. Such a

sort of thing had not been known since the Wise Woman at Tarley died; and she had charms as well as

"stuff": everybody went to her when their children had fits. Silas Marner must be a person of the same sort,

for how did he know what would bring back Sally Oates's breath, if he didn't know a fine sight more than

that? The Wise Woman had words that she muttered to herself, so that you couldn't hear what they were, and

if she tied a bit of red thread round the child's toe the while, it would keep off the water in the head. There

were women in Raveloe, at that present time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman's little bags round their

necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had. Silas Marner could very likely

do as much, and more; and now it was all clear how he should have come from unknown parts, and be so

"comicallooking". But Sally Oates must mind and not tell the doctor, for he would be sure to set his face

against Marner: he was always angry about the Wise Woman, and used to threaten those who went to her that

Silas now found himself and his cottage suddenly beset by mothers who wanted him to charm away the

whoopingcough, or bring back the milk, and by men who wanted stuff against the rheumatics or the knots in

the hands; and, to secure themselves against a refusal, the applicants brought silver in their palms. Silas might

have driven a profitable trade in charms as well as in his small list of drugs; but money on this condition was

no temptation to him: he had never known an impulse towards falsity, and he drove one after another away

with growing irritation, for the news of him as a wise man had spread even to Tarley, and it was long before

people ceased to take long walks for the sake of asking his aid. But the hope in his wisdom was at length

changed into dread, for no one believed him when he said he knew no charms and could work no cures, and

every man and woman who had an accident or a new attack after applying to him, set the misfortune down to

Master Marner's illwill and irritated glances. Thus it came to pass that his movement of pity towards Sally

Oates, which had given him a transient sense of brotherhood, heightened the repulsion between him and his

Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the halfcrowns grew to a heap, and Marner drew less and less for his

own wants, trying to solve the problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours aday on as

small an outlay as possible. Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, found an interest in marking the

moments by straight strokes of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight strokes,

arranged in triangles, has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued

waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient

habit? That will help us to understand how the love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in

men whose imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it.

Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea,

while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange world, made a hopeless riddle to him, he

might, if he had had a less intense nature, have sat weaving, weavinglooking towards the end of his

pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and everything else but his immediate

sensations; but the money had come to mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only grew, but

it remained with him. He began to think it was conscious of him, as his loom was, and he would on no

account have exchanged those coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He

handled them, he counted them, till their form and colour were like the satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it

was only in the night, when his work was done, that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship. He had

taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he had made a hole in which he set the iron

pot that contained his guineas and silver coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced them. Not

that the idea of being robbed presented itself often or strongly to his mind: hoarding was common in country

districts in those days; there were old labourers in the parish of Raveloe who were known to have their

savings by them, probably inside their flockbeds; but their rustic neighbours, though not all of them as

honest as their ancestors in the days of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough to lay a plan of

burglary. How could they have spent the money in their own village without betraying themselves? They

would be obliged to "run away"a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life

narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no

relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any

contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been

undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and loveonly, instead of a loom and a

heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some wellknit theory.

Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the

objects of his life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has

no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they

had been made to see only one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny grain, for which they hunted

everywhere: and he was so withered and yellow, that, though he was not yet forty, the children always called

Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happened, which showed that the sap of affection was not

all gone. It was one of his daily tasks to fetch his water from a well a couple of fields off, and for this

purpose, ever since he came to Raveloe, he had had a brown earthenware pot, which he held as his most

precious utensil among the very few conveniences he had granted himself. It had been his companion for

twelve years, always standing on the same spot, always lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that

its form had an expression for him of willing helpfulness, and the impress of its handle on his palm gave a

satisfaction mingled with that of having the fresh clear water. One day as he was returning from the well, he

stumbled against the step of the stile, and his brown pot, falling with force against the stones that overarched

the ditch below him, was broken in three pieces. Silas picked up the pieces and carried them home with grief

in his heart. The brown pot could never be of use to him any more, but he stuck the bits together and propped

This is the history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat

in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the

brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a

constraint as the holding of his breath. But at night came his revelry: at night he closed his shutters, and made

fast his doors, and drew forth his gold. Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to

hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their restingplace,

but lent themselves flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the dark

leather mouths! The silver bore no large proportion in amount to the gold, because the long pieces of linen

which formed his chief work were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied his own

bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to spend in this way. He loved the guineas best,

but he would not change the silverthe crowns and halfcrowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his

labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them

and set them up in regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought

fondly of the guineas that were only halfearned by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn

childrenthought of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years, through all his life,

which spread far away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days of weaving. No wonder his

thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journeys through the fields and the lanes

to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the hedgebanks and the laneside in

search of the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a

rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a

But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great change came over Marner's life, and his history

The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large red house with the handsome flight of

stone steps in front and the high stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one among several

landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with the title of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood's family was

also understood to be of timeless originthe Raveloe imagination having never ventured back to that fearful

blank when there were no Osgoodsstill, he merely owned the farm he occupied; whereas Squire Cass had a

tenant or two, who complained of the game to him quite as if he had been a lord.

It was still that glorious wartime which was felt to be a peculiar favour of Providence towards the landed

interest, and the fall of prices had not yet come to carry the race of small squires and yeomen down that road

to ruin for which extravagant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully anointing their wheels. I am speaking

now in relation to Raveloe and the parishes that resembled it; for our oldfashioned country life had many

different aspects, as all life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by

multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and

crossing each other with incalculable results. Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees and the rutted lanes,

aloof from the currents of industrial energy and Puritan earnestness: the rich ate and drank freely, accepting

gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich

were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which

were the heirlooms of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire Cass's hams, but her longing was

arrested by the unctuous liquor in which they were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great

merrymakings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for the poor. For the Raveloe feasts were like

the rounds of beef and the barrels of alethey were on a large scale, and lasted a good while, especially in

the wintertime. After ladies had packed up their best gowns and topknots in bandboxes, and had incurred

the risk of fording streams on pillions with the precious burden in rainy or snowy weather, when there was no

knowing how high the water would rise, it was not to be supposed that they looked forward to a brief

pleasure. On this ground it was always contrived in the dark seasons, when there was little work to be done,

and the hours were long, that several neighbours should keep open house in succession. So soon as Squire

Cass's standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his guests had nothing to do but to walk a little

higher up the village to Mr. Osgood's, at the Orchards, and they found hams and chines uncut, porkpies with

the scent of the fire in them, spun butter in all its freshnesseverything, in fact, that appetites at leisure could

desire, in perhaps greater perfection, though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass's.

For the Squire's wife had died long ago, and the Red House was without that presence of the wife and mother

which is the fountain of wholesome love and fear in parlour and kitchen; and this helped to account not only

for there being more profusion than finished excellence in the holiday provisions, but also for the frequency

with which the proud Squire condescended to preside in the parlour of the Rainbow rather than under the

shadow of his own dark wainscot; perhaps, also, for the fact that his sons had turned out rather ill. Raveloe

was not a place where moral censure was severe, but it was thought a weakness in the Squire that he had kept

all his sons at home in idleness; and though some licence was to be allowed to young men whose fathers

could afford it, people shook their heads at the courses of the second son, Dunstan, commonly called Dunsey

Cass, whose taste for swopping and betting might turn out to be a sowing of something worse than wild oats.

To be sure, the neighbours said, it was no matter what became of Dunseya spiteful jeering fellow, who

seemed to enjoy his drink the more when other people went dryalways provided that his doings did not

bring trouble on a family like Squire Cass's, with a monument in the church, and tankards older than King

George. But it would be a thousand pities if Mr. Godfrey, the eldest, a fine openfaced goodnatured young

man who was to come into the land some day, should take to going along the same road with his brother, as

he had seemed to do of late. If he went on in that way, he would lose Miss Nancy Lammeter; for it was well

known that she had looked very shyly on him ever since last Whitsuntide twelvemonth, when there was so

much talk about his being away from home days and days together. There was something wrong, more than

commonthat was quite clear; for Mr. Godfrey didn't look half so freshcoloured and open as he used to do.

At one time everybody was saying, What a handsome couple he and Miss Nancy Lammeter would make! and

if she could come to be mistress at the Red House, there would be a fine change, for the Lammeters had been

brought up in that way, that they never suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody in their

household had of the best, according to his place. Such a daughterinlaw would be a saving to the old

Squire, if she never brought a penny to her fortune; for it was to be feared that, notwithstanding his

incomings, there were more holes in his pocket than the one where he put his own hand in. But if Mr.

Godfrey didn't turn over a new leaf, he might say "Goodbye" to Miss Nancy Lammeter.

It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was standing, with his hands in his sidepockets and his back to the

fire, in the dark wainscoted parlour, one late November afternoon in that fifteenth year of Silas Marner's life

at Raveloe. The fading grey light fell dimly on the walls decorated with guns, whips, and foxes' brushes, on

coats and hats flung on the chairs, on tankards sending forth a scent of flat ale, and on a halfchoked fire,

with pipes propped up in the chimneycorners: signs of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing charm,

with which the look of gloomy vexation on Godfrey's blond face was in sad accordance. He seemed to be

waiting and listening for some one's approach, and presently the sound of a heavy step, with an

The door opened, and a thickset, heavylooking young man entered, with the flushed face and the

gratuitously elated bearing which mark the first stage of intoxication. It was Dunsey, and at the sight of him

Godfrey's face parted with some of its gloom to take on the more active expression of hatred. The handsome

brown spaniel that lay on the hearth retreated under the chair in the chimneycorner.

"Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want with me?" said Dunsey, in a mocking tone. "You're my elders and

"Why, this is what I wantand just shake yourself sober and listen, will you?" said Godfrey, savagely. He

had himself been drinking more than was good for him, trying to turn his gloom into uncalculating anger. "I

want to tell you, I must hand over that rent of Fowler's to the Squire, or else tell him I gave it you; for he's

threatening to distrain for it, and it'll all be out soon, whether I tell him or not. He said, just now, before he

went out, he should send word to Cox to distrain, if Fowler didn't come and pay up his arrears this week. The

Squire's short o' cash, and in no humour to stand any nonsense; and you know what he threatened, if ever he

found you making away with his money again. So, see and get the money, and pretty quickly, will you?"

"Oh!" said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer to his brother and looking in his face. "Suppose, now, you get

the money yourself, and save me the trouble, eh? Since you was so kind as to hand it over to me, you'll not

refuse me the kindness to pay it back for me: it was your brotherly love made you do it, you know."

Godfrey bit his lips and clenched his fist. "Don't come near me with that look, else I'll knock you down."

"Oh no, you won't," said Dunsey, turning away on his heel, however. "Because I'm such a goodnatured

brother, you know. I might get you turned out of house and home, and cut off with a shilling any day. I might

tell the Squire how his handsome son was married to that nice young woman, Molly Farren, and was very

unhappy because he couldn't live with his drunken wife, and I should slip into your place as comfortable as

could be. But you see, I don't do itI'm so easy and goodnatured. You'll take any trouble for me. You'll get

"How can I get the money?" said Godfrey, quivering. "I haven't a shilling to bless myself with. And it's a lie

that you'd slip into my place: you'd get yourself turned out too, that's all. For if you begin telling tales, I'll

follow. Bob's my father's favouriteyou know that very well. He'd only think himself well rid of you."

"Never mind," said Dunsey, nodding his head sideways as he looked out of the window. "It 'ud be very

pleasant to me to go in your companyyou're such a handsome brother, and we've always been so fond of

quarrelling with one another, I shouldn't know what to do without you. But you'd like better for us both to

stay at home together; I know you would. So you'll manage to get that little sum o' money, and I'll bid you

Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed after him and seized him by the arm, saying, with an oath

"Well, you've only got to ride him to the hunt tomorrow. There'll be Bryce and Keating there, for sure.

"I daresay, and get back home at eight o'clock, splashed up to the chin. I'm going to Mrs. Osgood's birthday

"Oho!" said Dunsey, turning his head on one side, and trying to speak in a small mincing treble. "And there's

sweet Miss Nancy coming; and we shall dance with her, and promise never to be naughty again, and be taken

"Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you fool," said Godfrey, turning red, "else I'll throttle you."

"What for?" said Dunsey, still in an artificial tone, but taking a whip from the table and beating the buttend

of it on his palm. "You've a very good chance. I'd advise you to creep up her sleeve again: it 'ud be saving

time, if Molly should happen to take a drop too much laudanum some day, and make a widower of you. Miss

Nancy wouldn't mind being a second, if she didn't know it. And you've got a goodnatured brother, who'll

"I'll tell you what it is," said Godfrey, quivering, and pale again, "my patience is pretty near at an end. If

you'd a little more sharpness in you, you might know that you may urge a man a bit too far, and make one

leap as easy as another. I don't know but what it is so now: I may as well tell the Squire everything myself

I should get you off my back, if I got nothing else. And, after all, he'll know some time. She's been

threatening to come herself and tell him. So, don't flatter yourself that your secrecy's worth any price you

choose to ask. You drain me of money till I have got nothing to pacify _her_ with, and she'll do as she

threatens some day. It's all one. I'll tell my father everything myself, and you may go to the devil."

Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his mark, and that there was a point at which even the hesitating

"As you please; but I'll have a draught of ale first." And ringing the bell, he threw himself across two chairs,

Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily moving his fingers among the contents of his

sidepockets, and looking at the floor. That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage, but

helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked down nor

throttled. His natural irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a position in which dreaded

consequences seemed to press equally on all sides, and his irritation had no sooner provoked him to defy

Dunstan and anticipate all possible betrayals, than the miseries he must bring on himself by such a step

seemed more unendurable to him than the present evil. The results of confession were not contingent, they

were certain; whereas betrayal was not certain. From the near vision of that certainty he fell back on suspense

and vacillation with a sense of repose. The disinherited son of a small squire, equally disinclined to dig and to

beg, was almost as helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by the favour of earth and sky, has grown to a

handsome bulk on the spot where it first shot upward. Perhaps it would have been possible to think of digging

with some cheerfulness if Nancy Lammeter were to be won on those terms; but, since he must irrevocably

lose _her_ as well as the inheritance, and must break every tie but the one that degraded him and left him

without motive for trying to recover his better self, he could imagine no future for himself on the other side of

confession but that of "'listing for a soldier"the most desperate step, short of suicide, in the eyes of

respectable families. No! he would rather trust to casualties than to his own resolverather go on sitting at

the feast, and sipping the wine he loved, though with the sword hanging over him and terror in his heart, than

rush away into the cold darkness where there was no pleasure left. The utmost concession to Dunstan about

the horse began to seem easy, compared with the fulfilment of his own threat. But his pride would not let him

recommence the conversation otherwise than by continuing the quarrel. Dunstan was waiting for this, and

"It's just like you," Godfrey burst out, in a bitter tone, "to talk about my selling Wildfire in that cool

waythe last thing I've got to call my own, and the best bit of horseflesh I ever had in my life. And if you'd

got a spark of pride in you, you'd be ashamed to see the stables emptied, and everybody sneering about it. But

it's my belief you'd sell yourself, if it was only for the pleasure of making somebody feel he'd got a bad

"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, very placably, "you do me justice, I see. You know I'm a jewel for 'ticing people

into bargains. For which reason I advise you to let _me_ sell Wildfire. I'd ride him to the hunt tomorrow for

you, with pleasure. I shouldn't look so handsome as you in the saddle, but it's the horse they'll bid for, and not

"As you please," said Dunstan, rapping the windowseat again with an air of great unconcern. "It's _you_

have got to pay Fowler's money; it's none of my business. You received the money from him when you went

to Bramcote, and _you_ told the Squire it wasn't paid. I'd nothing to do with that; you chose to be so obliging

as to give it me, that was all. If you don't want to pay the money, let it alone; it's all one to me. But I was

willing to accommodate you by undertaking to sell the horse, seeing it's not convenient to you to go so far

Godfrey was silent for some moments. He would have liked to spring on Dunstan, wrench the whip from his

hand, and flog him to within an inch of his life; and no bodily fear could have deterred him; but he was

mastered by another sort of fear, which was fed by feelings stronger even than his resentment. When he

"Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse, eh? You'll sell him all fair, and hand over the money? If you

don't, you know, everything 'ull go to smash, for I've got nothing else to trust to. And you'll have less pleasure

"Aye, aye," said Dunstan, rising; "all right. I thought you'd come round. I'm the fellow to bring old Bryce up

to the scratch. I'll get you a hundred and twenty for him, if I get you a penny."

"But it'll perhaps rain cats and dogs tomorrow, as it did yesterday, and then you can't go," said Godfrey,

"Not _it_," said Dunstan. "I'm always lucky in my weather. It might rain if you wanted to go yourself. You

never hold trumps, you knowI always do. You've got the beauty, you see, and I've got the luck, so you

must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence; you'll _ne_ver get along without me."

"Confound you, hold your tongue!" said Godfrey, impetuously. "And take care to keep sober tomorrow, else

you'll get pitched on your head coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it."

"Make your tender heart easy," said Dunstan, opening the door. "You never knew me see double when I'd got

a bargain to make; it 'ud spoil the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I'm warranted to fall on my legs."

With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left Godfrey to that bitter rumination on his personal

circumstances which was now unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting, drinking,

cardplaying, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied

pains springing from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that

dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent

companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to

think very prosaic figuresmen whose only work was to ride round their land, getting heavier and heavier in

their saddles, and who passed the rest of their days in the halflistless gratification of senses dulled by

monotonyhad a certain pathos in them nevertheless. Calamities came to _them_ too, and their early errors

carried hard consequences: perhaps the love of some sweet maiden, the image of purity, order, and calm, had

opened their eyes to the vision of a life in which the days would not seem too long, even without rioting; but

the maiden was lost, and the vision passed away, and then what was left to them, especially when they had

become too heavy for the hunt, or for carrying a gun over the furrows, but to drink and get merry, or to drink

and get angry, so that they might be independent of variety, and say over again with eager emphasis the

things they had said already any time that twelvemonth? Assuredly, among these flushed and dulleyed men

there were some whomthanks to their native humankindnesseven riot could never drive into brutality;

men who, when their cheeks were fresh, had felt the keen point of sorrow or remorse, had been pierced by the

reeds they leaned on, or had lightly put their limbs in fetters from which no struggle could loose them; and

under these sad circumstances, common to us all, their thoughts could find no restingplace outside the

That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this sixandtwentieth year of his life. A movement of

compunction, helped by those small indefinable influences which every personal relation exerts on a pliant

nature, had urged him into a secret marriage, which was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of low

passion, delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not to be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey's

bitter memory. He had long known that the delusion was partly due to a trap laid for him by Dunstan, who

saw in his brother's degrading marriage the means of gratifying at once his jealous hate and his cupidity. And

if Godfrey could have felt himself simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny had put into his mouth would

have chafed him less intolerably. If the curses he muttered half aloud when he was alone had had no other

object than Dunstan's diabolical cunning, he might have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal. But he

had something else to cursehis own vicious folly, which now seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as

almost all our follies and vices do when their promptings have long passed away. For four years he had

thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with tacit patient worship, as the woman who made him think of

the future with joy: she would be his wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his father's home had

never been; and it would be easy, when she was always near, to shake off those foolish habits that were no

pleasures, but only a feverish way of annulling vacancy. Godfrey's was an essentially domestic nature, bred

up in a home where the hearth had no smiles, and where the daily habits were not chastised by the presence

of household order. His easy disposition made him fall in unresistingly with the family courses, but the need

of some tender permanent affection, the longing for some influence that would make the good he preferred

easy to pursue, caused the neatness, purity, and liberal orderliness of the Lammeter household, sunned by the

smile of Nancy, to seem like those fresh bright hours of the morning when temptations go to sleep and leave

the ear open to the voice of the good angel, inviting to industry, sobriety, and peace. And yet the hope of this

paradise had not been enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it for ever. Instead of keeping

fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it

was easy to step firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into mud and slime, in which it was useless to

struggle. He had made ties for himself which robbed him of all wholesome motive, and were a constant

Still, there was one position worse than the present: it was the position he would be in when the ugly secret

was disclosed; and the desire that continually triumphed over every other was that of warding off the evil day,

when he would have to bear the consequences of his father's violent resentment for the wound inflicted on his

family pridewould have, perhaps, to turn his back on that hereditary ease and dignity which, after all, was

a sort of reason for living, and would carry with him the certainty that he was banished for ever from the sight

and esteem of Nancy Lammeter. The longer the interval, the more chance there was of deliverance from

some, at least, of the hateful consequences to which he had sold himself; the more opportunities remained for

him to snatch the strange gratification of seeing Nancy, and gathering some faint indications of her lingering

regard. Towards this gratification he was impelled, fitfully, every now and then, after having passed weeks in

which he had avoided her as the faroff brightwinged prize that only made him spring forward and find his

chain all the more galling. One of those fits of yearning was on him now, and it would have been strong

enough to have persuaded him to trust Wildfire to Dunstan rather than disappoint the yearning, even if he had

not had another reason for his disinclination towards the morrow's hunt. That other reason was the fact that

the morning's meet was near Batherley, the markettown where the unhappy woman lived, whose image

became more odious to him every day; and to his thought the whole vicinage was haunted by her. The yoke a

man creates for himself by wrongdoing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; and the goodhumoured,

affectionatehearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to

enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him a readygarnished home.

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about

the cockfighting: everybody was there, and what else was there to be done? Though, for his own part, he did

not care a button for cockfighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him, and had

been watching him for some time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress. But Godfrey thrust

her away without looking at her, and left the room, followed humbly by the unresenting Snuffperhaps

Dunstan Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at the judiciously quiet pace of a man who is obliged to ride to

cover on his hunter, had to take his way along the lane which, at its farther extremity, passed by the piece of

unenclosed ground called the Stonepit, where stood the cottage, once a stonecutter's shed, now for fifteen

years inhabited by Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at this season, with the moist trodden clay about

it, and the red, muddy water high up in the deserted quarry. That was Dunstan's first thought as he

approached it; the second was, that the old fool of a weaver, whose loom he heard rattling already, had a great

deal of money hidden somewhere. How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had often heard talk of Marner's

miserliness, had never thought of suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten or persuade the old fellow

into lending the money on the excellent security of the young Squire's prospects? The resource occurred to

him now as so easy and agreeable, especially as Marner's hoard was likely to be large enough to leave

Godfrey a handsome surplus beyond his immediate needs, and enable him to accommodate his faithful

brother, that he had almost turned the horse's head towards home again. Godfrey would be ready enough to

accept the suggestion: he would snatch eagerly at a plan that might save him from parting with Wildfire. But

when Dunstan's meditation reached this point, the inclination to go on grew strong and prevailed. He didn't

want to give Godfrey that pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed. Moreover, Dunstan

enjoyed the selfimportant consciousness of having a horse to sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain,

swaggering, and possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the satisfaction attendant on selling his

brother's horse, and not the less have the further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow Marner's money. So

Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would behe was such a lucky fellow.

"Heyday!" said Bryce, who had long had his eye on Wildfire, "you're on your brother's horse today: how's

"Oh, I've swopped with him," said Dunstan, whose delight in lying, grandly independent of utility, was not to

be diminished by the likelihood that his hearer would not believe him"Wildfire's mine now."

"What! has he swopped with you for that bigboned hack of yours?" said Bryce, quite aware that he should

"Oh, there was a little account between us," said Dunsey, carelessly, "and Wildfire made it even. I

accommodated him by taking the horse, though it was against my will, for I'd got an itch for a mare o'

Jortin'sas rare a bit o' blood as ever you threw your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him,

though I'd a bid of a hundred and fifty for him the other day, from a man over at Flittonhe's buying for

Lord Cromlecka fellow with a cast in his eye, and a green waistcoat. But I mean to stick to Wildfire: I

shan't get a better at a fence in a hurry. The mare's got more blood, but she's a bit too weak in the

Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and Dunstan knew that he divined it

(horsedealing is only one of many human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner); and they both

considered that the bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied ironically

"I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never heard of a man who didn't want to sell his

horse getting a bid of half as much again as the horse was worth. You'll be lucky if you get a hundred."

Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by

Bryce for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the Batherley

stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to

Batherley, and, having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him home with the money in his

pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from

his pocketpistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse under

him that would take the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many,

and got his horse pierced with a hedgestake. His own illfavoured person, which was quite unmarketable,

escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his flank and painfully panted

his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had

muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the

moment of glory, and under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would soon have been

up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened; and hence he was between eager riders in

advance, not troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and faroff stragglers, who were as

likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it

was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and

saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to a position

which no swaggering could make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and

much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his right hand, through which it occurred to him

that he could make his way to Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt. His first

intention was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand,

and along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as to other spirited young men of his

kind. He did not much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same time

the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt

from which he himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long: Dunstan felt sure he

could worry Godfrey into anything. The idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of

it had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy boots of a

pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of

his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his

waistcoatpocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three small coins

his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which

the stablekeeper had declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according

to the direction in which the run had brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he was

from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was only led to this conclusion by

the gradual perception that there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented course of walking home.

It was now nearly four o'clock, and a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the better. He

remembered having crossed the road and seen the fingerpost only a little while before Wildfire broke down;

so, buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his huntingwhip compactly round the handle, and rapping the tops

of his boots with a selfpossessed air, as if to assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set off

with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which somehow and at some

time he should be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. When a

young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his

hand is a desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position; and

Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was

Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one

could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was cut in deep letters on that gold

handlethey could only see that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey was not without fear that he might

meet some acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when people get

close to each other; but when he at last found himself in the wellknown Raveloe lanes without having met a

soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual good luck. But now the mist, helped by the evening

darkness, was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which his feet were liable to sliphid

everything, so that he had to guide his steps by dragging his whip along the low bushes in advance of the

hedgerow. He must soon, he thought, be getting near the opening at the Stonepits: he should find it out by

the break in the hedgerow. He found it out, however, by another circumstance which he had not

expectednamely, by certain gleams of light, which he presently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's

cottage. That cottage and the money hidden within it had been in his mind continually during his walk, and

he had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with the immediate possession of his

money for the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a little frightening added to the

cajolery, for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible demonstration

as to the advantages of interest; and as for security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by

making him believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on the miser's mind was a task that

Godfrey would be sure to hand over to his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made up his mind

to that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks of Marner's shutters, the idea of a

dialogue with the weaver had become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a natural thing to

make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be several conveniences attending this course: the weaver had

possibly got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was still nearly threequarters of a mile

from home, and the lane was becoming unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. He turned up

the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the right way, since he was not certain whether the light

were in front or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the ground before him cautiously with his whiphandle,

and at last arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be

frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the

weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan

knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latchhole,

intending to shake the door and pull the latchstring up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened.

But, to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he found himself in front of a bright fire

which lit up every corner of the cottagethe bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table and showed him

Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting to Dunsey than the bright fire on the brick hearth: he

walked in and seated himself by it at once. There was something in front of the fire, too, that would have

been inviting to a hungry man, if it had been in a different stage of cooking. It was a small bit of pork

suspended from the kettlehanger by a string passed through a large doorkey, in a way known to primitive

housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. But the pork had been hung at the farthest extremity of the hanger,

apparently to prevent the roasting from proceeding too rapidly during the owner's absence. The old staring

simpleton had hot meat for his supper, then? thought Dunstan. People had always said he lived on mouldy

bread, on purpose to check his appetite. But where could he be at this time, and on such an evening, leaving

his supper in this stage of preparation, and his door unfastened? Dunstan's own recent difficulty in making his

way suggested to him that the weaver had perhaps gone outside his cottage to fetch in fuel, or for some such

brief purpose, and had slipped into the Stonepit. That was an interesting idea to Dunstan, carrying

consequences of entire novelty. If the weaver was dead, who had a right to his money? Who would know

where his money was hidden? _Who would know that anybody had come to take it away?_ He went no

farther into the subtleties of evidence: the pressing question, "Where _is_ the money?" now took such entire

possession of him as to make him quite forget that the weaver's death was not a certainty. A dull mind, once

arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which

the inference started was purely problematic. And Dunstan's mind was as dull as the mind of a possible felon

usually is. There were only three hidingplaces where he had ever heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the

thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner's cottage had no thatch; and Dunstan's first act, after a train of

thought made rapid by the stimulus of cupidity, was to go up to the bed; but while he did so, his eyes

travelled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks, distinct in the firelight, were discernible under the

sprinkling of sand. But not everywhere; for there was one spot, and one only, which was quite covered with

sand, and sand showing the marks of fingers, which had apparently been careful to spread it over a given

space. It was near the treddles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan darted to that spot, swept away the sand

with his whip, and, inserting the thin end of the hook between the bricks, found that they were loose. In haste

he lifted up two bricks, and saw what he had no doubt was the object of his search; for what could there be

but money in those two leathern bags? And, from their weight, they must be filled with guineas. Dunstan felt

round the hole, to be certain that it held no more; then hastily replaced the bricks, and spread the sand over

them. Hardly more than five minutes had passed since he entered the cottage, but it seemed to Dunstan like a

long while; and though he was without any distinct recognition of the possibility that Marner might be alive,

and might reenter the cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread laying hold on him, as he rose to

his feet with the bags in his hand. He would hasten out into the darkness, and then consider what he should

do with the bags. He closed the door behind him immediately, that he might shut in the stream of light: a few

steps would be enough to carry him beyond betrayal by the gleams from the shutterchinks and the

latchhole. The rain and darkness had got thicker, and he was glad of it; though it was awkward walking with

both hands filled, so that it was as much as he could do to grasp his whip along with one of the bags. But

when he had gone a yard or two, he might take his time. So he stepped forward into the darkness.

When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas Marner was not more than a hundred yards away

from it, plodding along from the village with a sack thrown round his shoulders as an overcoat, and with a

horn lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease, free from the presentiment of change.

The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often

subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time

during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the

event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the

event imminent. A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a

reason why he should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink; and it is often observable,

that the older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing conception of his own death. This

influence of habit was necessarily strong in a man whose life was so monotonous as Marner's who saw no

new people and heard of no new events to keep alive in him the idea of the unexpected and the changeful;

and it explains simply enough, why his mind could be at ease, though he had left his house and his treasure

more defenceless than usual. Silas was thinking with double complacency of his supper: first, because it

would be hot and savoury; and secondly, because it would cost him nothing. For the little bit of pork was a

present from that excellent housewife, Miss Priscilla Lammeter, to whom he had this day carried home a

handsome piece of linen; and it was only on occasion of a present like this, that Silas indulged himself with

roastmeat. Supper was his favourite meal, because it came at his time of revelry, when his heart warmed

over his gold; whenever he had roastmeat, he always chose to have it for supper. But this evening, he had no

sooner ingeniously knotted his string fast round his bit of pork, twisted the string according to rule over his

doorkey, passed it through the handle, and made it fast on the hanger, than he remembered that a piece of

very fine twine was indispensable to his "setting up" a new piece of work in his loom early in the morning. It

had slipped his memory, because, in coming from Mr. Lammeter's, he had not had to pass through the

village; but to lose time by going on errands in the morning was out of the question. It was a nasty fog to turn

out into, but there were things Silas loved better than his own comfort; so, drawing his pork to the extremity

of the hanger, and arming himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what, in ordinary weather,

would have been a twenty minutes' errand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his

wellknotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth his while to make that sacrifice. What thief

would find his way to the Stonepits on such a night as this? and why should he come on this particular

night, when he had never come through all the fifteen years before? These questions were not distinctly

present in Silas's mind; they merely serve to represent the vaguelyfelt foundation of his freedom from

He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done: he opened it, and to his shortsighted eyes

everything remained as he had left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of heat. He trod about

the floor while putting by his lantern and throwing aside his hat and sack, so as to merge the marks of

Dunstan's feet on the sand in the marks of his own nailed boots. Then he moved his pork nearer to the fire,

and sat down to the agreeable business of tending the meat and warming himself at the same time.

Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon his pale face, strange straining eyes, and meagre

form, would perhaps have understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion with which he

was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few men could be more harmless than poor Marner. In his

truthful simple soul, not even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget any vice directly injurious

to others. The light of his faith quite put out, and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all the force

of his nature to his work and his money; and like all objects to which a man devotes himself, they had

fashioned him into correspondence with themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its

turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response.

His gold, as he hung over it and saw it grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard isolation like

As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to wait till after supper before he drew

out his guineas, and it would be pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his unwonted feast. For

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his loom, swept away the sand without

noticing any change, and removed the bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but

the belief that his gold was gone could not come at onceonly terror, and the eager effort to put an end to

the terror. He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his eyes had

deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and examined it curiously, trembling more and more. At last

he shook so violently that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying to steady himself, that

he might think. Had he put his gold somewhere else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then forgotten it?

A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones; and Silas, by acting as if he

believed in false hopes, warded off the moment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his bed

over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven where he laid his sticks. When there was no

other place to be searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the hole. There was no

Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration of thought under an overpowering

passion: it was that expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still distinct

from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the external fact. Silas got up from his knees

trembling, and looked round at the table: didn't the gold lie there after all? The table was bare. Then he turned

and looked behind himlooked all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible

appearance of the bags where he had already sought them in vain. He could see every object in his cottage

Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation. For a few

moments after, he stood motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first maddening pressure of the

truth. He turned, and tottered towards his loom, and got into the seat where he worked, instinctively seeking

And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock of certainty was past, the idea of a thief

began to present itself, and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to restore the

gold. The thought brought some new strength with it, and he started from his loom to the door. As he opened

it the rain beat in upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily. There were no footsteps to be tracked

on such a nightfootsteps? When had the thief come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the door had

been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad on his return by daylight. And in the evening, too, he

said to himself, everything was the same as when he had left it. The sand and bricks looked as if they had not

been moved. _Was_ it a thief who had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power that no hands could reach,

which had delighted in making him a second time desolate? He shrank from this vaguer dread, and fixed his

mind with struggling effort on the robber with hands, who could be reached by hands. His thoughts glanced

at all the neighbours who had made any remarks, or asked any questions which he might now regard as a

ground of suspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwise disreputable: he had often met

Marner in his journeys across the fields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver's money; nay, he

had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the fire when he called to light his pipe, instead of going about his

business. Jem Rodney was the manthere was ease in the thought. Jem could be found and made to restore

the money: Marner did not want to punish him, but only to get back his gold which had gone from him, and

left his soul like a forlorn traveller on an unknown desert. The robber must be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of

legal authority were confused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss; and the great people in the

villagethe clergyman, the constable, and Squire Casswould make Jem Rodney, or somebody else,

deliver up the stolen money. He rushed out in the rain, under the stimulus of this hope, forgetting to cover his

head, not caring to fasten his door; for he felt as if he had nothing left to lose. He ran swiftly, till want of

breath compelled him to slacken his pace as he was entering the village at the turning close to the Rainbow.

The Rainbow, in Marner's view, was a place of luxurious resort for rich and stout husbands, whose wives had

superfluous stores of linen; it was the place where he was likely to find the powers and dignities of Raveloe,

and where he could most speedily make his loss public. He lifted the latch, and turned into the bright bar or

kitchen on the right hand, where the less lofty customers of the house were in the habit of assembling, the

parlour on the left being reserved for the more select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the

double pleasure of conviviality and condescension. But the parlour was dark tonight, the chief personages

who ornamented its circle being all at Mrs. Osgood's birthday dance, as Godfrey Cass was. And in

consequence of this, the party on the highscreened seats in the kitchen was more numerous than usual;

several personages, who would otherwise have been admitted into the parlour and enlarged the opportunity of

hectoring and condescension for their betters, being content this evening to vary their enjoyment by taking

their spiritsandwater where they could themselves hector and condescend in company that called for beer.

The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas approached the door of the Rainbow,

had, as usual, been slow and intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to be puffed in

a silence which had an air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the

fire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the beerdrinkers,

chiefly men in fustian jackets and smockfrocks, kept their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their

mouths, as if their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with embarrassing sadness. At last Mr.

Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences as those

of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke silence, by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the

The butcher, a jolly, smiling, redhaired man, was not disposed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before

"Was it a red Durham?" said the farrier, taking up the thread of discourse after the lapse of a few minutes.

The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the butcher, as the person who must take the

"Red it was," said the butcher, in his goodhumoured husky treble "and a Durham it was."

"Then you needn't tell _me_ who you bought it of," said the farrier, looking round with some triumph; "I

know who it is has got the red Durhams o' this countryside. And she'd a white star on her brow, I'll bet a

penny?" The farrier leaned forward with his hands on his knees as he put this question, and his eyes twinkled

"Well; yesshe might," said the butcher, slowly, considering that he was giving a decided affirmative. "I

"I knew that very well," said the farrier, throwing himself backward again, and speaking defiantly; "if _I_

don't know Mr. Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who doesthat's all. And as for the cow you've

bought, bargain or no bargain, I've been at the drenching of hercontradick me who will."

The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational spirit was roused a little.

"I'm not for contradicking no man," he said; "I'm for peace and quietness. Some are for cutting long

ribsI'm for cutting 'em short myself; but _I_ don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, it's a lovely carkissand

"Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever it is," pursued the farrier, angrily; "and it was Mr. Lammeter's

"I tell no lies," said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as before, "and I contradick nonenot if a

man was to swear himself black: he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bargains. All I say is, it's a lovely

"No," said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the company generally; "and p'rhaps you aren't

pigheaded; and p'rhaps you didn't say the cow was a red Durham; and p'rhaps you didn't say she'd got a star

"Come, come," said the landlord; "let the cow alone. The truth lies atween you: you're both right and both

wrong, as I allays say. And as for the cow's being Mr. Lammeter's, I say nothing to that; but this I say, as the

Rainbow's the Rainbow. And for the matter o' that, if the talk is to be o' the Lammeters, _you_ know the most

upo' that head, eh, Mr. Macey? You remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these parts, and

Mr. Macey, tailor and parishclerk, the latter of which functions rheumatism had of late obliged him to share

with a smallfeatured young man who sat opposite him, held his white head on one side, and twirled his

thumbs with an air of complacency, slightly seasoned with criticism. He smiled pityingly, in answer to the

"Aye, aye; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I've laid by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them

as have been to school at Tarley: they've learnt pernouncing; that's come up since my day."

"If you're pointing at me, Mr. Macey," said the deputy clerk, with an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a

"Well, then, I wish you'd keep hold o' the tune, when it's set for you; if you're for prac_tis_ing, I wish you'd

prac_tise_ that," said a large jocoselooking man, an excellent wheelwright in his weekday capacity, but on

Sundays leader of the choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of the company, who were known officially as

the "bassoon" and the "keybugle", in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the musical

Mr. Tookey, the deputyclerk, who shared the unpopularity common to deputies, turned very red, but replied,

with careful moderation "Mr. Winthrop, if you'll bring me any proof as I'm in the wrong, I'm not the man

to say I won't alter. But there's people set up their own ears for a standard, and expect the whole choir to

"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with this attack on youthful presumption; "you're

right there, Tookey: there's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of himsen, and there's the 'pinion

other folks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself."

"Well, Mr. Macey," said poor Tookey, serious amidst the general laughter, "I undertook to partially fill up the

office of parishclerk by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirmities should make you unfitting;

and it's one of the rights thereof to sing in the choirelse why have you done the same yourself?"

"Ah! but the old gentleman and you are two folks," said Ben Winthrop. "The old gentleman's got a gift. Why,

the Squire used to invite him to take a glass, only to hear him sing the "Red Rovier"; didn't he, Mr. Macey?

It's a nat'ral gift. There's my little lad Aaron, he's got a gifthe can sing a tune off straight, like a throstle.

But as for you, Master Tookey, you'd better stick to your "Amens": your voice is well enough when you keep

it up in your nose. It's your inside as isn't right made for music: it's no better nor a hollow stalk."

This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and

"I see what it is plain enough," said Mr. Tookey, unable to keep cool any longer. "There's a consperacy to

turn me out o' the choir, as I shouldn't share the Christmas moneythat's where it is. But I shall speak to Mr.

"Nay, nay, Tookey," said Ben Winthrop. "We'll pay you your share to keep out of itthat's what we'll do.

"Come, come," said the landlord, who felt that paying people for their absence was a principle dangerous to

society; "a joke's a joke. We're all good friends here, I hope. We must give and take. You're both right and

you're both wrong, as I say. I agree wi' Mr. Macey here, as there's two opinions; and if mine was asked, I

should say they're both right. Tookey's right and Winthrop's right, and they've only got to split the difference

The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some contempt at this trivial discussion. He had no ear for

music himself, and never went to church, as being of the medical profession, and likely to be in requisition

for delicate cows. But the butcher, having music in his soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey's

"To be sure," he said, following up the landlord's conciliatory view, "we're fond of our old clerk; it's nat'ral,

and him used to be such a singer, and got a brother as is known for the first fiddler in this countryside. Eh,

it's a pity but what Solomon lived in our village, and could give us a tune when we liked; eh, Mr. Macey? I'd

"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency; "our family's been known for musicianers as far

back as anybody can tell. But them things are dying out, as I tell Solomon every time he comes round; there's

no voices like what there used to be, and there's nobody remembers what we remember, if it isn't the old

"Aye, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter's father come into these parts, don't you, Mr. Macey?" said the

"I should think I did," said the old man, who had now gone through that complimentary process necessary to

bring him up to the point of narration; "and a fine old gentleman he wasas fine, and finer nor the Mr.

Lammeter as now is. He came from a bit north'ard, so far as I could ever make out. But there's nobody rightly

knows about those parts: only it couldn't be far north'ard, nor much different from this country, for he brought

a fine breed o' sheep with him, so there must be pastures there, and everything reasonable. We heared tell as

he'd sold his own land to come and take the Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as had land of his own,

to come and rent a farm in a strange place. But they said it was along of his wife's dying; though there's

reasons in things as nobody knows onthat's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise,

they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and

they niver see't. Howsomever, it was soon seen as we'd got a new parish'ner as know'd the rights and customs

o' things, and kep a good house, and was well looked on by everybody. And the young man that's the Mr.

Lammeter as now is, for he'd niver a sister soon begun to court Miss Osgood, that's the sister o' the Mr.

Osgood as now is, and a fine handsome lass she waseh, you can't think they pretend this young lass is

like her, but that's the way wi' people as don't know what come before 'em. _I_ should know, for I helped the

Here Mr. Macey paused; he always gave his narrative in instalments, expecting to be questioned according to

"Aye, and a partic'lar thing happened, didn't it, Mr. Macey, so as you were likely to remember that

"I should think there dida _very_ partic'lar thing," said Mr. Macey, nodding sideways. "For Mr.

Drumlowpoor old gentleman, I was fond on him, though he'd got a bit confused in his head, what wi' age

and wi' taking a drop o' summat warm when the service come of a cold morning. And young Mr. Lammeter,

he'd have no way but he must be married in Janiwary, which, to be sure, 's a unreasonable time to be married

in, for it isn't like a christening or a burying, as you can't help; and so Mr. Drumlowpoor old gentleman, I

was fond on himbut when he come to put the questions, he put 'em by the rule o' contrairy, like, and he

says, "Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded wife?" says he, and then he says, "Wilt thou have this woman

to thy wedded husband?" says he. But the partic'larest thing of all is, as nobody took any notice on it but me,

and they answered straight off "yes", like as if it had been me saying "Amen" i' the right place, without

"But _you_ knew what was going on well enough, didn't you, Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh?" said

"Lor bless you!" said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at the impotence of his hearer's

imagination"why, I was all of a tremble: it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by the two tails, like; for I

couldn't stop the parson, I couldn't take upon me to do that; and yet I said to myself, I says, "Suppose they

shouldn't be fast married, 'cause the words are contrairy?" and my head went working like a mill, for I was

allays uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round 'em; and I says to myself, "Is't the meanin' or

the words as makes folks fast i' wedlock?" For the parson meant right, and the bride and bridegroom meant

right. But then, when I come to think on it, meanin' goes but a little way i' most things, for you may mean to

stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then where are you? And so I says to mysen, "It isn't the

meanin', it's the glue." And I was worreted as if I'd got three bells to pull at once, when we went into the

vestry, and they begun to sign their names. But where's the use o' talking?you can't think what goes on in a

"Aye, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi' Mr. Drumlow, and then I out wi' everything, but respectful, as I

allays did. And he made light on it, and he says, "Pooh, pooh, Macey, make yourself easy," he says; "it's

neither the meaning nor the wordsit's the re_ges_ter does itthat's the glue." So you see he settled it easy;

for parsons and doctors know everything by heart, like, so as they aren't worreted wi' thinking what's the

rights and wrongs o' things, as I'n been many and many's the time. And sure enough the wedding turned out

all right, on'y poor Mrs. Lammeterthat's Miss Osgood as wasdied afore the lasses was growed up; but

Every one of Mr. Macey's audience had heard this story many times, but it was listened to as if it had been a

favourite tune, and at certain points the puffing of the pipes was momentarily suspended, that the listeners

might give their whole minds to the expected words. But there was more to come; and Mr. Snell, the

"Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn't they say, when he come into these parts?"

"Well, yes," said Mr. Macey; "but I daresay it's as much as this Mr. Lammeter's done to keep it whole. For

there was allays a talk as nobody could get rich on the Warrens: though he holds it cheap, for it's what they

"Aye, and there's few folks know so well as you how it come to be Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the

"How should they?" said the old clerk, with some contempt. "Why, my grandfather made the grooms' livery

for that Mr. Cliff as came and built the big stables at the Warrens. Why, they're stables four times as big as

Squire Cass's, for he thought o' nothing but hosses and hunting, Cliff didn'ta Lunnon tailor, some folks

said, as had gone mad wi' cheating. For he couldn't ride; lor bless you! they said he'd got no more grip o' the

hoss than if his legs had been crosssticks: my grandfather heared old Squire Cass say so many and many a

time. But ride he would, as if Old Harry had been adriving him; and he'd a son, a lad o' sixteen; and nothing

would his father have him do, but he must ride and ridethough the lad was frighted, they said. And it was a

common saying as the father wanted to ride the tailor out o' the lad, and make a gentleman on himnot but

what I'm a tailor myself, but in respect as God made me such, I'm proud on it, for "Macey, tailor", 's been

wrote up over our door since afore the Queen's heads went out on the shillings. But Cliff, he was ashamed o'

being called a tailor, and he was sore vexed as his riding was laughed at, and nobody o' the gentlefolks

hereabout could abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got sickly and died, and the father didn't live long after

him, for he got queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night, wi' a lantern in his

hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand,

cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down

wi' the poor dumb creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd left all his property,

Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that's how the Warrens come to be Charity Land; though, as for the

stables, Mr. Lammeter never uses 'emthey're out o' all charicter lor bless you! if you was to set the doors

"Aye, but there's more going on in the stables than what folks see by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?" said the

"Aye, aye; go that way of a dark night, that's all," said Mr. Macey, winking mysteriously, "and then make

believe, if you like, as you didn't see lights i' the stables, nor hear the stamping o' the hosses, nor the cracking

o' the whips, and howling, too, if it's tow'rt daybreak. "Cliff's Holiday" has been the name of it ever sin' I

were a boy; that's to say, some said as it was the holiday Old Harry gev him from roasting, like. That's what

my father told me, and he was a reasonable man, though there's folks nowadays know what happened afore

"What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas?" said the landlord, turning to the farrier, who was swelling with

Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was proud of his position.

"Say? I say what a man _should_ say as doesn't shut his eyes to look at a fingerpost. I say, as I'm ready to

wager any man ten pound, if he'll stand out wi' me any dry night in the pasture before the Warren stables, as

we shall neither see lights nor hear noises, if it isn't the blowing of our own noses. That's what I say, and I've

said it many a time; but there's nobody 'ull ventur a tenpun' note on their ghos'es as they make so sure of."

"Why, Dowlas, that's easy betting, that is," said Ben Winthrop. "You might as well bet a man as he wouldn't

catch the rheumatise if he stood up to 's neck in the pool of a frosty night. It 'ud be fine fun for a man to win

his bet as he'd catch the rheumatise. Folks as believe in Cliff's Holiday aren't agoing to ventur near it for a

"If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth on it," said Mr. Macey, with a sarcastic smile, tapping his thumbs

together, "he's no call to lay any betlet him go and stan' by himselfthere's nobody 'ull hinder him; and

"Thank you! I'm obliged to you," said the farrier, with a snort of scorn. "If folks are fools, it's no business o'

mine. _I_ don't want to make out the truth about ghos'es: I know it a'ready. But I'm not against a

beteverything fair and open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and

"Ah, but who's to watch you, Dowlas, and see you do it? That's no fair bet," said the butcher.

"No fair bet?" replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily. "I should like to hear any man stand up and say I want to bet

"Very like you would," said the butcher. "But it's no business o' mine. You're none o' my bargains, and I

aren't agoing to try and 'bate your price. If anybody 'll bid for you at your own vallying, let him. I'm for

"Yes, that's what every yapping cur is, when you hold a stick up at him," said the farrier. "But I'm afraid o'

neither man nor ghost, and I'm ready to lay a fair bet. _I_ aren't a turntail cur."

"Aye, but there's this in it, Dowlas," said the landlord, speaking in a tone of much candour and tolerance.

"There's folks, i' my opinion, they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a pikestaff before 'em. And

there's reason i' that. For there's my wife, now, can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under her nose.

I never see'd a ghost myself; but then I says to myself, "Very like I haven't got the smell for 'em." I mean,

putting a ghost for a smell, or else contrairiways. And so, I'm for holding with both sides; for, as I say, the

truth lies between 'em. And if Dowlas was to go and stand, and say he'd never seen a wink o' Cliff's Holiday

all the night through, I'd back him; and if anybody said as Cliff's Holiday was certain sure, for all that, I'd

The landlord's analogical argument was not well received by the farriera man intensely opposed to

"Tut, tut," he said, setting down his glass with refreshed irritation; "what's the smell got to do with it? Did

ever a ghost give a man a black eye? That's what I should like to know. If ghos'es want me to believe in 'em,

let 'em leave off skulking i' the dark and i' lone placeslet 'em come where there's company and candles."

"As if ghos'es 'ud want to be believed in by anybody so ignirant!" said Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the

Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that ghosts had a more condescending disposition

than Mr. Macey attributed to them; for the pale thin figure of Silas Marner was suddenly seen standing in the

warm light, uttering no word, but looking round at the company with his strange unearthly eyes. The long

pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, not

excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression that he saw, not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an

apparition; for the door by which Silas had entered was hidden by the highscreened seats, and no one had

noticed his approach. Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost, might be supposed to have felt an

argumentative triumph, which would tend to neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always said

that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, his soul went loose from his body? Here was the

demonstration: nevertheless, on the whole, he would have been as well contented without it. For a few

moments there was a dead silence, Marner's want of breath and agitation not allowing him to speak. The

landlord, under the habitual sense that he was bound to keep his house open to all company, and confident in

the protection of his unbroken neutrality, at last took on himself the task of adjuring the ghost.

"Master Marner," he said, in a conciliatory tone, "what's lacking to you? What's your business here?"

"Robbed!" said Silas, gaspingly. "I've been robbed! I want the constableand the Justiceand Squire

"Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney," said the landlord, the idea of a ghost subsiding; "he's off his head, I doubt.

Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat conveniently near Marner's standingplace; but he declined to

"Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr. Snell, if you've a mind," said Jem, rather sullenly. "He's been

"Jem Rodney!" said Silas, turning and fixing his strange eyes on the suspected man.

"Aye, Master Marner, what do you want wi' me?" said Jem, trembling a little, and seizing his drinkingcan as

"If it was you stole my money," said Silas, clasping his hands entreatingly, and raising his voice to a cry,

"give it me back and I won't meddle with you. I won't set the constable on you. Give it me back, and I'll let

"Me stole your money!" said Jem, angrily. "I'll pitch this can at your eye if you talk o' _my_ stealing your

"Come, come, Master Marner," said the landlord, now rising resolutely, and seizing Marner by the shoulder,

"if you've got any information to lay, speak it out sensible, and show as you're in your right mind, if you

expect anybody to listen to you. You're as wet as a drownded rat. Sit down and dry yourself, and speak

"Ah, to be sure, man," said the farrier, who began to feel that he had not been quite on a par with himself and

the occasion. "Let's have no more staring and screaming, else we'll have you strapped for a madman. That

"Aye, aye, make him sit down," said several voices at once, well pleased that the reality of ghosts remained

The landlord forced Marner to take off his coat, and then to sit down on a chair aloof from every one else, in

the centre of the circle and in the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too feeble to have any distinct purpose

beyond that of getting help to recover his money, submitted unresistingly. The transient fears of the company

were now forgotten in their strong curiosity, and all faces were turned towards Silas, when the landlord,

"Now then, Master Marner, what's this you've got to sayas you've been robbed? Speak out."

"He'd better not say again as it was me robbed him," cried Jem Rodney, hastily. "What could I ha' done with

"Hold your tongue, Jem, and let's hear what he's got to say," said the landlord. "Now then, Master Marner."

Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the mysterious character of the robbery became

This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his Raveloe neighbours, of sitting in the warmth of a

hearth not his own, and feeling the presence of faces and voices which were his nearest promise of help, had

doubtless its influence on Marner, in spite of his passionate preoccupation with his loss. Our consciousness

rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many

The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened to him, gradually melted away before the

convincing simplicity of his distress: it was impossible for the neighbours to doubt that Marner was telling

the truth, not because they were capable of arguing at once from the nature of his statements to the absence of

any motive for making them falsely, but because, as Mr. Macey observed, "Folks as had the devil to back 'em

were not likely to be so mushed" as poor Silas was. Rather, from the strange fact that the robber had left no

traces, and had happened to know the nick of time, utterly incalculable by mortal agents, when Silas would

go away from home without locking his door, the more probable conclusion seemed to be, that his

disreputable intimacy in that quarter, if it ever existed, had been broken up, and that, in consequence, this ill

turn had been done to Marner by somebody it was quite in vain to set the constable after. Why this

preternatural felon should be obliged to wait till the door was left unlocked, was a question which did not

"It isn't Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Marner," said the landlord. "You mustn't be acasting

your eye at poor Jem. There may be a bit of a reckoning against Jem for the matter of a hare or so, if anybody

was bound to keep their eyes staring open, and niver to wink; but Jem's been asitting here drinking his can,

like the decentest man i' the parish, since before you left your house, Master Marner, by your own account."

"Aye, aye," said Mr. Macey; "let's have no accusing o' the innicent. That isn't the law. There must be folks to

swear again' a man before he can be ta'en up. Let's have no accusing o' the innicent, Master Marner."

Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be awakened by these words. With a movement of

compunction as new and strange to him as everything else within the last hour, he started from his chair and

went close up to Jem, looking at him as if he wanted to assure himself of the expression in his face.

"I was wrong," he said"yes, yesI ought to have thought. There's nothing to witness against you, Jem.

Only you'd been into my house oftener than anybody else, and so you came into my head. I don't accuse

youI won't accuse anybodyonly," he added, lifting up his hands to his head, and turning away with

"Aye, aye, they're gone where it's hot enough to melt 'em, I doubt," said Mr. Macey.

"Tchuh!" said the farrier. And then he asked, with a crossexamining air, "How much money might there be

"Two hundred and seventytwo pounds, twelve and sixpence, last night when I counted it," said Silas,

"Pooh! why, they'd be none so heavy to carry. Some tramp's been in, that's all; and as for the no footmarks,

and the bricks and the sand being all rightwhy, your eyes are pretty much like a insect's, Master Marner;

they're obliged to look so close, you can't see much at a time. It's my opinion as, if I'd been you, or you'd been

mefor it comes to the same thingyou wouldn't have thought you'd found everything as you left it. But

what I vote is, as two of the sensiblest o' the company should go with you to Master Kench, the

constable'she's ill i' bed, I know that muchand get him to appoint one of us his deppity; for that's the

law, and I don't think anybody 'ull take upon him to contradick me there. It isn't much of a walk to Kench's;

and then, if it's me as is deppity, I'll go back with you, Master Marner, and examine your premises; and if

anybody's got any fault to find with that, I'll thank him to stand up and say it out like a man."

By this pregnant speech the farrier had reestablished his selfcomplacency, and waited with confidence to

"Let us see how the night is, though," said the landlord, who also considered himself personally concerned in

this proposition. "Why, it rains heavy still," he said, returning from the door.

"Well, I'm not the man to be afraid o' the rain," said the farrier. "For it'll look bad when Justice Malam hears

as respectable men like us had a information laid before 'em and took no steps."

The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the sense of the company, and duly rehearsing a small

ceremony known in high ecclesiastical life as the _nolo episcopari_, he consented to take on himself the chill

dignity of going to Kench's. But to the farrier's strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an objection to his

proposing himself as a deputyconstable; for that oracular old gentleman, claiming to know the law, stated,

"And you're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only a cowdoctor for a fly's a fly, though it may be a

There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of course indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but

contending that a doctor could be a constable if he likedthe law meant, he needn't be one if he didn't like.

Mr. Macey thought this was nonsense, since the law was not likely to be fonder of doctors than of other folks.

Moreover, if it was in the nature of doctors more than of other men not to like being constables, how came

"_I_ don't want to act the constable," said the farrier, driven into a corner by this merciless reasoning; "and

there's no man can say it of me, if he'd tell the truth. But if there's to be any jealousy and en_vy_ing about

going to Kench's in the rain, let them go as like ityou won't get me to go, I can tell you."

By the landlord's intervention, however, the dispute was accommodated. Mr. Dowlas consented to go as a

second person disinclined to act officially; and so poor Silas, furnished with some old coverings, turned out

with his two companions into the rain again, thinking of the long nighthours before him, not as those do

When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood's party at midnight, he was not much surprised to learn that

Dunsey had not come home. Perhaps he had not sold Wildfire, and was waiting for another chance

perhaps, on that foggy afternoon, he had preferred housing himself at the Red Lion at Batherley for the night,

if the run had kept him in that neighbourhood; for he was not likely to feel much concern about leaving his

brother in suspense. Godfrey's mind was too full of Nancy Lammeter's looks and behaviour, too full of the

exasperation against himself and his lot, which the sight of her always produced in him, for him to give much

The next morning the whole village was excited by the story of the robbery, and Godfrey, like every one else,

was occupied in gathering and discussing news about it, and in visiting the Stonepits. The rain had washed

away all possibility of distinguishing footmarks, but a close investigation of the spot had disclosed, in the

direction opposite to the village, a tinderbox, with a flint and steel, half sunk in the mud. It was not Silas's

tinderbox, for the only one he had ever had was still standing on his shelf; and the inference generally

accepted was, that the tinderbox in the ditch was somehow connected with the robbery. A small minority

shook their heads, and intimated their opinion that it was not a robbery to have much light thrown on it by

tinderboxes, that Master Marner's tale had a queer look with it, and that such things had been known as a

man's doing himself a mischief, and then setting the justice to look for the doer. But when questioned closely

as to their grounds for this opinion, and what Master Marner had to gain by such false pretences, they only

shook their heads as before, and observed that there was no knowing what some folks counted gain;

moreover, that everybody had a right to their own opinions, grounds or no grounds, and that the weaver, as

everybody knew, was partly crazy. Mr. Macey, though he joined in the defence of Marner against all

suspicions of deceit, also poohpoohed the tinderbox; indeed, repudiated it as a rather impious suggestion,

tending to imply that everything must be done by human hands, and that there was no power which could

make away with the guineas without moving the bricks. Nevertheless, he turned round rather sharply on Mr.

Tookey, when the zealous deputy, feeling that this was a view of the case peculiarly suited to a parishclerk,

carried it still farther, and doubted whether it was right to inquire into a robbery at all when the circumstances

"As if," concluded Mr. Tookey"as if there was nothing but what could be made out by justices and

"Now, don't you be for overshooting the mark, Tookey," said Mr. Macey, nodding his head aside

admonishingly. "That's what you're allays at; if I throw a stone and hit, you think there's summat better than

hitting, and you try to throw a stone beyond. What I said was against the tinderbox: I said nothing against

justices and constables, for they're o' King George's making, and it 'ud be illbecoming a man in a parish

While these discussions were going on amongst the group outside the Rainbow, a higher consultation was

being carried on within, under the presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the rector, assisted by Squire Cass and

other substantial parishioners. It had just occurred to Mr. Snell, the landlordhe being, as he observed, a

man accustomed to put two and two togetherto connect with the tinderbox, which, as deputyconstable,

he himself had had the honourable distinction of finding, certain recollections of a pedlar who had called to

drink at the house about a month before, and had actually stated that he carried a tinderbox about with him

to light his pipe. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed out. And as memory, when duly impregnated with

ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered a vivid impression of the

effect produced on him by the pedlar's countenance and conversation. He had a "look with his eye" which fell

unpleasantly on Mr. Snell's sensitive organism. To be sure, he didn't say anything particularno, except that

about the tinderboxbut it isn't what a man says, it's the way he says it. Moreover, he had a swarthy

"Did he wear earrings?" Mr. Crackenthorp wished to know, having some acquaintance with foreign

"Wellstaylet me see," said Mr. Snell, like a docile clairvoyante, who would really not make a mistake if

she could help it. After stretching the corners of his mouth and contracting his eyes, as if he were trying to see

the earrings, he appeared to give up the effort, and said, "Well, he'd got earrings in his box to sell, so it's

nat'ral to suppose he might wear 'em. But he called at every house, a'most, in the village; there's somebody

Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that somebody else would remember the pedlar's earrings. For on the

spread of inquiry among the villagers it was stated with gathering emphasis, that the parson had wanted to

know whether the pedlar wore earrings in his ears, and an impression was created that a great deal depended

on the eliciting of this fact. Of course, every one who heard the question, not having any distinct image of the

pedlar as _without_ earrings, immediately had an image of him _with_ earrings, larger or smaller, as the

case might be; and the image was presently taken for a vivid recollection, so that the glazier's wife, a

wellintentioned woman, not given to lying, and whose house was among the cleanest in the village, was

ready to declare, as sure as ever she meant to take the sacrament the very next Christmas that was ever

coming, that she had seen big earrings, in the shape of the young moon, in the pedlar's two ears; while Jinny

Oates, the cobbler's daughter, being a more imaginative person, stated not only that she had seen them too,

but that they had made her blood creep, as it did at that very moment while there she stood.

Also, by way of throwing further light on this clue of the tinderbox, a collection was made of all the articles

purchased from the pedlar at various houses, and carried to the Rainbow to be exhibited there. In fact, there

was a general feeling in the village, that for the clearingup of this robbery there must be a great deal done at

the Rainbow, and that no man need offer his wife an excuse for going there while it was the scene of severe

Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a little indignation also, when it became known that Silas Marner,

on being questioned by the Squire and the parson, had retained no other recollection of the pedlar than that he

had called at his door, but had not entered his house, having turned away at once when Silas, holding the door

ajar, had said that he wanted nothing. This had been Silas's testimony, though he clutched strongly at the idea

of the pedlar's being the culprit, if only because it gave him a definite image of a whereabout for his gold

after it had been taken away from its hidingplace: he could see it now in the pedlar's box. But it was

observed with some irritation in the village, that anybody but a "blind creatur" like Marner would have seen

the man prowling about, for how came he to leave his tinderbox in the ditch close by, if he hadn't been

lingering there? Doubtless, he had made his observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody might

know and only look at himthat the weaver was a halfcrazy miser. It was a wonder the pedlar hadn't

murdered him; men of that sort, with rings in their ears, had been known for murderers often and often; there

had been one tried at the 'sizes, not so long ago but what there were people living who remembered it.

Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Rainbow during one of Mr. Snell's frequently repeated recitals of his

testimony, had treated it lightly, stating that he himself had bought a penknife of the pedlar, and thought him

a merry grinning fellow enough; it was all nonsense, he said, about the man's evil looks. But this was spoken

of in the village as the random talk of youth, "as if it was only Mr. Snell who had seen something odd about

the pedlar!" On the contrary, there were at least halfadozen who were ready to go before Justice Malam,

and give in much more striking testimony than any the landlord could furnish. It was to be hoped Mr.

Godfrey would not go to Tarley and throw cold water on what Mr. Snell said there, and so prevent the justice

from drawing up a warrant. He was suspected of intending this, when, after midday, he was seen setting off

But by this time Godfrey's interest in the robbery had faded before his growing anxiety about Dunstan and

Wildfire, and he was going, not to Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest in uncertainty about them any

longer. The possibility that Dunstan had played him the ugly trick of riding away with Wildfire, to return at

the end of a month, when he had gambled away or otherwise squandered the price of the horse, was a fear

that urged itself upon him more, even, than the thought of an accidental injury; and now that the dance at

Mrs. Osgood's was past, he was irritated with himself that he had trusted his horse to Dunstan. Instead of

trying to still his fears, he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if

we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come; and when he heard a horse approaching at a trot, and

saw a hat rising above a hedge beyond an angle of the lane, he felt as if his conjuration had succeeded. But no

sooner did the horse come within sight, than his heart sank again. It was not Wildfire; and in a few moments

more he discerned that the rider was not Dunstan, but Bryce, who pulled up to speak, with a face that implied

"Well, Mr. Godfrey, that's a lucky brother of yours, that Master Dunsey, isn't he?"

"Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pretended you had parted with it to him."

"Has he thrown him down and broken his knees?" said Godfrey, flushed with exasperation.

"Worse than that," said Bryce. "You see, I'd made a bargain with him to buy the horse for a hundred and

twentya swinging price, but I always liked the horse. And what does he do but go and stake himfly at a

hedge with stakes in it, atop of a bank with a ditch before it. The horse had been dead a pretty good while

"Home? no," said Godfrey, "and he'd better keep away. Confound me for a fool! I might have known this

"Well, to tell you the truth," said Bryce, "after I'd bargained for the horse, it did come into my head that he

might be riding and selling the horse without your knowledge, for I didn't believe it was his own. I knew

Master Dunsey was up to his tricks sometimes. But where can he be gone? He's never been seen at Batherley.

"Hurt?" said Godfrey, bitterly. "He'll never be hurthe's made to hurt other people."

"Yes; I wanted to part with the horsehe was always a little too hard in the mouth for me," said Godfrey; his

pride making him wince under the idea that Bryce guessed the sale to be a matter of necessity. "I was going

to see after himI thought some mischief had happened. I'll go back now," he added, turning the horse's

head, and wishing he could get rid of Bryce; for he felt that the longdreaded crisis in his life was close upon

"Well, no, not now," said Bryce. "I _was_ coming round there, for I had to go to Flitton, and I thought I

might as well take you in my way, and just let you know all I knew myself about the horse. I suppose Master

Dunsey didn't like to show himself till the ill news had blown over a bit. He's perhaps gone to pay a visit at

"Perhaps he is," said Godfrey, rather absently. Then rousing himself, he said, with an effort at carelessness,

"Well, here's my turning," said Bryce, not surprised to perceive that Godfrey was rather "down"; "so I'll bid

Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of confession to his father from which he felt

that there was now no longer any escape. The revelation about the money must be made the very next

morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be sure to come back shortly, and, finding that he must

bear the brunt of his father's anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even though he had nothing to gain

by it. There was one step, perhaps, by which he might still win Dunstan's silence and put off the evil day: he

might tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid to him by Fowler; and as he had never been

guilty of such an offence before, the affair would blow over after a little storming. But Godfrey could not

bend himself to this. He felt that in letting Dunstan have the money, he had already been guilty of a breach of

trust hardly less culpable than that of spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet there was a

distinction between the two acts which made him feel that the one was so much more blackening than the

"I don't pretend to be a good fellow," he said to himself; "but I'm not a scoundrelat least, I'll stop short

somewhere. I'll bear the consequences of what I _have_ done sooner than make believe I've done what I

never would have done. I'd never have spent the money for my own pleasureI was tortured into it."

Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only occasional fluctuations, kept his will bent in the

direction of a complete avowal to his father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire's loss till the next morning,

that it might serve him as an introduction to heavier matter. The old Squire was accustomed to his son's

frequent absence from home, and thought neither Dunstan's nor Wildfire's nonappearance a matter calling

for remark. Godfrey said to himself again and again, that if he let slip this one opportunity of confession, he

might never have another; the revelation might be made even in a more odious way than by Dunstan's

malignity: _she_ might come as she had threatened to do. And then he tried to make the scene easier to

himself by rehearsal: he made up his mind how he would pass from the admission of his weakness in letting

Dunstan have the money to the fact that Dunstan had a hold on him which he had been unable to shake off,

and how he would work up his father to expect something very bad before he told him the fact. The old

Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them

after his anger had subsided as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many violent and

implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him

with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard. This

was his system with his tenants: he allowed them to get into arrears, neglect their fences, reduce their stock,

sell their straw, and otherwise go the wrong way,and then, when he became short of money in

consequence of this indulgence, he took the hardest measures and would listen to no appeal. Godfrey knew

all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his

father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy.

(He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; _that_ seemed to him natural

enough.) Still there was just the chance, Godfrey thought, that his father's pride might see this marriage in a

light that would induce him to hush it up, rather than turn his son out and make the family the talk of the

This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him pretty closely till midnight, and he

went to sleep thinking that he had done with inward debating. But when he awoke in the still morning

darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts; it was as if they had been tired out and

were not to be roused to further work. Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the presence of

nothing but its evil consequences: the old dread of disgrace came backthe old shrinking from the thought

of raising a hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy the old disposition to rely on chances which

might be favourable to him, and save him from betrayal. Why, after all, should he cut off the hope of them by

his own act? He had seen the matter in a wrong light yesterday. He had been in a rage with Dunstan, and had

thought of nothing but a thorough breakup of their mutual understanding; but what it would be really wisest

for him to do, was to try and soften his father's anger against Dunsey, and keep things as nearly as possible in

their old condition. If Dunsey did not come back for a few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the rascal

had enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away still longer), everything might blow over.

Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his

younger brothers had finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always took a walk with his

managingman before breakfast. Every one breakfasted at a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire

was always the latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before he tried it. The table

had been spread with substantial eatables nearly two hours before he presented himself a tall, stout man of

sixty, with a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed contradicted by the slack and feeble

mouth. His person showed marks of habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something in

the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the ordinary farmers in the parish, who were

perhaps every whit as refined as he, but, having slouched their way through life with a consciousness of being

in the vicinity of their "betters", wanted that selfpossession and authoritativeness of voice and carriage

which belonged to a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with whom he had personally little

more to do than with America or the stars. The Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to the

presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that was his, were the oldest and best; and as he

never associated with any gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by comparison.

He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, "What, sir! haven't _you_ had your breakfast yet?" but

there was no pleasant morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but because the

"Yes, sir," said Godfrey, "I've had my breakfast, but I was waiting to speak to you."

"Ah! well," said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his chair, and speaking in a ponderous

coughing fashion, which was felt in Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of beef,

and held it up before the deerhound that had come in with him. "Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You

youngsters' business is your own pleasure, mostly. There's no hurry about it for anybody but yourselves."

The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons', but it was a fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries

in Raveloe that youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was constantly in a state

of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought

and the door closedan interval during which Fleet, the deerhound, had consumed enough bits of beef to

"There's been a cursed piece of illluck with Wildfire," he began; "happened the day before yesterday."

"What! broke his knees?" said the Squire, after taking a draught of ale. "I thought you knew how to ride

better than that, sir. I never threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha' whistled for another, for _my_

father wasn't quite so ready to unstring as some other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a new

leaf_they_ must. What with mortgages and arrears, I'm as short o' cash as a roadside pauper. And that fool

Kimble says the newspaper's talking about peace. Why, the country wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Prices

'ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I sold all the fellows up. And there's that

damned Fowler, I won't put up with him any longer; I've told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day. The lying

scoundrel told me he'd be sure to pay me a hundred last month. He takes advantage because he's on that

The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted manner, but with no pause long enough

for Godfrey to make it a pretext for taking up the word again. He felt that his father meant to ward off any

request for money on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire, and that the emphasis he had thus been led

to lay on his shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the utmost

"It's worse than breaking the horse's kneeshe's been staked and killed," he said, as soon as his father was

silent, and had begun to cut his meat. "But I wasn't thinking of asking you to buy me another horse; I was

only thinking I'd lost the means of paying you with the price of Wildfire, as I'd meant to do. Dunsey took him

to the hunt to sell him for me the other day, and after he'd made a bargain for a hundred and twenty with

Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took some fool's leap or other that did for the horse at once. If it hadn't

The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his son in amazement, not being sufficiently

quick of brain to form a probable guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion of the paternal

and filial relations as this proposition of his son to pay him a hundred pounds.

"The truth is, sirI'm very sorryI was quite to blame," said Godfrey. "Fowler did pay that hundred

pounds. He paid it to me, when I was over there one day last month. And Dunsey bothered me for the money,

and I let him have it, because I hoped I should be able to pay it you before this."

The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking, and found utterance difficult. "You let

Dunsey have it, sir? And how long have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must _collogue_ with him to

embezzle my money? Are you turning out a scamp? I tell you I won't have it. I'll turn the whole pack of you

out of the house together, and marry again. I'd have you to remember, sir, my property's got no entail on

it;since my grandfather's time the Casses can do as they like with their land. Remember that, sir. Let

Dunsey have the money! Why should you let Dunsey have the money? There's some lie at the bottom of it."

"There's no lie, sir," said Godfrey. "I wouldn't have spent the money myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I

was a fool, and let him have it. But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not. That's the whole story. I never

meant to embezzle money, and I'm not the man to do it. You never knew me do a dishonest trick, sir."

"Where's Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there for? Go and fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him

give account of what he wanted the money for, and what he's done with it. He shall repent it. I'll turn him out.

"What! did he break his own neck, then?" said the Squire, with some disgust at the idea that, in that case, he

"No, he wasn't hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we

"And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me that," said the Squire, attacking Godfrey

"Well, sir, I don't know," said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of

lying, and, not being sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal

"You don't know? I tell you what it is, sir. You've been up to some trick, and you've been bribing him not to

tell," said the Squire, with a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat violently at the

nearness of his father's guess. The sudden alarm pushed him on to take the next stepa very slight impulse

"Why, sir," he said, trying to speak with careless ease, "it was a little affair between me and Dunsey; it's no

matter to anybody else. It's hardly worth while to pry into young men's fooleries: it wouldn't have made any

difference to you, sir, if I'd not had the bad luck to lose Wildfire. I should have paid you the money."

"Fooleries! Pshaw! it's time you'd done with fooleries. And I'd have you know, sir, you _must_ ha' done with

'em," said the Squire, frowning and casting an angry glance at his son. "Your goingson are not what I shall

find money for any longer. There's my grandfather had his stables full o' horses, and kept a good house, too,

and in worse times, by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn't four goodfornothing fellows to hang

on me like horseleeches. I've been too good a father to you allthat's what it is. But I shall pull up, sir."

Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrating in his judgments, but he had always had a sense

that his father's indulgence had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some discipline that

would have checked his own errant weakness and helped his better will. The Squire ate his bread and meat

hastily, took a deep draught of ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak again.

"It'll be all the worse for you, you knowyou'd need try and help me keep things together."

"Well, sir, I've often offered to take the management of things, but you know you've taken it ill always, and

"I know nothing o' your offering or o' my taking it ill," said the Squire, whose memory consisted in certain

strong impressions unmodified by detail; "but I know, one while you seemed to be thinking o' marrying, and I

didn't offer to put any obstacles in your way, as some fathers would. I'd as lieve you married Lammeter's

daughter as anybody. I suppose, if I'd said you nay, you'd ha' kept on with it; but, for want o' contradiction,

you've changed your mind. You're a shillyshally fellow: you take after your poor mother. She never had a

will of her own; a woman has no call for one, if she's got a proper man for her husband. But _your_ wife had

need have one, for you hardly know your own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way. The lass

"No," said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; "but I don't think she will."

"Think! why haven't you the courage to ask her? Do you stick to it, you want to have _her_that's the

"Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that's all, if you haven't the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn't

likely to be loath for his daughter to marry into _my_ family, I should think. And as for the pretty lass, she

wouldn't have her cousinand there's nobody else, as I see, could ha' stood in your way."

"I'd rather let it be, please sir, at present," said Godfrey, in alarm. "I think she's a little offended with me just

now, and I should like to speak for myself. A man must manage these things for himself."

"Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can't turn over a new leaf. That's what a man must do when

"I don't see how I can think of it at present, sir. You wouldn't like to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose,

and I don't think she'd come to live in this house with all my brothers. It's a different sort of life to what she's

"Not come to live in this house? Don't tell me. You ask her, that's all," said the Squire, with a short, scornful

"I'd rather let the thing be, at present, sir," said Godfrey. "I hope you won't try to hurry it on by saying

"I shall do what I choose," said the Squire, "and I shall let you know I'm master; else you may turn out and

find an estate to drop into somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox's, but wait for me. And

tell 'em to get my horse saddled. And stop: look out and get that hack o' Dunsey's sold, and hand me the

money, will you? He'll keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know where he's sneakingI daresay

you doyou may tell him to spare himself the journey o' coming back home. Let him turn ostler, and keep

"I don't know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn't my place to tell him to keep away," said Godfrey, moving

"Confound it, sir, don't stay arguing, but go and order my horse," said the Squire, taking up a pipe.

Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved by the sense that the interview was

ended without having made any change in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself still

further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about his proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm,

lest by some afterdinner words of his father's to Mr. Lammeter he should be thrown into the embarrassment

of being obliged absolutely to decline her when she seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual

refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him

from unpleasant consequences perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence. And in this

point of trusting to some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called specially oldfashioned.

Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they

believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will

be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him

live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find

himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a

possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his

office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of

the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning

complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a

decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his

religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of

success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a

Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Raveloe as a man of capacious mind, seeing that he

could draw much wider conclusions without evidence than could be expected of his neighbours who were not

on the Commission of the Peace. Such a man was not likely to neglect the clue of the tinderbox, and an

inquiry was set on foot concerning a pedlar, name unknown, with curly black hair and a foreign complexion,

carrying a box of cutlery and jewellery, and wearing large rings in his ears. But either because inquiry was

too slowfooted to overtake him, or because the description applied to so many pedlars that inquiry did not

know how to choose among them, weeks passed away, and there was no other result concerning the robbery

than a gradual cessation of the excitement it had caused in Raveloe. Dunstan Cass's absence was hardly a

subject of remark: he had once before had a quarrel with his father, and had gone off, nobody knew whither,

to return at the end of six weeks, take up his old quarters unforbidden, and swagger as usual. His own family,

who equally expected this issue, with the sole difference that the Squire was determined this time to forbid

him the old quarters, never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle Kimble or Mr. Osgood noticed it, the

story of his having killed Wildfire, and committed some offence against his father, was enough to prevent

surprise. To connect the fact of Dunsey's disappearance with that of the robbery occurring on the same day,

lay quite away from the track of every one's thoughteven Godfrey's, who had better reason than any one

else to know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no mention of the weaver between them since

the time, twelve years ago, when it was their boyish sport to deride him; and, besides, his imagination

constantly created an _alibi_ for Dunstan: he saw him continually in some congenial haunt, to which he had

walked off on leaving Wildfiresaw him sponging on chance acquaintances, and meditating a return home

to the old amusement of tormenting his elder brother. Even if any brain in Raveloe had put the said two facts

together, I doubt whether a combination so injurious to the prescriptive respectability of a family with a

mural monument and venerable tankards, would not have been suppressed as of unsound tendency. But

Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental originality into the

channel of nightmare, are great preservatives against a dangerous spontaneity of waking thought.

When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and elsewhere, in good company, the balance continued to

waver between the rational explanation founded on the tinderbox, and the theory of an impenetrable

mystery that mocked investigation. The advocates of the tinderboxandpedlar view considered the other

side a muddleheaded and credulous set, who, because they themselves were walleyed, supposed everybody

else to have the same blank outlook; and the adherents of the inexplicable more than hinted that their

antagonists were animals inclined to crow before they had found any cornmere skimmingdishes in point

of depthwhose clearsightedness consisted in supposing there was nothing behind a barndoor because

they couldn't see through it; so that, though their controversy did not serve to elicit the fact concerning the

But while poor Silas's loss served thus to brush the slow current of Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was

feeling the withering desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were arguing at their ease.

To any one who had observed him before he lost his gold, it might have seemed that so withered and

shrunken a life as his could hardly be susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any subtraction but such as

would put an end to it altogether. But in reality it had been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which

fenced him in from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been a clinging life; and though the object round

which its fibres had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for clinging. But now the fence

was broken downthe support was snatched away. Marner's thoughts could no longer move in their old

round, and were baffled by a blank like that which meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on

its homeward path. The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern in the cloth; but the bright

treasure in the hole under his feet was gone; the prospect of handling and counting it was gone: the evening

had no phantasm of delight to still the poor soul's craving. The thought of the money he would get by his

actual work could bring no joy, for its meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss; and hope was too

heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his imagination to dwell on the growth of a new hoard from that

He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he every now and then moaned low, like one in pain: it

was the sign that his thoughts had come round again to the sudden chasmto the empty eveningtime. And

all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he leaned his elbows on his knees, and clasped his

And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The repulsion Marner had always created in his neighbours

was partly dissipated by the new light in which this misfortune had shown him. Instead of a man who had

more cunning than honest folks could come by, and, what was worse, had not the inclination to use that

cunning in a neighbourly way, it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning enough to keep his own. He

was generally spoken of as a "poor mushed creatur"; and that avoidance of his neighbours, which had before

been referred to his illwill and to a probable addiction to worse company, was now considered mere

This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. The odour of Christmas cooking being on the

wind, it was the season when superfluous pork and black puddings are suggestive of charity in welltodo

families; and Silas's misfortune had brought him uppermost in the memory of housekeepers like Mrs.

Osgood. Mr. Crackenthorp, too, while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from him

because he thought too much of it and never came to church, enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs'

pettitoes, well calculated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character. Neighbours who

had nothing but verbal consolation to give showed a disposition not only to greet Silas and discuss his

misfortune at some length when they encountered him in the village, but also to take the trouble of calling at

his cottage and getting him to repeat all the details on the very spot; and then they would try to cheer him by

saying, "Well, Master Marner, you're no worse off nor other poor folks, after all; and if you was to be

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our goodwill

gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and pettitoes

without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a

mingled soil. There was a fair proportion of kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and bungling

Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to let Silas know that recent events had given him the

advantage of standing more favourably in the opinion of a man whose judgment was not formed lightly,

opened the conversation by saying, as soon as he had seated himself and adjusted his thumbs

"Come, Master Marner, why, you've no call to sit amoaning. You're a deal better off to ha' lost your money,

nor to ha' kep it by foul means. I used to think, when you first come into these parts, as you were no better

nor you should be; you were younger a deal than what you are now; but you were allays a staring,

whitefaced creatur, partly like a baldfaced calf, as I may say. But there's no knowing: it isn't every

queerlooksed thing as Old Harry's had the making ofI mean, speaking o' toads and such; for they're often

harmless, like, and useful against varmin. And it's pretty much the same wi' you, as fur as I can see. Though

as to the yarbs and stuff to cure the breathing, if you brought that sort o' knowledge from distant parts, you

might ha' been a bit freer of it. And if the knowledge wasn't well come by, why, you might ha' made up for it

by coming to church reg'lar; for, as for the children as the Wise Woman charmed, I've been at the christening

of 'em again and again, and they took the water just as well. And that's reasonable; for if Old Harry's a mind

to do a bit o' kindness for a holiday, like, who's got anything against it? That's my thinking; and I've been

clerk o' this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday,

there's no cussing o' folks as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let Kimble say what he will. And so,

Master Marner, as I was sayingfor there's windings i' things as they may carry you to the fur end o' the

prayerbook afore you get back to 'emmy advice is, as you keep up your sperrits; for as for thinking you're

a deep un, and ha' got more inside you nor 'ull bear daylight, I'm not o' that opinion at all, and so I tell the

neighbours. For, says I, you talk o' Master Marner making out a talewhy, it's nonsense, that is: it 'ud take a

'cute man to make a tale like that; and, says I, he looked as scared as a rabbit."

During this discursive address Silas had continued motionless in his previous attitude, leaning his elbows on

his knees, and pressing his hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not doubting that he had been listened to,

paused, in the expectation of some appreciatory reply, but Marner remained silent. He had a sense that the old

man meant to be goodnatured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the

"Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to that?" said Mr. Macey at last, with a slight accent of

"Oh," said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his hands, "I thank youthank youkindly."

"Aye, aye, to be sure: I thought you would," said Mr. Macey; "and my advice ishave you got a Sunday

"I doubted it was so," said Mr. Macey. "Now, let me advise you to get a Sunday suit: there's Tookey, he's a

poor creatur, but he's got my tailoring business, and some o' my money in it, and he shall make a suit at a low

price, and give you trust, and then you can come to church, and be a bit neighbourly. Why, you've never

heared me say "Amen" since you come into these parts, and I recommend you to lose no time, for it'll be poor

work when Tookey has it all to himself, for I mayn't be equil to stand i' the desk at all, come another winter."

Here Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some sign of emotion in his hearer; but not observing any, he

went on. "And as for the money for the suit o' clothes, why, you get a matter of a pound aweek at your

weaving, Master Marner, and you're a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed. Why, you couldn't ha' been

Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and answered mildly, "I don't know; I can't rightly

After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surprising that Mr. Macey observed, later on in the evening at

the Rainbow, that Marner's head was "all of a muddle", and that it was to be doubted if he ever knew when

Another of Silas's comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to him with a mind highly charged on the same

topic. This was Mrs. Winthrop, the wheelwright's wife. The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely regular

in their churchgoing, and perhaps there was hardly a person in the parish who would not have held that to

go to church every Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with Heaven, and

get an undue advantage over their neighbours a wish to be better than the "common run", that would have

implied a reflection on those who had had godfathers and godmothers as well as themselves, and had an equal

right to the buryingservice. At the same time, it was understood to be requisite for all who were not

household servants, or young men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: Squire Cass himself

took it on Christmasday; while those who were held to be "good livers" went to church with greater, though

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a woman of scrupulous conscience, so eager for

duties that life seemed to offer them too scantily unless she rose at halfpast four, though this threw a scarcity

of work over the more advanced hours of the morning, which it was a constant problem with her to remove.

Yet she had not the vixenish temper which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition of such habits:

she was a very mild, patient woman, whose nature it was to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements

of life, and pasture her mind upon them. She was the person always first thought of in Raveloe when there

was illness or death in a family, when leeches were to be applied, or there was a sudden disappointment in a

monthly nurse. She was a "comfortable woman"goodlooking, freshcomplexioned, having her lips

always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself in a sickroom with the doctor or the clergyman present. But

she was never whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to shake her

head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that

Ben Winthrop, who loved his quartpot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took her

husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men _would_ be so", and

viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome,

This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her mind drawn strongly towards Silas Marner, now

that he appeared in the light of a sufferer; and one Sunday afternoon she took her little boy Aaron with her,

and went to call on Silas, carrying in her hand some small lardcakes, flat pastelike articles much esteemed

in Raveloe. Aaron, an applecheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which looked like a plate

for the apples, needed all his adventurous curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the bigeyed

weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety was much increased when, on arriving at the

They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them; but when he did come to the door he showed no

impatience, as he would once have done, at a visit that had been unasked for and unexpected. Formerly, his

heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was

broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and

halfdespairing one, that if any help came to him it must come from without; and there was a slight stirring

of expectation at the sight of his fellowmen, a faint consciousness of dependence on their goodwill. He

opened the door wide to admit Dolly, but without otherwise returning her greeting than by moving the

armchair a few inches as a sign that she was to sit down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed the

"I'd a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lardcakes turned out better nor common, and I'd ha' asked

you to accept some, if you'd thought well. I don't eat such things myself, for a bit o' bread's what I like from

one year's end to the other; but men's stomichs are made so comical, they want a changethey do, I know,

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who thanked her kindly and looked very close at them,

absently, being accustomed to look so at everything he took into his handeyed all the while by the

wondering bright orbs of the small Aaron, who had made an outwork of his mother's chair, and was peeping

"There's letters pricked on 'em," said Dolly. "I can't read 'em myself, and there's nobody, not Mr. Macey

himself, rightly knows what they mean; but they've a good meaning, for they're the same as is on the

"Oh, go, that's naughty," said his mother, mildly. "Well, whativer the letters are, they've a good meaning; and

it's a stamp as has been in our house, Ben says, ever since he was a little un, and his mother used to put it on

the cakes, and I've allays put it on too; for if there's any good, we've need of it i' this world."

"It's I. H. S.," said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron peeped round the chair again.

"Well, to be sure, you can read 'em off," said Dolly. "Ben's read 'em to me many and many a time, but they

slip out o' my mind again; the more's the pity, for they're good letters, else they wouldn't be in the church; and

so I prick 'em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though sometimes they won't hold, because o' the

risingfor, as I said, if there's any good to be got we've need of it i' this worldthat we have; and I hope

they'll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it's wi' that will I brought you the cakes; and you see the letters

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but there was no possibility of misunderstanding the

desire to give comfort that made itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, with more feeling than

before"Thank youthank you kindly." But he laid down the cakes and seated himself absentlydrearily

unconscious of any distinct benefit towards which the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly's kindness, could

"Ah, if there's good anywhere, we've need of it," repeated Dolly, who did not lightly forsake a serviceable

phrase. She looked at Silas pityingly as she went on. "But you didn't hear the churchbells this morning,

Master Marner? I doubt you didn't know it was Sunday. Living so lone here, you lose your count, I daresay;

and then, when your loom makes a noise, you can't hear the bells, more partic'lar now the frost kills the

"Yes, I did; I heard 'em," said Silas, to whom Sunday bells were a mere accident of the day, and not part of its

"Dear heart!" said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. "But what a pity it is you should work of a Sunday,

and not clean yourselfif you _didn't_ go to church; for if you'd a roasting bit, it might be as you couldn't

leave it, being a lone man. But there's the bakehus, if you could make up your mind to spend a twopence on

the oven now and then,not every week, in courseI shouldn't like to do that myself,you might carry

your bit o' dinner there, for it's nothing but right to have a bit o' summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make it as

you can't know your dinner from Saturday. But now, upo' Christmasday, this blessed Christmas as is ever

coming, if you was to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the yew, and

hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen', you'd be a deal the better, and you'd know which end you stood

on, and you could put your trust i' Them as knows better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done what it lies on us all

Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of speech for her, was uttered in the soothing

persuasive tone with which she would have tried to prevail on a sick man to take his medicine, or a basin of

gruel for which he had no appetite. Silas had never before been closely urged on the point of his absence from

church, which had only been thought of as a part of his general queerness; and he was too direct and simple

"No!" said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then bethinking herself of Silas's advent from an unknown

"Oh, yes," said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual posture of leaning on his knees, and supporting his

head. "There was churchesa manyit was a big town. But I knew nothing of 'em I went to chapel."

Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was rather afraid of inquiring further, lest "chapel" might

"Well, Master Marner, it's niver too late to turn over a new leaf, and if you've niver had no church, there's no

telling the good it'll do you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as niver was, when I've been and heard the

prayers, and the singing to the praise and glory o' God, as Mr. Macey gives outand Mr. Crackenthorp

saying good words, and more partic'lar on Sacramen' Day; and if a bit o' trouble comes, I feel as I can put up

wi' it, for I've looked for help i' the right quarter, and gev myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up

to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we

Poor Dolly's exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell rather unmeaningly on Silas's ears, for there was

no word in it that could rouse a memory of what he had known as religion, and his comprehension was quite

baffled by the plural pronoun, which was no heresy of Dolly's, but only her way of avoiding a presumptuous

familiarity. He remained silent, not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly's speech which he fully

understoodher recommendation that he should go to church. Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to talk

beyond the brief questions and answers necessary for the transaction of his simple business, that words did

But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver's awful presence, had advanced to his mother's side,

and Silas, seeming to notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly's signs of goodwill by offering the

lad a bit of lardcake. Aaron shrank back a little, and rubbed his head against his mother's shoulder, but still

"Oh, for shame, Aaron," said his mother, taking him on her lap, however; "why, you don't want cake again

yet awhile. He's wonderful hearty," she went on, with a little sigh"that he is, God knows. He's my

youngest, and we spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must allays hev him in our sightthat we

She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought it must do Master Marner good to see such a "pictur of a child".

But Marner, on the other side of the hearth, saw the neatfeatured rosy face as a mere dim round, with two

"And he's got a voice like a birdyou wouldn't think," Dolly went on; "he can sing a Christmas carril as his

father's taught him; and I take it for a token as he'll come to good, as he can learn the good tunes so quick.

"Oh, that's naughty," said Dolly, gently. "Stan' up, when mother tells you, and let me hold the cake till you've

Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an ogre, under protecting circumstances; and after a

few more signs of coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his hands over his eyes, and then

peeping between them at Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious for the "carril", he at length allowed his

head to be duly adjusted, and standing behind the table, which let him appear above it only as far as his broad

frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a

Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in some confidence that this strain would help to allure

"That's Christmas music," she said, when Aaron had ended, and had secured his piece of cake again. "There's

no other music equil to the Christmas music"Hark the erol angils sing." And you may judge what it is at

church, Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you can't help thinking you've got to a better

place a'readyfor I wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows bestbut what wi'

the drink, and the quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as I've seen times and times, one's

The Christmas carol, with its hammerlike rhythm, had fallen on his ears as strange music, quite unlike a

hymn, and could have none of the effect Dolly contemplated. But he wanted to show her that he was grateful,

"Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner," said Dolly, holding down Aaron's willing hands. "We must be going

home now. And so I wish you goodbye, Master Marner; and if you ever feel anyways bad in your inside, as

you can't fend for yourself, I'll come and clean up for you, and get you a bit o' victual, and willing. But I beg

and pray of you to leave off weaving of a Sunday, for it's bad for soul and bodyand the money as comes i'

that way 'ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the last, if it doesn't fly away, nobody knows where, like the white

frost. And you'll excuse me being that free with you, Master Marner, for I wish you wellI do. Make your

Silas said "Goodbye, and thank you kindly," as he opened the door for Dolly, but he couldn't help feeling

relieved when she was gone relieved that he might weave again and moan at his ease. Her simple view of

life and its comforts, by which she had tried to cheer him, was only like a report of unknown objects, which

his imagination could not fashion. The fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet been

unlocked, and his soul was still the shrunken rivulet, with only this difference, that its little groove of sand

And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Macey and Dolly Winthrop, Silas spent his

Christmasday in loneliness, eating his meat in sadness of heart, though the meat had come to him as a

neighbourly present. In the morning he looked out on the black frost that seemed to press cruelly on every

blade of grass, while the halficy red pool shivered under the bitter wind; but towards evening the snow

began to fall, and curtained from him even that dreary outlook, shutting him close up with his narrow grief.

And he sat in his robbed home through the livelong evening, not caring to close his shutters or lock his door,

pressing his head between his hands and moaning, till the cold grasped him and told him that his fire was

Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the same Silas Marner who had once loved his fellow

with tender love, and trusted in an unseen goodness. Even to himself that past experience had become dim.

But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the church was fuller than all through the rest of the year,

with red faces among the abundant darkgreen boughsfaces prepared for a longer service than usual by an

odorous breakfast of toast and ale. Those green boughs, the hymn and anthem never heard but at

Christmas even the Athanasian Creed, which was discriminated from the others only as being longer and

of exceptional virtue, since it was only read on rare occasionsbrought a vague exulting sense, for which the

grown men could as little have found words as the children, that something great and mysterious had been

done for them in heaven above and in earth below, which they were appropriating by their presence. And

then the red faces made their way through the black biting frost to their own homes, feeling themselves free

for the rest of the day to eat, drink, and be merry, and using that Christian freedom without diffidence.

At Squire Cass's family party that day nobody mentioned Dunstan nobody was sorry for his absence, or

feared it would be too long. The doctor and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the annual

Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions, rising to the climax of Mr. Kimble's experience

when he walked the London hospitals thirty years back, together with striking professional anecdotes then

gathered. Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble's annual failure to follow suit, and uncle Kimble's

irascibility concerning the odd trick which was rarely explicable to him, when it was not on his side, without

a general visitation of tricks to see that they were formed on sound principles: the whole being accompanied

But the party on Christmasday, being a strictly family party, was not the preeminently brilliant celebration

of the season at the Red House. It was the great dance on New Year's Eve that made the glory of Squire

Cass's hospitality, as of his forefathers', time out of mind. This was the occasion when all the society of

Raveloe and Tarley, whether old acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled acquaintances

separated by misunderstandings concerning runaway calves, or acquaintances founded on intermittent

condescension, counted on meeting and on comporting themselves with mutual appropriateness. This was the

occasion on which fair dames who came on pillions sent their bandboxes before them, supplied with more

than their evening costume; for the feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town

entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on the table at once, and bedding is scanty. The Red

House was provisioned as if for a siege; and as for the spare featherbeds ready to be laid on floors, they

were as plentiful as might naturally be expected in a family that had killed its own geese for many

Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year's Eve with a foolish reckless longing, that made him half

"Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great blowup, and how will you bribe his spite to

"Oh, he won't come home before New Year's Eve, perhaps," said Godfrey; "and I shall sit by Nancy then, and

"But money is wanted in another quarter," said Anxiety, in a louder voice, "and how will you get it without

"Well, but something may happen to make things easier. At any rate, there's one pleasure for me close at

"Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a pass that will oblige you to decline marrying

"Hold your tongue, and don't worry me. I can see Nancy's eyes, just as they will look at me, and feel her hand

But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to be utterly quieted even by much

Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a pillion, and attired in a drab joseph and a

drab beaverbonnet, with a crown resembling a small stewpan; for a garment suggesting a coachman's

greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes, is not well adapted to

conceal deficiencies of contour, nor is drab a colour that will throw sallow cheeks into lively contrast. It was

all the greater triumph to Miss Nancy Lammeter's beauty that she looked thoroughly bewitching in that

costume, as, seated on the pillion behind her tall, erect father, she held one arm round him, and looked down,

with openeyed anxiety, at the treacherous snowcovered pools and puddles, which sent up formidable

splashings of mud under the stamp of Dobbin's foot. A painter would, perhaps, have preferred her in those

moments when she was free from selfconsciousness; but certainly the bloom on her cheeks was at its

highest point of contrast with the surrounding drab when she arrived at the door of the Red House, and saw

Mr. Godfrey Cass ready to lift her from the pillion. She wished her sister Priscilla had come up at the same

time behind the servant, for then she would have contrived that Mr. Godfrey should have lifted off Priscilla

first, and, in the meantime, she would have persuaded her father to go round to the horseblock instead of

alighting at the doorsteps. It was very painful, when you had made it quite clear to a young man that you

were determined not to marry him, however much he might wish it, that he would still continue to pay you

marked attentions; besides, why didn't he always show the same attentions, if he meant them sincerely,

instead of being so strange as Mr. Godfrey Cass was, sometimes behaving as if he didn't want to speak to her,

and taking no notice of her for weeks and weeks, and then, all on a sudden, almost making love again?

Moreover, it was quite plain he had no real love for her, else he would not let people have _that_ to say of

him which they did say. Did he suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man, squire or no

squire, who led a bad life? That was not what she had been used to see in her own father, who was the

soberest and best man in that countryside, only a little hot and hasty now and then, if things were not done

All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy's mind, in their habitual succession, in the moments between

her first sight of Mr. Godfrey Cass standing at the door and her own arrival there. Happily, the Squire came

out too and gave a loud greeting to her father, so that, somehow, under cover of this noise she seemed to find

concealment for her confusion and neglect of any suitably formal behaviour, while she was being lifted from

the pillion by strong arms which seemed to find her ridiculously small and light. And there was the best

reason for hastening into the house at once, since the snow was beginning to fall again, threatening an

unpleasant journey for such guests as were still on the road. These were a small minority; for already the

afternoon was beginning to decline, and there would not be too much time for the ladies who came from a

distance to attire themselves in readiness for the early tea which was to inspirit them for the dance.

There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy entered, mingled with the scrape of a fiddle

preluding in the kitchen; but the Lammeters were guests whose arrival had evidently been thought of so much

that it had been watched for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble, who did the honours at the Red House on

these great occasions, came forward to meet Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct her upstairs. Mrs. Kimble

was the Squire's sister, as well as the doctor's wifea double dignity, with which her diameter was in direct

proportion; so that, a journey upstairs being rather fatiguing to her, she did not oppose Miss Nancy's request

to be allowed to find her way alone to the Blue Room, where the Miss Lammeters' bandboxes had been

There was hardly a bedroom in the house where feminine compliments were not passing and feminine

toilettes going forward, in various stages, in space made scanty by extra beds spread upon the floor; and Miss

Nancy, as she entered the Blue Room, had to make her little formal curtsy to a group of six. On the one hand,

there were ladies no less important than the two Miss Gunns, the wine merchant's daughters from Lytherly,

dressed in the height of fashion, with the tightest skirts and the shortest waists, and gazed at by Miss

Ladbrook (of the Old Pastures) with a shyness not unsustained by inward criticism. Partly, Miss Ladbrook

felt that her own skirt must be regarded as unduly lax by the Miss Gunns, and partly, that it was a pity the

Miss Gunns did not show that judgment which she herself would show if she were in their place, by stopping

a little on this side of the fashion. On the other hand, Mrs. Ladbrook was standing in skullcap and front,

with her turban in her hand, curtsying and smiling blandly and saying, "After you, ma'am," to another lady in

similar circumstances, who had politely offered the precedence at the lookingglass.

But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her curtsy than an elderly lady came forward, whose full white muslin

kerchief, and mobcap round her curls of smooth grey hair, were in daring contrast with the puffed yellow

satins and topknotted caps of her neighbours. She approached Miss Nancy with much primness, and said,

"Niece, I hope I see you well in health." Miss Nancy kissed her aunt's cheek dutifully, and answered, with the

same sort of amiable primness, "Quite well, I thank you, aunt; and I hope I see you the same."

"Thank you, niece; I keep my health for the present. And how is my brotherinlaw?"

These dutiful questions and answers were continued until it was ascertained in detail that the Lammeters were

all as well as usual, and the Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla must certainly arrive shortly, and that

travelling on pillions in snowy weather was unpleasant, though a joseph was a great protection. Then Nancy

was formally introduced to her aunt's visitors, the Miss Gunns, as being the daughters of a mother known to

_their_ mother, though now for the first time induced to make a journey into these parts; and these ladies

were so taken by surprise at finding such a lovely face and figure in an outoftheway country place, that

they began to feel some curiosity about the dress she would put on when she took off her joseph. Miss Nancy,

whose thoughts were always conducted with the propriety and moderation conspicuous in her manners,

remarked to herself that the Miss Gunns were rather hardfeatured than otherwise, and that such very low

dresses as they wore might have been attributed to vanity if their shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as

they were, it was not reasonable to suppose that they showed their necks from a love of display, but rather

from some obligation not inconsistent with sense and modesty. She felt convinced, as she opened her box,

that this must be her aunt Osgood's opinion, for Miss Nancy's mind resembled her aunt's to a degree that

everybody said was surprising, considering the kinship was on Mr. Osgood's side; and though you might not

have supposed it from the formality of their greeting, there was a devoted attachment and mutual admiration

between aunt and niece. Even Miss Nancy's refusal of her cousin Gilbert Osgood (on the ground solely that

he was her cousin), though it had grieved her aunt greatly, had not in the least cooled the preference which

had determined her to leave Nancy several of her hereditary ornaments, let Gilbert's future wife be whom she

Three of the ladies quickly retired, but the Miss Gunns were quite content that Mrs. Osgood's inclination to

remain with her niece gave them also a reason for staying to see the rustic beauty's toilette. And it was really

a pleasurefrom the first opening of the bandbox, where everything smelt of lavender and roseleaves, to

the clasping of the small coral necklace that fitted closely round her little white neck. Everything belonging to

Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and nattiness: not a crease was where it had no business to be, not a bit of

her linen professed whiteness without fulfilling its profession; the very pins on her pincushion were stuck in

after a pattern from which she was careful to allow no aberration; and as for her own person, it gave the same

idea of perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a little bird. It is true that her lightbrown hair was cropped

behind like a boy's, and was dressed in front in a number of flat rings, that lay quite away from her face; but

there was no sort of coiffure that could make Miss Nancy's cheek and neck look otherwise than pretty; and

when at last she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her lace tucker, her coral necklace, and coral

eardrops, the Miss Gunns could see nothing to criticise except her hands, which bore the traces of

buttermaking, cheesecrushing, and even still coarser work. But Miss Nancy was not ashamed of that, for

even while she was dressing she narrated to her aunt how she and Priscilla had packed their boxes yesterday,

because this morning was baking morning, and since they were leaving home, it was desirable to make a

good supply of meatpies for the kitchen; and as she concluded this judicious remark, she turned to the Miss

Gunns that she might not commit the rudeness of not including them in the conversation. The Miss Gunns

smiled stiffly, and thought what a pity it was that these rich country people, who could afford to buy such

good clothes (really Miss Nancy's lace and silk were very costly), should be brought up in utter ignorance and

vulgarity. She actually said "mate" for "meat", "'appen" for "perhaps", and "oss" for "horse", which, to young

ladies living in good Lytherly society, who habitually said 'orse, even in domestic privacy, and only said

'appen on the right occasions, was necessarily shocking. Miss Nancy, indeed, had never been to any school

higher than Dame Tedman's: her acquaintance with profane literature hardly went beyond the rhymes she had

worked in her large sampler under the lamb and the shepherdess; and in order to balance an account, she was

obliged to effect her subtraction by removing visible metallic shillings and sixpences from a visible metallic

total. There is hardly a servantmaid in these days who is not better informed than Miss Nancy; yet she had

the essential attributes of a ladyhigh veracity, delicate honour in her dealings, deference to others, and

refined personal habits,and lest these should not suffice to convince grammatical fair ones that her feelings

can at all resemble theirs, I will add that she was slightly proud and exacting, and as constant in her affection

The anxiety about sister Priscilla, which had grown rather active by the time the coral necklace was clasped,

was happily ended by the entrance of that cheerfullooking lady herself, with a face made blowsy by cold

and damp. After the first questions and greetings, she turned to Nancy, and surveyed her from head to

footthen wheeled her round, to ascertain that the back view was equally faultless.

"What do you think o' _these_ gowns, aunt Osgood?" said Priscilla, while Nancy helped her to unrobe.

"Very handsome indeed, niece," said Mrs. Osgood, with a slight increase of formality. She always thought

"I'm obliged to have the same as Nancy, you know, for all I'm five years older, and it makes me look yallow;

for she never _will_ have anything without I have mine just like it, because she wants us to look like sisters.

And I tell her, folks 'ull think it's my weakness makes me fancy as I shall look pretty in what she looks pretty

in. For I _am_ uglythere's no denying that: I feature my father's family. But, law! I don't mind, do you?"

Priscilla here turned to the Miss Gunns, rattling on in too much preoccupation with the delight of talking, to

notice that her candour was not appreciated. "The pretty uns do for flycatchersthey keep the men off us.

I've no opinion o' the men, Miss GunnI don't know what _you_ have. And as for fretting and stewing about

what _they_'ll think of you from morning till night, and making your life uneasy about what they're doing

when they're out o' your sightas I tell Nancy, it's a folly no woman need be guilty of, if she's got a good

father and a good home: let her leave it to them as have got no fortin, and can't help themselves. As I say, Mr.

Haveyourownway is the best husband, and the only one I'd ever promise to obey. I know it isn't pleasant,

when you've been used to living in a big way, and managing hogsheads and all that, to go and put your nose

in by somebody else's fireside, or to sit down by yourself to a scrag or a knuckle; but, thank God! my father's

a sober man and likely to live; and if you've got a man by the chimneycorner, it doesn't matter if he's

The delicate process of getting her narrow gown over her head without injury to her smooth curls, obliged

Miss Priscilla to pause in this rapid survey of life, and Mrs. Osgood seized the opportunity of rising and

"Sister," said Nancy, when they were alone, "you've offended the Miss Gunns, I'm sure."

"Law, did I? Well, it popped out: it's a mercy I said no more, for I'm a bad un to live with folks when they

don't like the truth. But as for being ugly, look at me, child, in this silvercoloured silk I told you how it

'ud beI look as yallow as a daffadil. Anybody 'ud say you wanted to make a mawkin of me."

"No, Priscy, don't say so. I begged and prayed of you not to let us have this silk if you'd like another better. I

was willing to have _your_ choice, you know I was," said Nancy, in anxious selfvindication.

"Nonsense, child! you know you'd set your heart on this; and reason good, for you're the colour o' cream. It

'ud be fine doings for you to dress yourself to suit _my_ skin. What I find fault with, is that notion o' yours as

I must dress myself just like you. But you do as you like with meyou always did, from when first you

begun to walk. If you wanted to go the field's length, the field's length you'd go; and there was no whipping

"Priscy," said Nancy, gently, as she fastened a coral necklace, exactly like her own, round Priscilla's neck,

which was very far from being like her own, "I'm sure I'm willing to give way as far as is right, but who

shouldn't dress alike if it isn't sisters? Would you have us go about looking as if we were no kin to one

anotherus that have got no mother and not another sister in the world? I'd do what was right, if I dressed in

a gown dyed with cheesecolouring; and I'd rather you'd choose, and let me wear what pleases you."

"There you go again! You'd come round to the same thing if one talked to you from Saturday night till

Saturday morning. It'll be fine fun to see how you'll master your husband and never raise your voice above

"Don't talk _so_, Priscy," said Nancy, blushing. "You know I don't mean ever to be married."

"Oh, you never mean a fiddlestick's end!" said Priscilla, as she arranged her discarded dress, and closed her

bandbox. "Who shall _I_ have to work for when father's gone, if you are to go and take notions in your head

and be an old maid, because some folks are no better than they should be? I haven't a bit o' patience with

you sitting on an addled egg for ever, as if there was never a fresh un in the world. One old maid's enough

out o' two sisters; and I shall do credit to a single life, for God A'mighty meant me for it. Come, we can go

down now. I'm as ready as a mawkin _can_ bethere's nothing awanting to frighten the crows, now I've got

As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the large parlour together, any one who did not know the character

of both might certainly have supposed that the reason why the squareshouldered, clumsy, highfeatured

Priscilla wore a dress the facsimile of her pretty sister's, was either the mistaken vanity of the one, or the

malicious contrivance of the other in order to set off her own rare beauty. But the goodnatured

selfforgetful cheeriness and commonsense of Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one suspicion; and

the modest calm of Nancy's speech and manners told clearly of a mind free from all disavowed devices.

Places of honour had been kept for the Miss Lammeters near the head of the principal teatable in the

wainscoted parlour, now looking fresh and pleasant with handsome branches of holly, yew, and laurel, from

the abundant growths of the old garden; and Nancy felt an inward flutter, that no firmness of purpose could

prevent, when she saw Mr. Godfrey Cass advancing to lead her to a seat between himself and Mr.

Crackenthorp, while Priscilla was called to the opposite side between her father and the Squire. It certainly

did make some difference to Nancy that the lover she had given up was the young man of quite the highest

consequence in the parishat home in a venerable and unique parlour, which was the extremity of grandeur

in her experience, a parlour where _she_ might one day have been mistress, with the consciousness that she

was spoken of as "Madam Cass", the Squire's wife. These circumstances exalted her inward drama in her own

eyes, and deepened the emphasis with which she declared to herself that not the most dazzling rank should

induce her to marry a man whose conduct showed him careless of his character, but that, "love once, love

always", was the motto of a true and pure woman, and no man should ever have any right over her which

would be a call on her to destroy the dried flowers that she treasured, and always would treasure, for Godfrey

Cass's sake. And Nancy was capable of keeping her word to herself under very trying conditions. Nothing but

a becoming blush betrayed the moving thoughts that urged themselves upon her as she accepted the seat next

to Mr. Crackenthorp; for she was so instinctively neat and adroit in all her actions, and her pretty lips met

each other with such quiet firmness, that it would have been difficult for her to appear agitated.

It was not the rector's practice to let a charming blush pass without an appropriate compliment. He was not in

the least lofty or aristocratic, but simply a merryeyed, smallfeatured, greyhaired man, with his chin

propped by an ample, manycreased white neckcloth which seemed to predominate over every other point in

his person, and somehow to impress its peculiar character on his remarks; so that to have considered his

amenities apart from his cravat would have been a severe, and perhaps a dangerous, effort of abstraction.

"Ha, Miss Nancy," he said, turning his head within his cravat and smiling down pleasantly upon her, "when

anybody pretends this has been a severe winter, I shall tell them I saw the roses blooming on New Year's

Godfrey made no reply, and avoided looking at Nancy very markedly; for though these complimentary

personalities were held to be in excellent taste in oldfashioned Raveloe society, reverent love has a

politeness of its own which it teaches to men otherwise of small schooling. But the Squire was rather

impatient at Godfrey's showing himself a dull spark in this way. By this advanced hour of the day, the Squire

was always in higher spirits than we have seen him in at the breakfasttable, and felt it quite pleasant to fulfil

the hereditary duty of being noisily jovial and patronizing: the large silver snuffbox was in active service

and was offered without fail to all neighbours from time to time, however often they might have declined the

favour. At present, the Squire had only given an express welcome to the heads of families as they appeared;

but always as the evening deepened, his hospitality rayed out more widely, till he had tapped the youngest

guests on the back and shown a peculiar fondness for their presence, in the full belief that they must feel their

lives made happy by their belonging to a parish where there was such a hearty man as Squire Cass to invite

them and wish them well. Even in this early stage of the jovial mood, it was natural that he should wish to

"Aye, aye," he began, offering his snuffbox to Mr. Lammeter, who for the second time bowed his head and

waved his hand in stiff rejection of the offer, "us old fellows may wish ourselves young tonight, when we

see the mistletoebough in the White Parlour. It's true, most things are gone back'ard in these last thirty

years the country's going down since the old king fell ill. But when I look at Miss Nancy here, I begin to

think the lasses keep up their quality;ding me if I remember a sample to match her, not when I was a fine

young fellow, and thought a deal about my pigtail. No offence to you, madam," he added, bending to Mrs.

Crackenthorp, who sat by him, "I didn't know _you_ when you were as young as Miss Nancy here."

Mrs. Crackenthorpa small blinking woman, who fidgeted incessantly with her lace, ribbons, and gold

chain, turning her head about and making subdued noises, very much like a guineapig that twitches its nose

and soliloquizes in all company indiscriminately now blinked and fidgeted towards the Squire, and said,

This emphatic compliment of the Squire's to Nancy was felt by others besides Godfrey to have a diplomatic

significance; and her father gave a slight additional erectness to his back, as he looked across the table at her

with complacent gravity. That grave and orderly senior was not going to bate a jot of his dignity by seeming

elated at the notion of a match between his family and the Squire's: he was gratified by any honour paid to his

daughter; but he must see an alteration in several ways before his consent would be vouchsafed. His spare but

healthy person, and highfeatured firm face, that looked as if it had never been flushed by excess, was in

strong contrast, not only with the Squire's, but with the appearance of the Raveloe farmers generallyin

accordance with a favourite saying of his own, that "breed was stronger than pasture".

"Miss Nancy's wonderful like what her mother was, though; isn't she, Kimble?" said the stout lady of that

But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed that title without authority of diploma), being a

thin and agile man, was flitting about the room with his hands in his pockets, making himself agreeable to his

feminine patients, with medical impartiality, and being welcomed everywhere as a doctor by hereditary

rightnot one of those miserable apothecaries who canvass for practice in strange neighbourhoods, and

spend all their income in starving their one horse, but a man of substance, able to keep an extravagant table

like the best of his patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor had been a Kimble; Kimble was inherently

a doctor's name; and it was difficult to contemplate firmly the melancholy fact that the actual Kimble had no

son, so that his practice might one day be handed over to a successor with the incongruous name of Taylor or

Johnson. But in that case the wiser people in Raveloe would employ Dr. Blick of Flittonas less unnatural.

"Did you speak to me, my dear?" said the authentic doctor, coming quickly to his wife's side; but, as if

foreseeing that she would be too much out of breath to repeat her remark, he went on immediately "Ha,

Miss Priscilla, the sight of you revives the taste of that superexcellent porkpie. I hope the batch isn't near

"Yes, indeed, it is, doctor," said Priscilla; "but I'll answer for it the next shall be as good. My porkpies don't

"Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble?because folks forget to take your physic, eh?" said the Squire,

who regarded physic and doctors as many loyal churchmen regard the church and the clergy tasting a joke

against them when he was in health, but impatiently eager for their aid when anything was the matter with

"Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has," said the doctor, choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady

rather than allow a brotherinlaw that advantage over him. "She saves a little pepper to sprinkle over her

talkthat's the reason why she never puts too much into her pies. There's my wife now, she never has an

answer at her tongue's end; but if I offend her, she's sure to scarify my throat with black pepper the next day,

or else give me the colic with watery greens. That's an awful titfortat." Here the vivacious doctor made a

"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, laughing above her double chin with much goodhumour,

aside to Mrs. Crackenthorp, who blinked and nodded, and seemed to intend a smile, which, by the correlation

"I suppose that's the sort of titfortat adopted in your profession, Kimble, if you've a grudge against a

"Never do have a grudge against our patients," said Mr. Kimble, "except when they leave us: and then, you

see, we haven't the chance of prescribing for 'em. Ha, Miss Nancy," he continued, suddenly skipping to

Nancy's side, "you won't forget your promise? You're to save a dance for me, you know."

"Come, come, Kimble, don't you be too for'ard," said the Squire. "Give the young uns fairplay. There's my

son Godfrey'll be wanting to have a round with you if you run off with Miss Nancy. He's bespoke her for the

first dance, I'll be bound. Eh, sir! what do you say?" he continued, throwing himself backward, and looking at

Godfrey, sorely uncomfortable under this significant insistence about Nancy, and afraid to think where it

would end by the time his father had set his usual hospitable example of drinking before and after supper,

saw no course open but to turn to Nancy and say, with as little awkwardness as possible

"No; I've not asked her yet, but I hope she'll consentif somebody else hasn't been before me."

"No, I've not engaged myself," said Nancy, quietly, though blushingly. (If Mr. Godfrey founded any hopes on

her consenting to dance with him, he would soon be undeceived; but there was no need for her to be uncivil.)

"Then I hope you've no objections to dancing with me," said Godfrey, beginning to lose the sense that there

"Ah, well, you're a lucky fellow, Godfrey," said uncle Kimble; "but you're my godson, so I won't stand in

your way. Else I'm not so very old, eh, my dear?" he went on, skipping to his wife's side again. "You wouldn't

"Come, come, take a cup o' tea and stop your tongue, do," said goodhumoured Mrs. Kimble, feeling some

pride in a husband who must be regarded as so clever and amusing by the company generally. If he had only

While safe, welltested personalities were enlivening the tea in this way, the sound of the fiddle approaching

within a distance at which it could be heard distinctly, made the young people look at each other with

"Why, there's Solomon in the hall," said the Squire, "and playing my fav'rite tune, _I_ believe"The

flaxenheaded ploughboy" he's for giving us a hint as we aren't enough in a hurry to hear him play. Bob,"

he called out to his third longlegged son, who was at the other end of the room, "open the door, and tell

Bob obeyed, and Solomon walked in, fiddling as he walked, for he would on no account break off in the

"Here, Solomon," said the Squire, with loud patronage. "Round here, my man. Ah, I knew it was "The

Solomon Macey, a small hale old man with an abundant crop of long white hair reaching nearly to his

shoulders, advanced to the indicated spot, bowing reverently while he fiddled, as much as to say that he

respected the company, though he respected the keynote more. As soon as he had repeated the tune and

lowered his fiddle, he bowed again to the Squire and the rector, and said, "I hope I see your honour and your

reverence well, and wishing you health and long life and a happy New Year. And wishing the same to you,

Mr. Lammeter, sir; and to the other gentlemen, and the madams, and the young lasses."

As Solomon uttered the last words, he bowed in all directions solicitously, lest he should be wanting in due

respect. But thereupon he immediately began to prelude, and fell into the tune which he knew would be taken

"Thank ye, Solomon, thank ye," said Mr. Lammeter when the fiddle paused again. "That's "Over the hills and

far away", that is. My father used to say to me, whenever we heard that tune, "Ah, lad, _I_ come from over

the hills and far away." There's a many tunes I don't make head or tail of; but that speaks to me like the

blackbird's whistle. I suppose it's the name: there's a deal in the name of a tune."

But Solomon was already impatient to prelude again, and presently broke with much spirit into "Sir Roger de

Coverley", at which there was a sound of chairs pushed back, and laughing voices.

"Aye, aye, Solomon, we know what that means," said the Squire, rising. "It's time to begin the dance, eh?

So Solomon, holding his white head on one side, and playing vigorously, marched forward at the head of the

gay procession into the White Parlour, where the mistletoebough was hung, and multitudinous tallow

candles made rather a brilliant effect, gleaming from among the berried hollyboughs, and reflected in the

oldfashioned oval mirrors fastened in the panels of the white wainscot. A quaint procession! Old Solomon,

in his seedy clothes and long white locks, seemed to be luring that decent company by the magic scream of

his fiddleluring discreet matrons in turbanshaped caps, nay, Mrs. Crackenthorp herself, the summit of

whose perpendicular feather was on a level with the Squire's shoulderluring fair lasses complacently

conscious of very short waists and skirts blameless of frontfoldsluring burly fathers in large variegated

waistcoats, and ruddy sons, for the most part shy and sheepish, in short nether garments and very long

Already Mr. Macey and a few other privileged villagers, who were allowed to be spectators on these great

occasions, were seated on benches placed for them near the door; and great was the admiration and

satisfaction in that quarter when the couples had formed themselves for the dance, and the Squire led off with

Mrs. Crackenthorp, joining hands with the rector and Mrs. Osgood. That was as it should bethat was what

everybody had been used to and the charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by the ceremony. It was not

thought of as an unbecoming levity for the old and middleaged people to dance a little before sitting down

to cards, but rather as part of their social duties. For what were these if not to be merry at appropriate times,

interchanging visits and poultry with due frequency, paying each other oldestablished compliments in sound

traditional phrases, passing welltried personal jokes, urging your guests to eat and drink too much out of

hospitality, and eating and drinking too much in your neighbour's house to show that you liked your cheer?

And the parson naturally set an example in these social duties. For it would not have been possible for the

Raveloe mind, without a peculiar revelation, to know that a clergyman should be a palefaced memento of

solemnities, instead of a reasonably faulty man whose exclusive authority to read prayers and preach, to

christen, marry, and bury you, necessarily coexisted with the right to sell you the ground to be buried in and

to take tithe in kind; on which last point, of course, there was a little grumbling, but not to the extent of

irreligionnot of deeper significance than the grumbling at the rain, which was by no means accompanied

with a spirit of impious defiance, but with a desire that the prayer for fine weather might be read forthwith.

There was no reason, then, why the rector's dancing should not be received as part of the fitness of things

quite as much as the Squire's, or why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey's official respect should restrain him

from subjecting the parson's performance to that criticism with which minds of extraordinary acuteness must

"The Squire's pretty springe, considering his weight," said Mr. Macey, "and he stamps uncommon well. But

Mr. Lammeter beats 'em all for shapes: you see he holds his head like a sodger, and he isn't so cushiony as

most o' the oldish gentlefolksthey run fat in general; and he's got a fine leg. The parson's nimble enough,

but he hasn't got much of a leg: it's a bit too thick down'ard, and his knees might be a bit nearer wi'out

damage; but he might do worse, he might do worse. Though he hasn't that grand way o' waving his hand as

"Talk o' nimbleness, look at Mrs. Osgood," said Ben Winthrop, who was holding his son Aaron between his

knees. "She trips along with her little steps, so as nobody can see how she goesit's like as if she had little

wheels to her feet. She doesn't look a day older nor last year: she's the finestmade woman as is, let the next

"I don't heed how the women are made," said Mr. Macey, with some contempt. "They wear nayther coat nor

"Fayder," said Aaron, whose feet were busy beating out the tune, "how does that big cock'sfeather stick in

Mrs. Crackenthorp's yead? Is there a little hole for it, like in my shuttlecock?"

"Hush, lad, hush; that's the way the ladies dress theirselves, that is," said the father, adding, however, in an

undertone to Mr. Macey, "It does make her look funny, thoughpartly like a shortnecked bottle wi' a long

quill in it. Hey, by jingo, there's the young Squire leading off now, wi' Miss Nancy for partners! There's a lass

for you!like a pinkandwhite posythere's nobody 'ud think as anybody could be so pritty. I shouldn't

wonder if she's Madam Cass some day, arter alland nobody more rightfuller, for they'd make a fine match.

You can find nothing against Master Godfrey's shapes, Macey, _I_'ll bet a penny."

Mr. Macey screwed up his mouth, leaned his head further on one side, and twirled his thumbs with a presto

movement as his eyes followed Godfrey up the dance. At last he summed up his opinion.

"Pretty well down'ard, but a bit too round i' the shoulderblades. And as for them coats as he gets from the

"Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two folks," said Ben, slightly indignant at this carping. "When I've got a pot

o' good ale, I like to swaller it, and do my inside good, i'stead o' smelling and staring at it to see if I can't find

faut wi' the brewing. I should like you to pick me out a finerlimbed young fellow nor Master Godfreyone

as 'ud knock you down easier, or 's more pleasanterlooksed when he's piert and merry."

"Tchuh!" said Mr. Macey, provoked to increased severity, "he isn't come to his right colour yet: he's partly

like a slackbaked pie. And I doubt he's got a soft place in his head, else why should he be turned round the

finger by that offal Dunsey as nobody's seen o' late, and let him kill that fine hunting hoss as was the talk o'

the country? And one while he was allays after Miss Nancy, and then it all went off again, like a smell o' hot

"I should say she didn't," said Mr. Macey, significantly. "Before I said "sniff", I took care to know as she'd

say "snaff", and pretty quick too. I wasn't agoing to open _my_ mouth, like a dog at a fly, and snap it to

"Well, I think Miss Nancy's acoming round again," said Ben, "for Master Godfrey doesn't look so

downhearted tonight. And I see he's for taking her away to sit down, now they're at the end o' the dance:

The reason why Godfrey and Nancy had left the dance was not so tender as Ben imagined. In the close press

of couples a slight accident had happened to Nancy's dress, which, while it was short enough to show her neat

ankle in front, was long enough behind to be caught under the stately stamp of the Squire's foot, so as to rend

certain stitches at the waist, and cause much sisterly agitation in Priscilla's mind, as well as serious concern in

Nancy's. One's thoughts may be much occupied with lovestruggles, but hardly so as to be insensible to a

disorder in the general framework of things. Nancy had no sooner completed her duty in the figure they were

dancing than she said to Godfrey, with a deep blush, that she must go and sit down till Priscilla could come to

her; for the sisters had already exchanged a short whisper and an openeyed glance full of meaning. No

reason less urgent than this could have prevailed on Nancy to give Godfrey this opportunity of sitting apart

with her. As for Godfrey, he was feeling so happy and oblivious under the long charm of the countrydance

with Nancy, that he got rather bold on the strength of her confusion, and was capable of leading her straight

away, without leave asked, into the adjoining small parlour, where the cardtables were set.

"Oh no, thank you," said Nancy, coldly, as soon as she perceived where he was going, "not in there. I'll wait

here till Priscilla's ready to come to me. I'm sorry to bring you out of the dance and make myself

"Why, you'll be more comfortable here by yourself," said the artful Godfrey: "I'll leave you here till your

That was an agreeable proposition, and just what Nancy desired; why, then, was she a little hurt that Mr.

Godfrey should make it? They entered, and she seated herself on a chair against one of the cardtables, as the

"Thank you, sir," she said immediately. "I needn't give you any more trouble. I'm sorry you've had such an

"That's very illnatured of you," said Godfrey, standing by her without any sign of intended departure, "to be

"Oh, no, sir, I don't mean to say what's illnatured at all," said Nancy, looking distractingly prim and pretty.

"You know that isn't true. You know one dance with you matters more to me than all the other pleasures in

It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said anything so direct as that, and Nancy was startled. But her

instinctive dignity and repugnance to any show of emotion made her sit perfectly still, and only throw a little

"No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that's not known to me, and I have very good reasons for thinking different. But if

"Would you never forgive me, then, Nancynever think well of me, let what would happenwould you

never think the present made amends for the past? Not if I turned a good fellow, and gave up everything you

Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of speaking to Nancy alone had driven him beside

himself; but blind feeling had got the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt much agitated by the possibility

Godfrey's words suggested, but this very pressure of emotion that she was in danger of finding too strong for

"I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. Godfrey," she answered, with the slightest discernible

"You're very hardhearted, Nancy," said Godfrey, pettishly. "You might encourage me to be a better fellow.

"I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin with," said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of

herself. Godfrey was delighted with that little flash, and would have liked to go on and make her quarrel with

him; Nancy was so exasperatingly quiet and firm. But she was not indifferent to him _yet_, though

The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, "Dear heart alive, child, let us look at this gown," cut

"It's no matter to me whether you go or stay," said that frank lady, searching for something in her pocket,

"Do _you_ want me to go?" said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, who was now standing up by Priscilla's order.

"As you like," said Nancy, trying to recover all her former coldness, and looking down carefully at the hem

"Then I like to stay," said Godfrey, with a reckless determination to get as much of this joy as he could

While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness from the sweet presence of Nancy, willingly losing

all sense of that hidden bond which at other moments galled and fretted him so as to mingle irritation with the

very sunshine, Godfrey's wife was walking with slow uncertain steps through the snowcovered Raveloe

This journey on New Year's Eve was a premeditated act of vengeance which she had kept in her heart ever

since Godfrey, in a fit of passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as his wife. There

would be a great party at the Red House on New Year's Eve, she knew: her husband would be smiling and

smiled upon, hiding _her_ existence in the darkest corner of his heart. But she would mar his pleasure: she

would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face, once as handsome as the best, with her little child that had its

father's hair and eyes, and disclose herself to the Squire as his eldest son's wife. It is seldom that the miserable

can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable. Molly knew that the

cause of her dingy rags was not her husband's neglect, but the demon Opium to whom she was enslaved,

body and soul, except in the lingering mother's tenderness that refused to give him her hungry child. She

knew this well; and yet, in the moments of wretched unbenumbed consciousness, the sense of her want and

degradation transformed itself continually into bitterness towards Godfrey. _He_ was well off; and if she had

her rights she would be well off too. The belief that he repented his marriage, and suffered from it, only

aggravated her vindictiveness. Just and selfreproving thoughts do not come to us too thickly, even in the

purest air, and with the best lessons of heaven and earth; how should those whitewinged delicate

messengers make their way to Molly's poisoned chamber, inhabited by no higher memories than those of a

She had set out at an early hour, but had lingered on the road, inclined by her indolence to believe that if she

waited under a warm shed the snow would cease to fall. She had waited longer than she knew, and now that

she found herself belated in the snowhidden ruggedness of the long lanes, even the animation of a vindictive

purpose could not keep her spirit from failing. It was seven o'clock, and by this time she was not very far

from Raveloe, but she was not familiar enough with those monotonous lanes to know how near she was to

her journey's end. She needed comfort, and she knew but one comforterthe familiar demon in her bosom;

but she hesitated a moment, after drawing out the black remnant, before she raised it to her lips. In that

moment the mother's love pleaded for painful consciousness rather than oblivionpleaded to be left in

aching weariness, rather than to have the encircling arms benumbed so that they could not feel the dear

burden. In another moment Molly had flung something away, but it was not the black remnantit was an

empty phial. And she walked on again under the breaking cloud, from which there came now and then the

light of a quickly veiled star, for a freezing wind had sprung up since the snowing had ceased. But she walked

always more and more drowsily, and clutched more and more automatically the sleeping child at her bosom.

Slowly the demon was working his will, and cold and weariness were his helpers. Soon she felt nothing but a

supreme immediate longing that curtained off all futuritythe longing to lie down and sleep. She had arrived

at a spot where her footsteps were no longer checked by a hedgerow, and she had wandered vaguely, unable

to distinguish any objects, notwithstanding the wide whiteness around her, and the growing starlight. She

sank down against a straggling furze bush, an easy pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft. She did

not feel that the bed was cold, and did not heed whether the child would wake and cry for her. But her arms

had not yet relaxed their instinctive clutch; and the little one slumbered on as gently as if it had been rocked

But the complete torpor came at last: the fingers lost their tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell

away from the bosom, and the blue eyes opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a little peevish

cry of "mammy", and an effort to regain the pillowing arm and bosom; but mammy's ear was deaf, and the

pillow seemed to be slipping away backward. Suddenly, as the child rolled downward on its mother's knees,

all wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright glancing light on the white ground, and, with the ready

transition of infancy, it was immediately absorbed in watching the bright living thing running towards it, yet

never arriving. That bright living thing must be caught; and in an instant the child had slipped on allfours,

and held out one little hand to catch the gleam. But the gleam would not be caught in that way, and now the

head was held up to see where the cunning gleam came from. It came from a very bright place; and the little

one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped trailing behind

it, and the queer little bonnet dangling at its backtoddled on to the open door of Silas Marner's cottage, and

right up to the warm hearth, where there was a bright fire of logs and sticks, which had thoroughly warmed

the old sack (Silas's greatcoat) spread out on the bricks to dry. The little one, accustomed to be left to itself

for long hours without notice from its mother, squatted down on the sack, and spread its tiny hands towards

the blaze, in perfect contentment, gurgling and making many inarticulate communications to the cheerful fire,

like a newhatched gosling beginning to find itself comfortable. But presently the warmth had a lulling

effect, and the little golden head sank down on the old sack, and the blue eyes were veiled by their delicate

But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had come to his hearth? He was in the cottage, but he

did not see the child. During the last few weeks, since he had lost his money, he had contracted the habit of

opening his door and looking out from time to time, as if he thought that his money might be somehow

coming back to him, or that some trace, some news of it, might be mysteriously on the road, and be caught by

the listening ear or the straining eye. It was chiefly at night, when he was not occupied in his loom, that he

fell into this repetition of an act for which he could have assigned no definite purpose, and which can hardly

be understood except by those who have undergone a bewildering separation from a supremely loved object.

In the evening twilight, and later whenever the night was not dark, Silas looked out on that narrow prospect

round the Stonepits, listening and gazing, not with hope, but with mere yearning and unrest.

This morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was New Year's Eve, and that he must sit up

and hear the old year rung out and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his money

back again. This was only a friendly Raveloeway of jesting with the halfcrazy oddities of a miser, but it

had perhaps helped to throw Silas into a more than usually excited state. Since the oncoming of twilight he

had opened his door again and again, though only to shut it immediately at seeing all distance veiled by the

falling snow. But the last time he opened it the snow had ceased, and the clouds were parting here and there.

He stood and listened, and gazed for a long whilethere was really something on the road coming towards

him then, but he caught no sign of it; and the stillness and the wide trackless snow seemed to narrow his

solitude, and touched his yearning with the chill of despair. He went in again, and put his right hand on the

latch of the door to close itbut he did not close it: he was arrested, as he had been already since his loss, by

the invisible wand of catalepsy, and stood like a graven image, with wide but sightless eyes, holding open his

When Marner's sensibility returned, he continued the action which had been arrested, and closed his door,

unaware of the chasm in his consciousness, unaware of any intermediate change, except that the light had

grown dim, and that he was chilled and faint. He thought he had been too long standing at the door and

looking out. Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red

uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when,

to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold!his own

goldbrought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to beat

violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The

heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched

forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft

warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a

sleeping childa round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head. Could this be his little sister come

back to him in a dream his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died,

when he was a small boy without shoes or stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas's

blank wonderment. _Was_ it a dream? He rose to his feet again, pushed his logs together, and, throwing on

some dried leaves and sticks, raised a flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision it only lit up more

distinctly the little round form of the child, and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his little sister.

Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a hurrying

influx of memories. How and when had the child come in without his knowledge? He had never been beyond

the door. But along with that question, and almost thrusting it away, there was a vision of the old home and

the old streets leading to Lantern Yardand within that vision another, of the thoughts which had been

present with him in those faroff scenes. The thoughts were strange to him now, like old friendships

impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy feeling that this child was somehow a message come to him

from that faroff life: it stirred fibres that had never been moved in Raveloeold quiverings of

tendernessold impressions of awe at the presentiment of some Power presiding over his life; for his

imagination had not yet extricated itself from the sense of mystery in the child's sudden presence, and had

formed no conjectures of ordinary natural means by which the event could have been brought about.

But there was a cry on the hearth: the child had awaked, and Marner stooped to lift it on his knee. It clung

round his neck, and burst louder and louder into that mingling of inarticulate cries with "mammy" by which

little children express the bewilderment of waking. Silas pressed it to him, and almost unconsciously uttered

sounds of hushing tenderness, while he bethought himself that some of his porridge, which had got cool by

the dying fire, would do to feed the child with if it were only warmed up a little.

He had plenty to do through the next hour. The porridge, sweetened with some dry brown sugar from an old

store which he had refrained from using for himself, stopped the cries of the little one, and made her lift her

blue eyes with a wide quiet gaze at Silas, as he put the spoon into her mouth. Presently she slipped from his

knee and began to toddle about, but with a pretty stagger that made Silas jump up and follow her lest she

should fall against anything that would hurt her. But she only fell in a sitting posture on the ground, and

began to pull at her boots, looking up at him with a crying face as if the boots hurt her. He took her on his

knee again, but it was some time before it occurred to Silas's dull bachelor mind that the wet boots were the

grievance, pressing on her warm ankles. He got them off with difficulty, and baby was at once happily

occupied with the primary mystery of her own toes, inviting Silas, with much chuckling, to consider the

mystery too. But the wet boots had at last suggested to Silas that the child had been walking on the snow, and

this roused him from his entire oblivion of any ordinary means by which it could have entered or been

brought into his house. Under the prompting of this new idea, and without waiting to form conjectures, he

raised the child in his arms, and went to the door. As soon as he had opened it, there was the cry of "mammy"

again, which Silas had not heard since the child's first hungry waking. Bending forward, he could just discern

the marks made by the little feet on the virgin snow, and he followed their track to the furze bushes.

"Mammy!" the little one cried again and again, stretching itself forward so as almost to escape from Silas's

arms, before he himself was aware that there was something more than the bush before himthat there was a

human body, with the head sunk low in the furze, and halfcovered with the shaken snow.

It was after the early suppertime at the Red House, and the entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness

itself had passed into easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual accomplishments, could at length be

prevailed on to dance a hornpipe, and when the Squire preferred talking loudly, scattering snuff, and patting

his visitors' backs, to sitting longer at the whisttablea choice exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being

always volatile in sober business hours, became intense and bitter over cards and brandy, shuffled before his

adversary's deal with a glare of suspicion, and turned up a mean trumpcard with an air of inexpressible

disgust, as if in a world where such things could happen one might as well enter on a course of reckless

profligacy. When the evening had advanced to this pitch of freedom and enjoyment, it was usual for the

servants, the heavy duties of supper being well over, to get their share of amusement by coming to look on at

There were two doors by which the White Parlour was entered from the hall, and they were both standing

open for the sake of air; but the lower one was crowded with the servants and villagers, and only the upper

doorway was left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a hornpipe, and his father, very proud of this lithe son,

whom he repeatedly declared to be just like himself in his young days in a tone that implied this to be the

very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the centre of a group who had placed themselves opposite the

performer, not far from the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off, not to admire his brother's

dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, who was seated in the group, near her father. He stood aloof, because he

wished to avoid suggesting himself as a subject for the Squire's fatherly jokes in connection with matrimony

and Miss Nancy Lammeter's beauty, which were likely to become more and more explicit. But he had the

prospect of dancing with her again when the hornpipe was concluded, and in the meanwhile it was very

But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from one of those long glances, they encountered an object as startling

to him at that moment as if it had been an apparition from the dead. It _was_ an apparition from that hidden

life which lies, like a dark bystreet, behind the goodly ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the

gaze of respectable admirers. It was his own child, carried in Silas Marner's arms. That was his instantaneous

impression, unaccompanied by doubt, though he had not seen the child for months past; and when the hope

was rising that he might possibly be mistaken, Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Lammeter had already advanced to

Silas, in astonishment at this strange advent. Godfrey joined them immediately, unable to rest without hearing

every wordtrying to control himself, but conscious that if any one noticed him, they must see that he was

But now all eyes at that end of the room were bent on Silas Marner; the Squire himself had risen, and asked

"I'm come for the doctorI want the doctor," Silas had said, in the first moment, to Mr. Crackenthorp.

"Why, what's the matter, Marner?" said the rector. "The doctor's here; but say quietly what you want him

"It's a woman," said Silas, speaking low, and halfbreathlessly, just as Godfrey came up. "She's dead, I

Godfrey felt a great throb: there was one terror in his mind at that moment: it was, that the woman might

_not_ be dead. That was an evil terroran ugly inmate to have found a nestlingplace in Godfrey's kindly

disposition; but no disposition is a security from evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity.

"Hush, hush!" said Mr. Crackenthorp. "Go out into the hall there. I'll fetch the doctor to you. Found a woman

in the snow and thinks she's dead," he added, speaking low to the Squire. "Better say as little about it as

possible: it will shock the ladies. Just tell them a poor woman is ill from cold and hunger. I'll go and fetch

By this time, however, the ladies had pressed forward, curious to know what could have brought the solitary

linenweaver there under such strange circumstances, and interested in the pretty child, who, half alarmed

and half attracted by the brightness and the numerous company, now frowned and hid her face, now lifted up

her head again and looked round placably, until a touch or a coaxing word brought back the frown, and made

"What child is it?" said several ladies at once, and, among the rest, Nancy Lammeter, addressing Godfrey.

"I don't knowsome poor woman's who has been found in the snow, I believe," was the answer Godfrey

wrung from himself with a terrible effort. ("After all, _am_ I certain?" he hastened to add, silently, in

"Why, you'd better leave the child here, then, Master Marner," said goodnatured Mrs. Kimble, hesitating,

however, to take those dingy clothes into contact with her own ornamented satin bodice. "I'll tell one o' the

"NonoI can't part with it, I can't let it go," said Silas, abruptly. "It's come to meI've a right to keep it."

The proposition to take the child from him had come to Silas quite unexpectedly, and his speech, uttered

under a strong sudden impulse, was almost like a revelation to himself: a minute before, he had no distinct

"Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Kimble, in mild surprise, to her neighbour.

"Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside," said Mr. Kimble, coming from the cardroom, in some

bitterness at the interruption, but drilled by the long habit of his profession into obedience to unpleasant calls,

"It's a nasty business turning out now, eh, Kimble?" said the Squire. "He might ha' gone for your young

"Might? ayewhat's the use of talking about might?" growled uncle Kimble, hastening out with Marner, and

followed by Mr. Crackenthorp and Godfrey. "Get me a pair of thick boots, Godfrey, will you? And stay, let

somebody run to Winthrop's and fetch Dollyshe's the best woman to get. Ben was here himself before

"Yes, sir, I met him," said Marner; "but I couldn't stop to tell him anything, only I said I was going for the

doctor, and he said the doctor was at the Squire's. And I made haste and ran, and there was nobody to be seen

The child, no longer distracted by the bright light and the smiling women's faces, began to cry and call for

"mammy", though always clinging to Marner, who had apparently won her thorough confidence. Godfrey

had come back with the boots, and felt the cry as if some fibre were drawn tight within him.

"I'll go," he said, hastily, eager for some movement; "I'll go and fetch the womanMrs. Winthrop."

"You'll let me know if I can be of any use, Kimble," said Mr. Crackenthorp. But the doctor was out of

Godfrey, too, had disappeared: he was gone to snatch his hat and coat, having just reflection enough to

remember that he must not look like a madman; but he rushed out of the house into the snow without heeding

In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stonepits by the side of Dolly, who, though feeling that she

was entirely in her place in encountering cold and snow on an errand of mercy, was much concerned at a

"You'd a deal better go back, sir," said Dolly, with respectful compassion. "You've no call to catch cold; and

I'd ask you if you'd be so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back he's at the Rainbow, I

doubtif you found him anyway sober enough to be o' use. Or else, there's Mrs. Snell 'ud happen send the

"No, I'll stay, now I'm once outI'll stay outside here," said Godfrey, when they came opposite Marner's

"Well, sir, you're very good: you've a tender heart," said Dolly, going to the door.

Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of selfreproach at this undeserved praise. He walked

up and down, unconscious that he was plunging ankledeep in snow, unconscious of everything but

trembling suspense about what was going on in the cottage, and the effect of each alternative on his future lot.

No, not quite unconscious of everything else. Deeper down, and halfsmothered by passionate desire and

dread, there was the sense that he ought not to be waiting on these alternatives; that he ought to accept the

consequences of his deeds, own the miserable wife, and fulfil the claims of the helpless child. But he had not

moral courage enough to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy as possible for him: he had only

conscience and heart enough to make him for ever uneasy under the weakness that forbade the renunciation.

And at this moment his mind leaped away from all restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliverance from

"Is she dead?" said the voice that predominated over every other within him. "If she is, I may marry Nancy;

and then I shall be a good fellow in future, and have no secrets, and the childshall be taken care of

somehow." But across that vision came the other possibility"She may live, and then it's all up with me."

Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the cottage opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He

went forward to meet his uncle, prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel, whatever news he was to

"Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out: why didn't you send one of the men? There's nothing to be done.

"A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. Some vagrant quite in rags. She's got a

weddingring on, however. They must fetch her away to the workhouse tomorrow. Come, come along."

"I want to look at her," said Godfrey. "I think I saw such a woman yesterday. I'll overtake you in a minute or

Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cottage. He cast only one glance at the dead face on the

pillow, which Dolly had smoothed with decent care; but he remembered that last look at his unhappy hated

wife so well, that at the end of sixteen years every line in the worn face was present to him when he told the

He turned immediately towards the hearth, where Silas Marner sat lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet

now, but not asleep only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that widegazing calm which makes

us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we

feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or skybefore a steady glowing planet, or a

fullflowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent pathway. The wideopen blue eyes looked up at

Godfrey's without any uneasiness or sign of recognition: the child could make no visible audible claim on its

father; and the father felt a strange mixture of feelings, a conflict of regret and joy, that the pulse of that little

heart had no response for the halfjealous yearning in his own, when the blue eyes turned away from him

slowly, and fixed themselves on the weaver's queer face, which was bent low down to look at them, while the

"You'll take the child to the parish tomorrow?" asked Godfrey, speaking as indifferently as he could.

"Till anybody shows they've a right to take her away from me," said Marner. "The mother's dead, and I

reckon it's got no father: it's a lone thingand I'm a lone thing. My money's gone, I don't know whereand

"Poor little thing!" said Godfrey. "Let me give something towards finding it clothes."

He had put his hand in his pocket and found halfaguinea, and, thrusting it into Silas's hand, he hurried out

"Ah, I see it's not the same woman I saw," he said, as he came up. "It's a pretty little child: the old fellow

seems to want to keep it; that's strange for a miser like him. But I gave him a trifle to help him out: the parish

"No; but I've seen the time when I might have quarrelled with him for it myself. It's too late now, though. If

the child ran into the fire, your aunt's too fat to overtake it: she could only sit and grunt like an alarmed sow.

But what a fool you are, Godfrey, to come out in your dancing shoes and stockings in this wayand you one

of the beaux of the evening, and at your own house! What do you mean by such freaks, young fellow? Has

"Oh, everything has been disagreeable tonight. I was tired to death of jigging and gallanting, and that bother

about the hornpipes. And I'd got to dance with the other Miss Gunn," said Godfrey, glad of the subterfuge his

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great

artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when

Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with dry feet, and, since the truth must be told, with a sense of relief

and gladness that was too strong for painful thoughts to struggle with. For could he not venture now,

whenever opportunity offered, to say the tenderest things to Nancy Lammeterto promise her and himself

that he would always be just what she would desire to see him? There was no danger that his dead wife would

be recognized: those were not days of active inquiry and wide report; and as for the registry of their marriage,

that was a long way off, buried in unturned pages, away from every one's interest but his own. Dunsey might

And when events turn out so much better for a man than he has had reason to dread, is it not a proof that his

conduct has been less foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise have appeared? When we are treated

well, we naturally begin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and that it is only just we should

treat ourselves well, and not mar our own good fortune. Where, after all, would be the use of his confessing

the past to Nancy Lammeter, and throwing away his happiness?nay, hers? for he felt some confidence that

she loved him. As for the child, he would see that it was cared for: he would never forsake it; he would do

everything but own it. Perhaps it would be just as happy in life without being owned by its father, seeing that

nobody could tell how things would turn out, and thatis there any other reason wanted?well, then, that

There was a pauper's burial that week in Raveloe, and up Kench Yard at Batherley it was known that the

darkhaired woman with the fair child, who had lately come to lodge there, was gone away again. That was

all the express note taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men. But the unwept death which, to

the general lot, seemed as trivial as the summershed leaf, was charged with the force of destiny to certain

Silas Marner's determination to keep the "tramp's child" was matter of hardly less surprise and iterated talk in

the village than the robbery of his money. That softening of feeling towards him which dated from his

misfortune, that merging of suspicion and dislike in a rather contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy,

was now accompanied with a more active sympathy, especially amongst the women. Notable mothers, who

knew what it was to keep children "whole and sweet"; lazy mothers, who knew what it was to be interrupted

in folding their arms and scratching their elbows by the mischievous propensities of children just firm on

their legs, were equally interested in conjecturing how a lone man would manage with a twoyearold child

on his hands, and were equally ready with their suggestions: the notable chiefly telling him what he had better

do, and the lazy ones being emphatic in telling him what he would never be able to do.

Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop was the one whose neighbourly offices were the most

acceptable to Marner, for they were rendered without any show of bustling instruction. Silas had shown her

the halfguinea given to him by Godfrey, and had asked her what he should do about getting some clothes for

"Eh, Master Marner," said Dolly, "there's no call to buy, no more nor a pair o' shoes; for I've got the little

petticoats as Aaron wore five years ago, and it's ill spending the money on them babyclothes, for the child

And the same day Dolly brought her bundle, and displayed to Marner, one by one, the tiny garments in their

due order of succession, most of them patched and darned, but clean and neat as freshsprung herbs. This

was the introduction to a great ceremony with soap and water, from which Baby came out in new beauty, and

sat on Dolly's knee, handling her toes and chuckling and patting her palms together with an air of having

made several discoveries about herself, which she communicated by alternate sounds of "gugguggug", and

"mammy". The "mammy" was not a cry of need or uneasiness: Baby had been used to utter it without

"Anybody 'ud think the angils in heaven couldn't be prettier," said Dolly, rubbing the golden curls and kissing

them. "And to think of its being covered wi' them dirty ragsand the poor motherfroze to death; but

there's Them as took care of it, and brought it to your door, Master Marner. The door was open, and it walked

in over the snow, like as if it had been a little starved robin. Didn't you say the door was open?"

"Yes," said Silas, meditatively. "Yesthe door was open. The money's gone I don't know where, and this is

He had not mentioned to any one his unconsciousness of the child's entrance, shrinking from questions which

might lead to the fact he himself suspectednamely, that he had been in one of his trances.

"Ah," said Dolly, with soothing gravity, "it's like the night and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking,

and the rain and the harvestone goes and the other comes, and we know nothing how nor where. We may

strive and scrat and fend, but it's little we can do arter allthe big things come and go wi' no striving o'

our'n they do, that they do; and I think you're in the right on it to keep the little un, Master Marner, seeing

as it's been sent to you, though there's folks as thinks different. You'll happen be a bit moithered with it while

it's so little; but I'll come, and welcome, and see to it for you: I've a bit o' time to spare most days, for when

one gets up betimes i' the morning, the clock seems to stan' still tow'rt ten, afore it's time to go about the

"Thank you... kindly," said Silas, hesitating a little. "I'll be glad if you'll tell me things. But," he added,

uneasily, leaning forward to look at Baby with some jealousy, as she was resting her head backward against

Dolly's arm, and eyeing him contentedly from a distance"But I want to do things for it myself, else it may

get fond o' somebody else, and not fond o' me. I've been used to fending for myself in the houseI can learn,

"Eh, to be sure," said Dolly, gently. "I've seen men as are wonderful handy wi' children. The men are awk'ard

and contrairy mostly, God help 'embut when the drink's out of 'em, they aren't unsensible, though they're

bad for leeching and bandagingso fiery and unpatient. You see this goes first, next the skin," proceeded

"Yes," said Marner, docilely, bringing his eyes very close, that they might be initiated in the mysteries;

whereupon Baby seized his head with both her small arms, and put her lips against his face with purring

"See there," said Dolly, with a woman's tender tact, "she's fondest o' you. She wants to go o' your lap, I'll be

bound. Go, then: take her, Master Marner; you can put the things on, and then you can say as you've done for

Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning

on his life. Thought and feeling were so confused within him, that if he had tried to give them utterance, he

could only have said that the child was come instead of the goldthat the gold had turned into the child. He

took the garments from Dolly, and put them on under her teaching; interrupted, of course, by Baby's

"There, then! why, you take to it quite easy, Master Marner," said Dolly; "but what shall you do when you're

forced to sit in your loom? For she'll get busier and mischievouser every dayshe will, bless her. It's lucky

as you've got that high hearth i'stead of a grate, for that keeps the fire more out of her reach: but if you've got

anything as can be spilt or broke, or as is fit to cut her fingers off, she'll be at itand it is but right you

Silas meditated a little while in some perplexity. "I'll tie her to the leg o' the loom," he said at last"tie her

"Well, mayhap that'll do, as it's a little gell, for they're easier persuaded to sit i' one place nor the lads. I know

what the lads are; for I've had fourfour I've had, God knowsand if you was to take and tie 'em up, they'd

make a fighting and a crying as if you was ringing the pigs. But I'll bring you my little chair, and some bits o'

red rag and things for her to play wi'; an' she'll sit and chatter to 'em as if they was alive. Eh, if it wasn't a sin

to the lads to wish 'em made different, bless 'em, I should ha' been glad for one of 'em to be a little gell; and to

think as I could ha' taught her to scour, and mend, and the knitting, and everything. But I can teach 'em this

"But she'll be _my_ little un," said Marner, rather hastily. "She'll be nobody else's."

"No, to be sure; you'll have a right to her, if you're a father to her, and bring her up according. But," added

Dolly, coming to a point which she had determined beforehand to touch upon, "you must bring her up like

christened folks's children, and take her to church, and let her learn her catechise, as my little Aaron can say

offthe "I believe", and everything, and "hurt nobody by word or deed",as well as if he was the clerk.

That's what you must do, Master Marner, if you'd do the right thing by the orphin child."

Marner's pale face flushed suddenly under a new anxiety. His mind was too busy trying to give some definite

"And it's my belief," she went on, "as the poor little creatur has never been christened, and it's nothing but

right as the parson should be spoke to; and if you was noways unwilling, I'd talk to Mr. Macey about it this

very day. For if the child ever went anyways wrong, and you hadn't done your part by it, Master Marner

'noculation, and everything to save it from harmit 'ud be a thorn i' your bed for ever o' this side the grave;

and I can't think as it 'ud be easy lying down for anybody when they'd got to another world, if they hadn't

Dolly herself was disposed to be silent for some time now, for she had spoken from the depths of her own

simple belief, and was much concerned to know whether her words would produce the desired effect on Silas.

He was puzzled and anxious, for Dolly's word "christened" conveyed no distinct meaning to him. He had

"What is it as you mean by "christened"?" he said at last, timidly. "Won't folks be good to her without it?"

"Dear, dear! Master Marner," said Dolly, with gentle distress and compassion. "Had you never no father nor

mother as taught you to say your prayers, and as there's good words and good things to keep us from harm?"

"Yes," said Silas, in a low voice; "I know a deal about that used to, used to. But your ways are different:

my country was a good way off." He paused a few moments, and then added, more decidedly, "But I want to

do everything as can be done for the child. And whatever's right for it i' this country, and you think 'ull do it

"Well, then, Master Marner," said Dolly, inwardly rejoiced, "I'll ask Mr. Macey to speak to the parson about

it; and you must fix on a name for it, because it must have a name giv' it when it's christened."

"My mother's name was Hephzibah," said Silas, "and my little sister was named after her."

"Eh, that's a hard name," said Dolly. "I partly think it isn't a christened name."

"Then I've no call to speak again' it," said Dolly, rather startled by Silas's knowledge on this head; "but you

see I'm no scholard, and I'm slow at catching the words. My husband says I'm allays like as if I was putting

the haft for the handlethat's what he saysfor he's very sharp, God help him. But it was awk'ard calling

your little sister by such a hard name, when you'd got nothing big to say, likewasn't it, Master Marner?"

"Well, if it was noways wrong to shorten the name, it 'ud be a deal handier. And so I'll go now, Master

Marner, and I'll speak about the christening afore dark; and I wish you the best o' luck, and it's my belief as

it'll come to you, if you do what's right by the orphin child;and there's the 'noculation to be seen to; and as

to washing its bits o' things, you need look to nobody but me, for I can do 'em wi' one hand when I've got my

suds about. Eh, the blessed angil! You'll let me bring my Aaron one o' these days, and he'll show her his little

cart as his father's made for him, and the blackandwhite pup as he's got arearing."

Baby _was_ christened, the rector deciding that a double baptism was the lesser risk to incur; and on this

occasion Silas, making himself as clean and tidy as he could, appeared for the first time within the church,

and shared in the observances held sacred by his neighbours. He was quite unable, by means of anything he

heard or saw, to identify the Raveloe religion with his old faith; if he could at any time in his previous life

have done so, it must have been by the aid of a strong feeling ready to vibrate with sympathy, rather than by a

comparison of phrases and ideas: and now for long years that feeling had been dormant. He had no distinct

idea about the baptism and the churchgoing, except that Dolly had said it was for the good of the child; and

in this way, as the weeks grew to months, the child created fresh and fresh links between his life and the lives

from which he had hitherto shrunk continually into narrower isolation. Unlike the gold which needed

nothing, and must be worshipped in closelocked solitudewhich was hidden away from the daylight, was

deaf to the song of birds, and started to no human tonesEppie was a creature of endless claims and

evergrowing desires, seeking and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living movements; making trial of

everything, with trust in new joy, and stirring the human kindness in all eyes that looked on her. The gold had

kept his thoughts in an everrepeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object

compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old

eager pacing towards the same blank limitcarried them away to the new things that would come with the

coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made

him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his neighbours.

The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all

things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away from his

weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the

old winterflies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because

And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might

be seen in the sunny midday, or in the late afternoon when the shadows were lengthening under the

hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond the Stonepits to where the flowers

grew, till they reached some favourite bank where he could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the

flowers, and make remarks to the winged things that murmured happily above the bright petals, calling

"Daddad's" attention continually by bringing him the flowers. Then she would turn her ear to some sudden

birdnote, and Silas learned to please her by making signs of hushed stillness, that they might listen for the

note to come again: so that when it came, she set up her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph.

Sitting on the banks in this way, Silas began to look for the once familiar herbs again; and as the leaves, with

their unchanged outline and markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of crowding remembrances from

which he turned away timidly, taking refuge in Eppie's little world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.

As the child's mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded,

his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full

It was an influence which must gather force with every new year: the tones that stirred Silas's heart grew

articulate, and called for more distinct answers; shapes and sounds grew clearer for Eppie's eyes and ears, and

there was more that "Daddad" was imperatively required to notice and account for. Also, by the time Eppie

was three years old, she developed a fine capacity for mischief, and for devising ingenious ways of being

troublesome, which found much exercise, not only for Silas's patience, but for his watchfulness and

penetration. Sorely was poor Silas puzzled on such occasions by the incompatible demands of love. Dolly

Winthrop told him that punishment was good for Eppie, and that, as for rearing a child without making it

"To be sure, there's another thing you might do, Master Marner," added Dolly, meditatively: "you might shut

her up once i' the coalhole. That was what I did wi' Aaron; for I was that silly wi' the youngest lad, as I

could never bear to smack him. Not as I could find i' my heart to let him stay i' the coalhole more nor a

minute, but it was enough to colly him all over, so as he must be new washed and dressed, and it was as good

as a rod to himthat was. But I put it upo' your conscience, Master Marner, as there's one of 'em you must

chooseayther smacking or the coalhole else she'll get so masterful, there'll be no holding her."

Silas was impressed with the melancholy truth of this last remark; but his force of mind failed before the only

two penal methods open to him, not only because it was painful to him to hurt Eppie, but because he trembled

at a moment's contention with her, lest she should love him the less for it. Let even an affectionate Goliath get

himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord,

and which of the two, pray, will be master? It was clear that Eppie, with her short toddling steps, must lead

father Silas a pretty dance on any fine morning when circumstances favoured mischief.

For example. He had wisely chosen a broad strip of linen as a means of fastening her to his loom when he

was busy: it made a broad belt round her waist, and was long enough to allow of her reaching the trucklebed

and sitting down on it, but not long enough for her to attempt any dangerous climbing. One bright summer's

morning Silas had been more engrossed than usual in "setting up" a new piece of work, an occasion on which

his scissors were in requisition. These scissors, owing to an especial warning of Dolly's, had been kept

carefully out of Eppie's reach; but the click of them had had a peculiar attraction for her ear, and watching the

results of that click, she had derived the philosophic lesson that the same cause would produce the same

effect. Silas had seated himself in his loom, and the noise of weaving had begun; but he had left his scissors

on a ledge which Eppie's arm was long enough to reach; and now, like a small mouse, watching her

opportunity, she stole quietly from her corner, secured the scissors, and toddled to the bed again, setting up

her back as a mode of concealing the fact. She had a distinct intention as to the use of the scissors; and having

cut the linen strip in a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had run out at the open door where

the sunshine was inviting her, while poor Silas believed her to be a better child than usual. It was not until he

happened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst upon him: Eppie had run out by herselfhad perhaps

fallen into the Stonepit. Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have befallen him, rushed out, calling

"Eppie!" and ran eagerly about the unenclosed space, exploring the dry cavities into which she might have

fallen, and then gazing with questioning dread at the smooth red surface of the water. The cold drops stood on

his brow. How long had she been out? There was one hopethat she had crept through the stile and got into

the fields, where he habitually took her to stroll. But the grass was high in the meadow, and there was no

descrying her, if she were there, except by a close search that would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood's crop. Still,

that misdemeanour must be committed; and poor Silas, after peering all round the hedgerows, traversed the

grass, beginning with perturbed vision to see Eppie behind every group of red sorrel, and to see her moving

always farther off as he approached. The meadow was searched in vain; and he got over the stile into the next

field, looking with dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to its summer shallowness, so

as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud. Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully to her own

small boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the water into a deep hoofmark, while her little

naked foot was planted comfortably on a cushion of olivegreen mud. A redheaded calf was observing her

Here was clearly a case of aberration in a christened child which demanded severe treatment; but Silas,

overcome with convulsive joy at finding his treasure again, could do nothing but snatch her up, and cover her

with halfsobbing kisses. It was not until he had carried her home, and had begun to think of the necessary

washing, that he recollected the need that he should punish Eppie, and "make her remember". The idea that

she might run away again and come to harm, gave him unusual resolution, and for the first time he

"Naughty, naughty Eppie," he suddenly began, holding her on his knee, and pointing to her muddy feet and

clothes"naughty to cut with the scissors and run away. Eppie must go into the coalhole for being naughty.

He halfexpected that this would be shock enough, and that Eppie would begin to cry. But instead of that, she

began to shake herself on his knee, as if the proposition opened a pleasing novelty. Seeing that he must

proceed to extremities, he put her into the coalhole, and held the door closed, with a trembling sense that he

was using a strong measure. For a moment there was silence, but then came a little cry, "Opy, opy!" and Silas

let her out again, saying, "Now Eppie 'ull never be naughty again, else she must go in the coalholea black

The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now Eppie must be washed, and have clean

clothes on; but it was to be hoped that this punishment would have a lasting effect, and save time in

In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas having turned his back to see what he could do with the linen

band, threw it down again, with the reflection that Eppie would be good without fastening for the rest of the

morning. He turned round again, and was going to place her in her little chair near the loom, when she peeped

This total failure of the coalhole discipline shook Silas's belief in the efficacy of punishment. "She'd take it

all for fun," he observed to Dolly, "if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs. Winthrop. If she makes me a

bit o' trouble, I can bear it. And she's got no tricks but what she'll grow out of."

"Well, that's partly true, Master Marner," said Dolly, sympathetically; "and if you can't bring your mind to

frighten her off touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way. That's what I do wi'

the pups as the lads are allays arearing. They _will_ worry and gnawworry and gnaw they will, if it was

one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help 'em: it's the

So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds being borne vicariously by father Silas.

The stone hut was made a soft nest for her, lined with downy patience: and also in the world that lay beyond

Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yarn or linen at the same time, Silas took her with him

in most of his journeys to the farmhouses, unwilling to leave her behind at Dolly Winthrop's, who was always

ready to take care of her; and little curlyheaded Eppie, the weaver's child, became an object of interest at

several outlying homesteads, as well as in the village. Hitherto he had been treated very much as if he had

been a useful gnome or brownie a queer and unaccountable creature, who must necessarily be looked at

with wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one would be glad to make all greetings and bargains

as brief as possible, but who must be dealt with in a propitiatory way, and occasionally have a present of pork

or garden stuff to carry home with him, seeing that without him there was no getting the yarn woven. But

now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and

difficulties could be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little and talk about the child, and words of interest

were always ready for him: "Ah, Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon and easy!"

or, "Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take up with a little un like that: but I reckon the

weaving makes you handier than men as do outdoor workyou're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving

comes next to spinning." Elderly masters and mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen armchairs,

shook their heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing children, felt Eppie's round arms and legs, and

pronounced them remarkably firm, and told Silas that, if she turned out well (which, however, there was no

telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a steady lass to do for him when he got helpless. Servant

maidens were fond of carrying her out to look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any cherries could be

shaken down in the orchard; and the small boys and girls approached her slowly, with cautious movement

and steady gaze, like little dogs face to face with one of their own kind, till attraction had reached the point at

which the soft lips were put out for a kiss. No child was afraid of approaching Silas when Eppie was near

him: there was no repulsion around him now, either for young or old; for the little child had come to link him

once more with the whole world. There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and

there was love between the child and the worldfrom men and women with parental looks and tones, to the

Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to Eppie: she must have everything that was a

good in Raveloe; and he listened docilely, that he might come to understand better what this life was, from

which, for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from a strange thing, with which he could have no communion:

as some man who has a precious plant to which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil, thinks of the

rain, and the sunshine, and all influences, in relation to his nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge

that will help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf and bud from invading harm.

The disposition to hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first by the loss of his longstored gold: the

coins he earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to complete a house suddenly buried by an

earthquake; the sense of bereavement was too heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction to arise again

at the touch of the newlyearned coin. And now something had come to replace his hoard which gave a

growing purpose to the earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money.

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of

destruction. We see no whitewinged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a

hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no

There was one person, as you will believe, who watched with keener though more hidden interest than any

other, the prosperous growth of Eppie under the weaver's care. He dared not do anything that would imply a

stronger interest in a poor man's adopted child than could be expected from the kindliness of the young

Squire, when a chance meeting suggested a little present to a simple old fellow whom others noticed with

goodwill; but he told himself that the time would come when he might do something towards furthering the

welfare of his daughter without incurring suspicion. Was he very uneasy in the meantime at his inability to

give his daughter her birthright? I cannot say that he was. The child was being taken care of, and would very

likely be happy, as people in humble stations often were happier, perhaps, than those brought up in luxury.

That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot duty and followed desireI wonder if it pricked very

hard when he set out on the chase, or whether it pricked but lightly then, and only pierced to the quick when

the chase had long been ended, and hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became regret?

Godfrey Cass's cheek and eye were brighter than ever now. He was so undivided in his aims, that he seemed

like a man of firmness. No Dunsey had come back: people had made up their minds that he was gone for a

soldier, or gone "out of the country", and no one cared to be specific in their inquiries on a subject delicate to

a respectable family. Godfrey had ceased to see the shadow of Dunsey across his path; and the path now lay

straight forward to the accomplishment of his best, longestcherished wishes. Everybody said Mr. Godfrey

had taken the right turn; and it was pretty clear what would be the end of things, for there were not many days

in the week that he was not seen riding to the Warrens. Godfrey himself, when he was asked jocosely if the

day had been fixed, smiled with the pleasant consciousness of a lover who could say "yes", if he liked. He felt

a reformed man, delivered from temptation; and the vision of his future life seemed to him as a promised land

for which he had no cause to fight. He saw himself with all his happiness centred on his own hearth, while

And that other childnot on the hearthhe would not forget it; he would see that it was well provided for.

It was a bright autumn Sunday, sixteen years after Silas Marner had found his new treasure on the hearth. The

bells of the old Raveloe church were ringing the cheerful peal which told that the morning service was ended;

and out of the arched doorway in the tower came slowly, retarded by friendly greetings and questions, the

richer parishioners who had chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible for churchgoing. It was the rural

fashion of that time for the more important members of the congregation to depart first, while their humbler

neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent heads or dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer

Foremost among these advancing groups of wellclad people, there are some whom we shall recognize, in

spite of Time, who has laid his hand on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not much changed in feature

from the Godfrey Cass of sixandtwenty: he is only fuller in flesh, and has only lost the indefinable look of

youth a loss which is marked even when the eye is undulled and the wrinkles are not yet come. Perhaps the

pretty woman, not much younger than he, who is leaning on his arm, is more changed than her husband: the

lovely bloom that used to be always on her cheek now comes but fitfully, with the fresh morning air or with

some strong surprise; yet to all who love human faces best for what they tell of human experience, Nancy's

beauty has a heightened interest. Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly

film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. But the years have not been so cruel

to Nancy. The firm yet placid mouth, the clear veracious glance of the brown eyes, speak now of a nature that

has been tested and has kept its highest qualities; and even the costume, with its dainty neatness and purity,

has more significance now the coquetries of youth can have nothing to do with it.

Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title has died away from Raveloe lips since the old Squire was

gathered to his fathers and his inheritance was divided) have turned round to look for the tall aged man and

the plainly dressed woman who are a little behind Nancy having observed that they must wait for "father

and Priscilla"and now they all turn into a narrower path leading across the churchyard to a small gate

opposite the Red House. We will not follow them now; for may there not be some others in this departing

congregation whom we should like to see againsome of those who are not likely to be handsomely clad,

and whom we may not recognize so easily as the master and mistress of the Red House?

But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large brown eyes seem to have gathered a longer vision, as

is the way with eyes that have been shortsighted in early life, and they have a less vague, a more answering

gaze; but in everything else one sees signs of a frame much enfeebled by the lapse of the sixteen years. The

weaver's bent shoulders and white hair give him almost the look of advanced age, though he is not more than

fiveandfifty; but there is the freshest blossom of youth close by his sidea blonde dimpled girl of

eighteen, who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet: the

hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the little ringlets burst away from the

restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnetcrown. Eppie cannot help being rather

vexed about her hair, for there is no other girl in Raveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks hair ought

to be smooth. She does not like to be blameworthy even in small things: you see how neatly her prayerbook

That goodlooking young fellow, in a new fustian suit, who walks behind her, is not quite sure upon the

question of hair in the abstract, when Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that perhaps straight hair is the best in

general, but he doesn't want Eppie's hair to be different. She surely divines that there is some one behind her

who is thinking about her very particularly, and mustering courage to come to her side as soon as they are out

in the lane, else why should she look rather shy, and take care not to turn away her head from her father Silas,

to whom she keeps murmuring little sentences as to who was at church and who was not at church, and how

"I wish _we_ had a little garden, father, with double daisies in, like Mrs. Winthrop's," said Eppie, when they

were out in the lane; "only they say it 'ud take a deal of digging and bringing fresh soiland you couldn't do

that, could you, father? Anyhow, I shouldn't like you to do it, for it 'ud be too hard work for you."

"Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o' garden: these long evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit

o' the waste, just enough for a root or two o' flowers for you; and again, i' the morning, I could have a turn wi'

the spade before I sat down to the loom. Why didn't you tell me before as you wanted a bit o' garden?"

"_I_ can dig it for you, Master Marner," said the young man in fustian, who was now by Eppie's side,

entering into the conversation without the trouble of formalities. "It'll be play to me after I've done my day's

work, or any odd bits o' time when the work's slack. And I'll bring you some soil from Mr. Cass's

"Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?" said Silas; "I wasn't aware of you; for when Eppie's talking o' things, I

see nothing but what she's asaying. Well, if you could help me with the digging, we might get her a bit o'

"Then, if you think well and good," said Aaron, "I'll come to the Stonepits this afternoon, and we'll settle

what land's to be taken in, and I'll get up an hour earlier i' the morning, and begin on it."

"But not if you don't promise me not to work at the hard digging, father," said Eppie. "For I shouldn't ha' said

anything about it," she added, halfbashfully, halfroguishly, "only Mrs. Winthrop said as Aaron 'ud be so

"And you might ha' known it without mother telling you," said Aaron. "And Master Marner knows too, I

hope, as I'm able and willing to do a turn o' work for him, and he won't do me the unkindness to anyways take

"There, now, father, you won't work in it till it's all easy," said Eppie, "and you and me can mark out the

beds, and make holes and plant the roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stonepits when we've got some

flowers, for I always think the flowers can see us and know what we're talking about. And I'll have a bit o'

rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, because they're so sweetsmelling; but there's no lavender only in the

"That's no reason why you shouldn't have some," said Aaron, "for I can bring you slips of anything; I'm

forced to cut no end of 'em when I'm gardening, and throw 'em away mostly. There's a big bed o' lavender at

"Well," said Silas, gravely, "so as you don't make free for us, or ask for anything as is worth much at the Red

House: for Mr. Cass's been so good to us, and built us up the new end o' the cottage, and given us beds and

"No, no, there's no imposin'," said Aaron; "there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless

waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there

need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what

could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that gardening does. But I must go back now, else

"Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron," said Eppie; "I shouldn't like to fix about the garden, and her not

"Aye, bring her if you can, Aaron," said Silas; "she's sure to have a word to say as'll help us to set things on

Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie went on up the lonely sheltered lane.

"O daddy!" she began, when they were in privacy, clasping and squeezing Silas's arm, and skipping round to

give him an energetic kiss. "My little old daddy! I'm so glad. I don't think I shall want anything else when

we've got a little garden; and I knew Aaron would dig it for us," she went on with roguish triumph"I knew

"You're a deep little puss, you are," said Silas, with the mild passive happiness of lovecrowned age in his

"Come, come, let me carry your prayerbook, else you'll be dropping it, jumping i' that way."

Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was under observation, but it was only the observation of a friendly

donkey, browsing with a log fastened to his foota meek donkey, not scornfully critical of human

trivialities, but thankful to share in them, if possible, by getting his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to

gratify him with her usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience of his following them,

But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the door, modified the donkey's views, and he

limped away again without bidding. The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting

them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in a hysterical manner, rushed with a

worrying noise at a tortoiseshell kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as

much as to say, "I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you perceive"; while the ladymother of the

kitten sat sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of expecting caresses,

The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which had come over the interior of the stone

cottage. There was no bed now in the livingroom, and the small space was well filled with decent furniture,

all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop's eye. The oaken table and threecornered oaken chair

were hardly what was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage: they had come, with the beds and other things,

from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as every one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver;

and it was nothing but right a man should be looked on and helped by those who could afford it, when he had

brought up an orphan child, and been father and mother to herand had lost his money too, so as he had

nothing but what he worked for week by week, and when the weaving was going down toofor there was

less and less flax spunand Master Marner was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for he

was regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help were not to be matched in Raveloe.

Any superstition that remained concerning him had taken an entirely new colour; and Mr. Macey, now a very

feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his chimneycorner or sitting in the sunshine at his

doorsill, was of opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan child, it was a sign that

his money would come to light again, or leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for itfor, as

Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she spread the clean cloth, and set on it the

potatopie, warmed up slowly in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a slowlydying fire,

as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas would not consent to have a grate and oven added to his

conveniences: he loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his brown potand was it not there when he had

found Eppie? The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it

Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying down his knife and fork, and watching

halfabstractedly Eppie's play with Snap and the cat, by which her own dining was made rather a lengthy

business. Yet it was a sight that might well arrest wandering thoughts: Eppie, with the rippling radiance of

her hair and the whiteness of her rounded chin and throat set off by the darkblue cotton gown, laughing

merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws to one shoulder, like a design for a jughandle, while Snap

on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of

bothSnap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the

greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and divided the morsel between

But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, and said, "O daddy, you're wanting to go into the

sunshine to smoke your pipe. But I must clear away first, so as the house may be tidy when godmother

Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years, having been strongly urged to it by the

sages of Raveloe, as a practice "good for the fits"; and this advice was sanctioned by Dr. Kimble, on the

ground that it was as well to try what could do no harma principle which was made to answer for a great

deal of work in that gentleman's medical practice. Silas did not highly enjoy smoking, and often wondered

how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good,

had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his

hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had

been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for

Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of

custom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life; and as, with reawakening sensibilities, memory also

reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new

impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his past and present. The sense of presiding

goodness and the human trust which come with all pure peace and joy, had given him a dim impression that

there had been some error, some mistake, which had thrown that dark shadow over the days of his best years;

and as it grew more and more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually communicated to

her all he could describe of his early life. The communication was necessarily a slow and difficult process,

for Silas's meagre power of explanation was not aided by any readiness of interpretation in Dolly, whose

narrow outward experience gave her no key to strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder

that arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only by fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly

time to revolve what she had heard till it acquired some familiarity for her, that Silas at last arrived at the

climax of the sad storythe drawing of lots, and its false testimony concerning him; and this had to be

repeated in several interviews, under new questions on her part as to the nature of this plan for detecting the

"And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o' that, Master Marner the Bible as you brought wi' you from that

countryit's the same as what they've got at church, and what Eppie's alearning to read in?"

"Yes," said Silas, "every bit the same; and there's drawing o' lots in the Bible, mind you," he added in a lower

"Oh, dear, dear," said Dolly in a grieved voice, as if she were hearing an unfavourable report of a sick man's

"There's wise folks, happen, as know how it all is; the parson knows, I'll be bound; but it takes big words to

tell them things, and such as poor folks can't make much out on. I can never rightly know the meaning o'

what I hear at church, only a bit here and there, but I know it's good wordsI do. But what lies upo' your

mindit's this, Master Marner: as, if Them above had done the right thing by you, They'd never ha' let you

"Ah!" said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly's phraseology, "that was what fell on me like as if it

had been redhot iron; because, you see, there was nobody as cared for me or clave to me above nor below.

And him as I'd gone out and in wi' for ten year and more, since when we was lads and went halvesmine

own familiar friend in whom I trusted, had lifted up his heel again' me, and worked to ruin me."

"Eh, but he was a bad unI can't think as there's another such," said Dolly. "But I'm o'ercome, Master

Marner; I'm like as if I'd waked and didn't know whether it was night or morning. I feel somehow as sure as I

do when I've laid something up though I can't justly put my hand on it, as there was a rights in what happened

to you, if one could but make it out; and you'd no call to lose heart as you did. But we'll talk on it again; for

sometimes things come into my head when I'm leeching or poulticing, or such, as I could never think on

Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportunities of illumination of the kind she alluded to, and

"Master Marner," she said, one day that she came to bring home Eppie's washing, "I've been sore puzzled for

a good bit wi' that trouble o' yourn and the drawing o' lots; and it got twisted back'ards and for'ards, as I didn't

know which end to lay hold on. But it come to me all clear like, that night when I was sitting up wi' poor

Bessy Fawkes, as is dead and left her children behind, God help 'emit come to me as clear as daylight; but

whether I've got hold on it now, or can anyways bring it to my tongue's end, that I don't know. For I've often

a deal inside me as'll never come out; and for what you talk o' your folks in your old country niver saying

prayers by heart nor saying 'em out of a book, they must be wonderful cliver; for if I didn't know "Our

Father", and little bits o' good words as I can carry out o' church wi' me, I might down o' my knees every

"But you can mostly say something as I can make sense on, Mrs. Winthrop," said Silas.

"Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this: I can make nothing o' the drawing o' lots and the

answer coming wrong; it 'ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us i' big words. But

what come to me as clear as the daylight, it was when I was troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays

comes into my head when I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a power to help 'em, not if I was to get up

i' the middle o' the night it comes into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor what I've

gotfor I can't be anyways better nor Them as made me; and if anything looks hard to me, it's because

there's things I don't know on; and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o' things I don't know on, for it's

little as I knowthat it is. And so, while I was thinking o' that, you come into my mind, Master Marner, and

it all come pouring in:if _I_ felt i' my inside what was the right and just thing by you, and them as prayed

and drawed the lots, all but that wicked un, if _they_'d ha' done the right thing by you if they could, isn't there

Them as was at the making on us, and knows better and has a better will? And that's all as ever I can be sure

on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it. For there was the fever come and took off

them as were fullgrowed, and left the helpless children; and there's the breaking o' limbs; and them as 'ud do

right and be sober have to suffer by them as are contrairyeh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things

as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marnerto do the

right thing as fur as we know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we

may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can knowI feel it i' my own inside as it must

be so. And if you could but ha' gone on trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn't ha' run away from your

"Ah, but that 'ud ha' been hard," said Silas, in an undertone; "it 'ud ha' been hard to trusten then."

"And so it would," said Dolly, almost with compunction; "them things are easier said nor done; and I'm partly

"Nay, nay," said Silas, "you're i' the right, Mrs. Winthrop you're i' the right. There's good i' this

worldI've a feeling o' that now; and it makes a man feel as there's a good more nor he can see, i' spite o' the

trouble and the wickedness. That drawing o' the lots is dark; but the child was sent to me: there's dealings

This dialogue took place in Eppie's earlier years, when Silas had to part with her for two hours every day, that

she might learn to read at the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself to guide her in that first step to

learning. Now that she was grown up, Silas had often been led, in those moments of quiet outpouring which

come to people who live together in perfect love, to talk with _her_ too of the past, and how and why he had

lived a lonely man until she had been sent to him. For it would have been impossible for him to hide from

Eppie that she was not his own child: even if the most delicate reticence on the point could have been

expected from Raveloe gossips in her presence, her own questions about her mother could not have been

parried, as she grew up, without that complete shrouding of the past which would have made a painful barrier

between their minds. So Eppie had long known how her mother had died on the snowy ground, and how she

herself had been found on the hearth by father Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his lost guineas

brought back to him. The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable

companionship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering

influences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely

supposed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the

relations of the leastinstructed human beings; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time

when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in

other things besides her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had a touch of

refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching than that of tenderlynurtured unvitiated feeling.

She was too childish and simple for her imagination to rove into questions about her unknown father; for a

long while it did not even occur to her that she must have had a father; and the first time that the idea of her

mother having had a husband presented itself to her, was when Silas showed her the weddingring which had

been taken from the wasted finger, and had been carefully preserved by him in a little lackered box shaped

like a shoe. He delivered this box into Eppie's charge when she had grown up, and she often opened it to look

at the ring: but still she thought hardly at all about the father of whom it was the symbol. Had she not a father

very close to her, who loved her better than any real fathers in the village seemed to love their daughters? On

the contrary, who her mother was, and how she came to die in that forlornness, were questions that often

pressed on Eppie's mind. Her knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who was her nearest friend next to Silas, made

her feel that a mother must be very precious; and she had again and again asked Silas to tell her how her

mother looked, whom she was like, and how he had found her against the furze bush, led towards it by the

little footsteps and the outstretched arms. The furze bush was there still; and this afternoon, when Eppie came

out with Silas into the sunshine, it was the first object that arrested her eyes and thoughts.

"Father," she said, in a tone of gentle gravity, which sometimes came like a sadder, slower cadence across her

playfulness, "we shall take the furze bush into the garden; it'll come into the corner, and just against it I'll put

snowdrops and crocuses, 'cause Aaron says they won't die out, but'll always get more and more."

"Ah, child," said Silas, always ready to talk when he had his pipe in his hand, apparently enjoying the pauses

more than the puffs, "it wouldn't do to leave out the furze bush; and there's nothing prettier, to my thinking,

when it's yallow with flowers. But it's just come into my head what we're to do for a fencemayhap Aaron

can help us to a thought; but a fence we must have, else the donkeys and things 'ull come and trample

"Oh, I'll tell you, daddy," said Eppie, clasping her hands suddenly, after a minute's thought. "There's lots o'

loose stones about, some of 'em not big, and we might lay 'em atop of one another, and make a wall. You and

"Eh, my precious un," said Silas, "there isn't enough stones to go all round; and as for you carrying, why, wi'

your little arms you couldn't carry a stone no bigger than a turnip. You're dillicate made, my dear," he added,

"Oh, I'm stronger than you think, daddy," said Eppie; "and if there wasn't stones enough to go all round, why

they'll go part o' the way, and then it'll be easier to get sticks and things for the rest. See here, round the big

She skipped forward to the pit, meaning to lift one of the stones and exhibit her strength, but she started back

"Oh, father, just come and look here," she exclaimed"come and see how the water's gone down since

"Well, to be sure," said Silas, coming to her side. "Why, that's the draining they've begun on, since harvest, i'

Mr. Osgood's fields, I reckon. The foreman said to me the other day, when I passed by 'em, "Master Marner,"

he said, "I shouldn't wonder if we lay your bit o' waste as dry as a bone." It was Mr. Godfrey Cass, he said,

"How odd it'll seem to have the old pit dried up!" said Eppie, turning away, and stooping to lift rather a large

stone. "See, daddy, I can carry this quite well," she said, going along with much energy for a few steps, but

"Ah, you're fine and strong, aren't you?" said Silas, while Eppie shook her aching arms and laughed. "Come,

come, let us go and sit down on the bank against the stile there, and have no more lifting. You might hurt

yourself, child. You'd need have somebody to work for youand my arm isn't over strong."

Silas uttered the last sentence slowly, as if it implied more than met the ear; and Eppie, when they sat down

on the bank, nestled close to his side, and, taking hold caressingly of the arm that was not over strong, held it

on her lap, while Silas puffed again dutifully at the pipe, which occupied his other arm. An ash in the

hedgerow behind made a fretted screen from the sun, and threw happy playful shadows all about them.

"Father," said Eppie, very gently, after they had been sitting in silence a little while, "if I was to be married,

Silas gave an almost imperceptible start, though the question fell in with the undercurrent of thought in his

own mind, and then said, in a subdued tone, "Why, Eppie, have you been athinking on it?"

"Only this last week, father," said Eppie, ingenuously, "since Aaron talked to me about it."

"And what did he say?" said Silas, still in the same subdued way, as if he were anxious lest he should fall into

"He said he should like to be married, because he was agoing in fourandtwenty, and had got a deal of

gardening work, now Mr. Mott's given up; and he goes twice aweek regular to Mr. Cass's, and once to Mr.

"Why, me, to be sure, daddy," said Eppie, with dimpling laughter, kissing her father's cheek; "as if he'd want

"Yes, some time," said Eppie, "I don't know when. Everybody's married some time, Aaron says. But I told

"But you'll never be lone again, father," said Eppie, tenderly. "That was what Aaron said"I could never

think o' taking you away from Master Marner, Eppie." And I said, "It 'ud be no use if you did, Aaron." And

he wants us all to live together, so as you needn't work a bit, father, only what's for your own pleasure; and

"I shouldn't mind it, father," said Eppie, quite simply. "And I should like things to be so as you needn't work

much. But if it wasn't for that, I'd sooner things didn't change. I'm very happy: I like Aaron to be fond of me,

and come and see us often, and behave pretty to youhe always _does_ behave pretty to you, doesn't he,

"Yes, child, nobody could behave better," said Silas, emphatically. "He's his mother's lad."

"But I don't want any change," said Eppie. "I should like to go on a long, long while, just as we are. Only

Aaron does want a change; and he made me cry a bitonly a bitbecause he said I didn't care for him, for

"Eh, my blessed child," said Silas, laying down his pipe as if it were useless to pretend to smoke any longer,

"you're o'er young to be married. We'll ask Mrs. Winthropwe'll ask Aaron's mother what _she_ thinks: if

there's a right thing to do, she'll come at it. But there's this to be thought on, Eppie: things _will_ change,

whether we like it or no; things won't go on for a long while just as they are and no difference. I shall get

older and helplesser, and be a burden on you, belike, if I don't go away from you altogether. Not as I mean

you'd think me a burdenI know you wouldn'tbut it 'ud be hard upon you; and when I look for'ard to that,

I like to think as you'd have somebody else besides me somebody young and strong, as'll outlast your own

life, and take care on you to the end." Silas paused, and, resting his wrists on his knees, lifted his hands up

"Then, would you like me to be married, father?" said Eppie, with a little trembling in her voice.

"I'll not be the man to say no, Eppie," said Silas, emphatically; "but we'll ask your godmother. She'll wish the

"There they come, then," said Eppie. "Let us go and meet 'em. Oh, the pipe! won't you have it lit again,

"Nay, child," said Silas, "I've done enough for today. I think, mayhap, a little of it does me more good than

While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank discoursing in the fleckered shade of the ash tree, Miss

Priscilla Lammeter was resisting her sister's arguments, that it would be better to take tea at the Red House,

and let her father have a long nap, than drive home to the Warrens so soon after dinner. The family party (of

four only) were seated round the table in the dark wainscoted parlour, with the Sunday dessert before them,

of fresh filberts, apples, and pears, duly ornamented with leaves by Nancy's own hand before the bells had

A great change has come over the dark wainscoted parlour since we saw it in Godfrey's bachelor days, and

under the wifeless reign of the old Squire. Now all is polish, on which no yesterday's dust is ever allowed to

rest, from the yard's width of oaken boards round the carpet, to the old Squire's gun and whips and

walkingsticks, ranged on the stag's antlers above the mantelpiece. All other signs of sporting and outdoor

occupation Nancy has removed to another room; but she has brought into the Red House the habit of filial

reverence, and preserves sacredly in a place of honour these relics of her husband's departed father. The

tankards are on the sidetable still, but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling, and there are no dregs to

send forth unpleasant suggestions: the only prevailing scent is of the lavender and roseleaves that fill the

vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in this once dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was

"Now, father," said Nancy, "_is_ there any call for you to go home to tea? Mayn't you just as well stay with

The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the increasing poorrate and the ruinous times, and

"My dear, you must ask Priscilla," he said, in the once firm voice, now become rather broken. "She manages

"And reason good as I should manage you, father," said Priscilla, "else you'd be giving yourself your death

with rheumatism. And as for the farm, if anything turns out wrong, as it can't but do in these times, there's

nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. It's a deal the best way o' being

master, to let somebody else do the ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a

"Well, well, my dear," said her father, with a quiet laugh, "I didn't say you don't manage for everybody's

"Then manage so as you may stay tea, Priscilla," said Nancy, putting her hand on her sister's arm

affectionately. "Come now; and we'll go round the garden while father has his nap."

"My dear child, he'll have a beautiful nap in the gig, for I shall drive. And as for staying tea, I can't hear of it;

for there's this dairymaid, now she knows she's to be married, turned Michaelmas, she'd as lief pour the new

milk into the pigtrough as into the pans. That's the way with 'em all: it's as if they thought the world 'ud be

newmade because they're to be married. So come and let me put my bonnet on, and there'll be time for us to

When the sisters were treading the neatlyswept gardenwalks, between the bright turf that contrasted

pleasantly with the dark cones and arches and walllike hedges of yew, Priscilla said

"I'm as glad as anything at your husband's making that exchange o' land with cousin Osgood, and beginning

the dairying. It's a thousand pities you didn't do it before; for it'll give you something to fill your mind.

There's nothing like a dairy if folks want a bit o' worrit to make the days pass. For as for rubbing furniture,

when you can once see your face in a table there's nothing else to look for; but there's always something fresh

with the dairy; for even in the depths o' winter there's some pleasure in conquering the butter, and making it

come whether or no. My dear," added Priscilla, pressing her sister's hand affectionately as they walked side

"Ah, Priscilla," said Nancy, returning the pressure with a grateful glance of her clear eyes, "but it won't make

up to Godfrey: a dairy's not so much to a man. And it's only what he cares for that ever makes me low. I'm

"It drives me past patience," said Priscilla, impetuously, "that way o' the menalways wanting and wanting,

and never easy with what they've got: they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when they've neither ache nor

pain, but either they must stick a pipe in their mouths, to make 'em better than well, or else they must be

swallowing something strong, though they're forced to make haste before the next meal comes in. But joyful

be it spoken, our father was never that sort o' man. And if it had pleased God to make you ugly, like me, so as

the men wouldn't ha' run after you, we might have kept to our own family, and had nothing to do with folks

"Oh, don't say so, Priscilla," said Nancy, repenting that she had called forth this outburst; "nobody has any

occasion to find fault with Godfrey. It's natural he should be disappointed at not having any children: every

man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for, and he always counted so on making a fuss with 'em

when they were little. There's many another man 'ud hanker more than he does. He's the best of husbands."

"Oh, I know," said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, "I know the way o' wives; they set one on to abuse their

husbands, and then they turn round on one and praise 'em as if they wanted to sell 'em. But father'll be

The large gig with the steady old grey was at the front door, and Mr. Lammeter was already on the stone

steps, passing the time in recalling to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had when his master used to ride

"I always _would_ have a good horse, you know," said the old gentleman, not liking that spirited time to be

"Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week's out, Mr. Cass," was Priscilla's parting injunction, as

she took the reins, and shook them gently, by way of friendly incitement to Speckle.

"I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stonepits, Nancy, and look at the draining," said Godfrey.

It was Godfrey's custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little contemplative farming in a leisurely walk.

Nancy seldom accompanied him; for the women of her generationunless, like Priscilla, they took to

outdoor managementwere not given to much walking beyond their own house and garden, finding

sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So, when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant's Bible

before her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little while, she would gradually permit them to

But Nancy's Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with the devout and reverential intention

implied by the book spread open before her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very

clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she opened without method, and her own

obscure, simple life; but the spirit of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her conduct on

others, which were strong elements in Nancy's character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past

feelings and actions with selfquestioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted by a great variety of

subjects, she filled the vacant moments by living inwardly, again and again, through all her remembered

experience, especially through the fifteen years of her married time, in which her life and its significance had

been doubled. She recalled the small details, the words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which had

opened a new epoch for her by giving her a deeper insight into the relations and trials of life, or which had

called on her for some little effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or real duty

asking herself continually whether she had been in any respect blamable. This excessive rumination and

selfquestioning is perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when shut out from

its due share of outward activity and of practical claims on its affectionsinevitable to a noblehearted,

childless woman, when her lot is narrow. "I can do so littlehave I done it all well?" is the perpetually

recurring thought; and there are no voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no peremptory demands to

There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy's married life, and on it hung certain deeplyfelt

scenes, which were the oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in the garden had

determined the current of retrospect in that frequent direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first

wandering of her thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow with her eyes and silent

lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla's

implied blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection can find for its wounds:"A

man must have so much on his mind," is the belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under

rough answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all come from the perception that the

absence of children from their hearth was dwelt on in her husband's mind as a privation to which he could not

Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the denial of a blessing to which she had

looked forward with all the varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily trivial, which fill the

mind of a loving woman when she expects to become a mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat

work of her hands, all unworn and untouched, just as she had arranged it there fourteen years agojust, but

for one little dress, which had been made the burialdress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy

was so firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit of visiting this drawer, lest

Perhaps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she held to be sinful regret in herself, that

made her shrink from applying her own standard to her husband. "It is very different it is much worse for a

man to be disappointed in that way: a woman can always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband,

but a man wants something that will make him look forward moreand sitting by the fire is so much duller

to him than to a woman." And always, when Nancy reached this point in her meditationstrying, with

predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it there came a renewal of selfquestioning.

_Had_ she done everything in her power to lighten Godfrey's privation? Had she really been right in the

resistance which had cost her so much pain six years ago, and again four years agothe resistance to her

husband's wish that they should adopt a child? Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits of that

time than of our own; still Nancy had her opinion on it. It was as necessary to her mind to have an opinion on

all topics, not exclusively masculine, that had come under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked

place for every article of her personal property: and her opinions were always principles to be unwaveringly

acted on. They were firm, not because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity inseparable

from her mental action. On all the duties and proprieties of life, from filial behaviour to the arrangements of

the evening toilette, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she was threeandtwenty, had her unalterable little

code, and had formed every one of her habits in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided

judgments within her in the most unobtrusive way: they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as

quietly as grass. Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because "it was right for sisters

to dress alike", and because "she would do what was right if she wore a gown dyed with cheesecolouring".

That was a trivial but typical instance of the mode in which Nancy's life was regulated.

It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling, which had been the ground of Nancy's

difficult resistance to her husband's wish. To adopt a child, because children of your own had been denied

you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence: the adopted child, she was convinced, would never

turn out well, and would be a curse to those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought what it was clear that,

for some high reason, they were better without. When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it

was a bounden duty to leave off so much as wishing for it. And so far, perhaps, the wisest of men could

scarcely make more than a verbal improvement in her principle. But the conditions under which she held it

apparent that a thing was not meant to be, depended on a more peculiar mode of thinking. She would have

given up making a purchase at a particular place if, on three successive times, rain, or some other cause of

Heaven's sending, had formed an obstacle; and she would have anticipated a broken limb or other heavy

"But why should you think the child would turn out ill?" said Godfrey, in his remonstrances. "She has thriven

as well as child can do with the weaver; and _he_ adopted her. There isn't such a pretty little girl anywhere

else in the parish, or one fitter for the station we could give her. Where can be the likelihood of her being a

"Yes, my dear Godfrey," said Nancy, who was sitting with her hands tightly clasped together, and with

yearning, regretful affection in her eyes. "The child may not turn out ill with the weaver. But, then, he didn't

go to seek her, as we should be doing. It will be wrong: I feel sure it will. Don't you remember what that lady

we met at the Royston Baths told us about the child her sister adopted? That was the only adopting I ever

heard of: and the child was transported when it was twentythree. Dear Godfrey, don't ask me to do what I

know is wrong: I should never be happy again. I know it's very hard for _you_it's easier for mebut it's

It might seem singular that Nancywith her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions,

fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experienceshould

have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are

held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledgesingular, if we did not know that human

Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years old, as a child suitable for them to adopt.

It had never occurred to him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie. Surely the weaver

would wish the best to the child he had taken so much trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune

should happen to her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he would be well provided for to the end

of his lifeprovided for as the excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an appropriate

thing for people in a higher station to take a charge off the hands of a man in a lower? It seemed an eminently

appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common fallacy, he

imagined the measure would be easy because he had private motives for desiring it. This was rather a coarse

mode of estimating Silas's relation to Eppie; but we must remember that many of the impressions which

Godfrey was likely to gather concerning the labouring people around him would favour the idea that deep

affections can hardly go along with callous palms and scant means; and he had not had the opportunity, even

if he had had the power, of entering intimately into all that was exceptional in the weaver's experience. It was

only the want of adequate knowledge that could have made it possible for Godfrey deliberately to entertain an

unfeeling project: his natural kindness had outlived that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of

"I was right," she said to herself, when she had recalled all their scenes of discussion"I feel I was right to

say him nay, though it hurt me more than anything; but how good Godfrey has been about it! Many men

would have been very angry with me for standing out against their wishes; and they might have thrown out

that they'd had illluck in marrying me; but Godfrey has never been the man to say me an unkind word. It's

only what he can't hide: everything seems so blank to him, I know; and the landwhat a difference it 'ud

make to him, when he goes to see after things, if he'd children growing up that he was doing it all for! But I

won't murmur; and perhaps if he'd married a woman who'd have had children, she'd have vexed him in other

This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort; and to give it greater strength, she laboured to make it impossible

that any other wife should have had more perfect tenderness. She had been _forced_ to vex him by that one

denial. Godfrey was not insensible to her loving effort, and did Nancy no injustice as to the motives of her

obstinacy. It was impossible to have lived with her fifteen years and not be aware that an unselfish clinging to

the right, and a sincerity clear as the flowerborn dew, were her main characteristics; indeed, Godfrey felt

this so strongly, that his own more wavering nature, too averse to facing difficulty to be unvaryingly simple

and truthful, was kept in a certain awe of this gentle wife who watched his looks with a yearning to obey

them. It seemed to him impossible that he should ever confess to her the truth about Eppie: she would never

recover from the repulsion the story of his earlier marriage would create, told to her now, after that long

concealment. And the child, too, he thought, must become an object of repulsion: the very sight of her would

be painful. The shock to Nancy's mingled pride and ignorance of the world's evil might even be too much for

her delicate frame. Since he had married her with that secret on his heart, he must keep it there to the last.

Whatever else he did, he could not make an irreparable breach between himself and this longloved wife.

Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the absence of children from a hearth brightened by such a

wife? Why did his mind fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the sole reason why life was not thoroughly

joyous to him? I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear

perception that life never _can_ be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dullness of the grey hours,

dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction seated

musingly on a childless hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose return is greeted by young

voicesseated at the meal where the little heads rise one above another like nursery plants, it sees a black

care hovering behind every one of them, and thinks the impulses by which men abandon freedom, and seek

for ties, are surely nothing but a brief madness. In Godfrey's case there were further reasons why his thoughts

should be continually solicited by this one point in his lot: his conscience, never thoroughly easy about Eppie,

now gave his childless home the aspect of a retribution; and as the time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to

On this Sunday afternoon it was already four years since there had been any allusion to the subject between

"I wonder if he'll mind it less or more as he gets older," she thought; "I'm afraid more. Aged people feel the

miss of children: what would father do without Priscilla? And if I die, Godfrey will be very lonelynot

holding together with his brothers much. But I won't be overanxious, and trying to make things out

With that last thought Nancy roused herself from her reverie, and turned her eyes again towards the forsaken

page. It had been forsaken longer than she imagined, for she was presently surprised by the appearance of the

servant with the teathings. It was, in fact, a little before the usual time for tea; but Jane had her reasons.

"No 'm, he isn't," said Jane, with a slight emphasis, of which, however, her mistress took no notice.

"I don't know whether you've seen 'em, 'm," continued Jane, after a pause, "but there's folks making haste all

one way, afore the front window. I doubt something's happened. There's niver a man to be seen i' the yard,

else I'd send and see. I've been up into the top attic, but there's no seeing anything for trees. I hope nobody's

"Oh, no, I daresay there's nothing much the matter," said Nancy. "It's perhaps Mr. Snell's bull got out again,

"I wish he mayn't gore anybody then, that's all," said Jane, not altogether despising a hypothesis which

"That girl is always terrifying me," thought Nancy; "I wish Godfrey would come in."

She went to the front window and looked as far as she could see along the road, with an uneasiness which she

felt to be childish, for there were now no such signs of excitement as Jane had spoken of, and Godfrey would

not be likely to return by the village road, but by the fields. She continued to stand, however, looking at the

placid churchyard with the long shadows of the gravestones across the bright green hillocks, and at the

glowing autumn colours of the Rectory trees beyond. Before such calm external beauty the presence of a

vague fear is more distinctly feltlike a raven flapping its slow wing across the sunny air. Nancy wished

Some one opened the door at the other end of the room, and Nancy felt that it was her husband. She turned

from the window with gladness in her eyes, for the wife's chief dread was stilled.

"Dear, I'm so thankful you're come," she said, going towards him. "I began to get "

She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down his hat with trembling hands, and turned towards her with

a pale face and a strange unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but saw her as part of a scene invisible

to herself. She laid her hand on his arm, not daring to speak again; but he left the touch unnoticed, and threw

Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to keep away, will you?" said Godfrey; and when

"Sit down, Nancythere," he said, pointing to a chair opposite him. "I came back as soon as I could, to

hinder anybody's telling you but me. I've had a great shockbut I care most about the shock it'll be to you."

"It isn't father and Priscilla?" said Nancy, with quivering lips, clasping her hands together tightly on her lap.

"No, it's nobody living," said Godfrey, unequal to the considerate skill with which he would have wished to

make his revelation. "It's Dunstanmy brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen years ago. We've found

The deep dread Godfrey's look had created in Nancy made her feel these words a relief. She sat in

"The Stonepit has gone dry suddenlyfrom the draining, I suppose; and there he lieshas lain for sixteen

years, wedged between two great stones. There's his watch and seals, and there's my goldhandled

huntingwhip, with my name on: he took it away, without my knowing, the day he went hunting on Wildfire,

Godfrey paused: it was not so easy to say what came next. "Do you think he drowned himself?" said Nancy,

almost wondering that her husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those years ago to

"No, he fell in," said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as if he felt some deep meaning in the fact.

The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and shame, for she had been bred up to regard

"O Godfrey!" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had immediately reflected that the dishonour

"There was the money in the pit," he continued"all the weaver's money. Everything's been gathered up,

and they're taking the skeleton to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you: there was no hindering it; you

He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. Nancy would have said some words of comfort

under this disgrace, but she refrained, from an instinctive sense that there was something behind that

Godfrey had something else to tell her. Presently he lifted his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on her, as

"Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out.

I've lived with a secret on my mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn't have you know it by

somebody else, and not by meI wouldn't have you find it out after I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been "I

Nancy's utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the husband and wife met with awe in them, as at a crisis

"Nancy," said Godfrey, slowly, "when I married you, I hid something from yousomething I ought to have

told you. That woman Marner found dead in the snowEppie's motherthat wretched womanwas my

He paused, dreading the effect of his confession. But Nancy sat quite still, only that her eyes dropped and

ceased to meet his. She was pale and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping her hands on her lap.

"You'll never think the same of me again," said Godfrey, after a little while, with some tremor in his voice.

"I oughtn't to have left the child unowned: I oughtn't to have kept it from you. But I couldn't bear to give you

Still Nancy was silent, looking down; and he almost expected that she would presently get up and say she

would go to her father's. How could she have any mercy for faults that must seem so black to her, with her

But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and spoke. There was no indignation in her voiceonly deep

"Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we could have done some of our duty by the child. Do

At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was not simply futile, but had defeated its own

end. He had not measured this wife with whom he had lived so long. But she spoke again, with more

"AndOh, Godfreyif we'd had her from the first, if you'd taken to her as you ought, she'd have loved me

for her motherand you'd have been happier with me: I could better have bore my little baby dying, and our

"But you wouldn't have married me then, Nancy, if I'd told you," said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his

selfreproach, to prove to himself that his conduct had not been utter folly. "You may think you would now,

but you wouldn't then. With your pride and your father's, you'd have hated having anything to do with me

"I can't say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. I should never have married anybody else. But I

wasn't worth doing wrong for nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems beforehandnot

even our marrying wasn't, you see." There was a faint sad smile on Nancy's face as she said the last words.

"I'm a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy," said Godfrey, rather tremulously. "Can you forgive me

"The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey: you've made it up to me you've been good to me for fifteen years.

It's another you did the wrong to; and I doubt it can never be all made up for."

"But we can take Eppie now," said Godfrey. "I won't mind the world knowing at last. I'll be plain and open

"It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up," said Nancy, shaking her head sadly. "But it's your duty

to acknowledge her and provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to God Almighty to make her

"Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as soon as everything's quiet at the Stonepits."

Between eight and nine o'clock that evening, Eppie and Silas were seated alone in the cottage. After the great

excitement the weaver had undergone from the events of the afternoon, he had felt a longing for this

quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had naturally lingered behind every one else,

to leave him alone with his child. The excitement had not passed away: it had only reached that stage when

the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus intolerablewhen there is no sense of weariness,

but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such

moments in other men remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange definiteness that comes over

coarse features from that transient influence. It is as if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual voices had sent

wonderworking vibrations through the heavy mortal frameas if "beauty born of murmuring sound" had

Silas's face showed that sort of transfiguration, as he sat in his armchair and looked at Eppie. She had drawn

her own chair towards his knees, and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while she looked up at him. On

the table near them, lit by a candle, lay the recovered goldthe old longloved gold, ranged in orderly

heaps, as Silas used to range it in the days when it was his only joy. He had been telling her how he used to

count it every night, and how his soul was utterly desolate till she was sent to him.

"At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me now and then," he was saying in a subdued tone, "as if you

might be changed into the gold again; for sometimes, turn my head which way I would, I seemed to see the

gold; and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it, and find it was come back. But that didn't last long.

After a bit, I should have thought it was a curse come again, if it had drove you from me, for I'd got to feel

the need o' your looks and your voice and the touch o' your little fingers. You didn't know then, Eppie, when

you were such a little unyou didn't know what your old father Silas felt for you."

"But I know now, father," said Eppie. "If it hadn't been for you, they'd have taken me to the workhouse, and

"Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine. If you hadn't been sent to save me, I should ha' gone to the

grave in my misery. The money was taken away from me in time; and you see it's been kept kept till it was

Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at the money. "It takes no hold of me now," he said,

ponderingly"the money doesn't. I wonder if it ever could againI doubt it might, if I lost you, Eppie. I

might come to think I was forsaken again, and lose the feeling that God was good to me."

At that moment there was a knocking at the door; and Eppie was obliged to rise without answering Silas.

Beautiful she looked, with the tenderness of gathering tears in her eyes and a slight flush on her cheeks, as

she stepped to open the door. The flush deepened when she saw Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass. She made her

"We're disturbing you very late, my dear," said Mrs. Cass, taking Eppie's hand, and looking in her face with

an expression of anxious interest and admiration. Nancy herself was pale and tremulous.

Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs. Cass, went to stand against Silas, opposite to them.

"Well, Marner," said Godfrey, trying to speak with perfect firmness, "it's a great comfort to me to see you

with your money again, that you've been deprived of so many years. It was one of my family did you the

wrongthe more grief to meand I feel bound to make up to you for it in every way. Whatever I can do for

you will be nothing but paying a debt, even if I looked no further than the robbery. But there are other things

Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed between him and his wife that the subject of his fatherhood

should be approached very carefully, and that, if possible, the disclosure should be reserved for the future, so

that it might be made to Eppie gradually. Nancy had urged this, because she felt strongly the painful light in

Silas, always ill at ease when he was being spoken to by "betters", such as Mr. Casstall, powerful, florid

"Sir, I've a deal to thank you for a'ready. As for the robbery, I count it no loss to me. And if I did, you

"You may look at it in that way, Marner, but I never can; and I hope you'll let me act according to my own

feeling of what's just. I know you're easily contented: you've been a hardworking man all your life."

"Yes, sir, yes," said Marner, meditatively. "I should ha' been bad off without my work: it was what I held by

"Ah," said Godfrey, applying Marner's words simply to his bodily wants, "it was a good trade for you in this

country, because there's been a great deal of linenweaving to be done. But you're getting rather past such

close work, Marner: it's time you laid by and had some rest. You look a good deal pulled down, though you're

"Oh, why, you may live thirty years longerlook at old Macey! And that money on the table, after all, is but

little. It won't go far either waywhether it's put out to interest, or you were to live on it as long as it would

last: it wouldn't go far if you'd nobody to keep but yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good many

"Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was saying, "I'm in no fear o' want. We shall do very

wellEppie and me 'ull do well enough. There's few workingfolks have got so much laid by as that. I don't

know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a dealalmost too much. And as for us, it's little we

"Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the moment after.

"You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that this turn in the point of view might help her

"Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Red House," said Godfrey, surprised at the difficulty he found in

approaching a proposition which had seemed so easy to him in the distance. "You've done a good part by

Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years. It 'ud be a great comfort to you to see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She

looks blooming and healthy, but not fit for any hardships: she doesn't look like a strapping girl come of

working parents. You'd like to see her taken care of by those who can leave her well off, and make a lady of

her; she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as she might come to have in a few years' time."

A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disappeared, like a passing gleam. Eppie was simply wondering

Mr. Cass should talk so about things that seemed to have nothing to do with reality; but Silas was hurt and

"I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at command to express the mingled feelings

"Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to come to the point. "Mrs. Cass and I, you

know, have no children nobody to benefit by our good home and everything else we have more than

enough for ourselves. And we should like to have somebody in the place of a daughter to uswe should like

to have Eppie, and treat her in every way as our own child. It 'ud be a great comfort to you in your old age, I

hope, to see her fortune made in that way, after you've been at the trouble of bringing her up so well. And it's

right you should have every reward for that. And Eppie, I'm sure, will always love you and be grateful to you:

she'd come and see you very often, and we should all be on the lookout to do everything we could towards

A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment, necessarily blunders on words that are

coarser than his intentions, and that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. While he had been

speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head, and let her hand rest against it caressingly:

she felt him trembling violently. He was silent for some moments when Mr. Cass had endedpowerless

under the conflict of emotions, all alike painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in

distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when one struggling dread at last gained the

Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a step. Her cheeks were flushed, but not with

shyness this time: the sense that her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of

selfconsciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass and then to Mr. Cass, and said

"Thank you, ma'amthank you, sir. But I can't leave my father, nor own anybody nearer than him. And I

don't want to be a lady thank you all the same" (here Eppie dropped another curtsy). "I couldn't give up the

Eppie's lips began to tremble a little at the last words. She retreated to her father's chair again, and held him

The tears were in Nancy's eyes, but her sympathy with Eppie was, naturally, divided with distress on her

husband's account. She dared not speak, wondering what was going on in her husband's mind.

Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we encounter an unexpected obstacle. He had

been full of his own penitence and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the time was left to him; he was

possessed with allimportant feelings, that were to lead to a predetermined course of action which he had

fixed on as the right, and he was not prepared to enter with lively appreciation into other people's feelings

counteracting his virtuous resolves. The agitation with which he spoke again was not quite unmixed with

"But I've a claim on you, Eppiethe strongest of all claims. It's my duty, Marner, to own Eppie as my child,

and provide for her. She is my own childher mother was my wife. I've a natural claim on her that must

Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale. Silas, on the contrary, who had been relieved, by

Eppie's answer, from the dread lest his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the spirit of resistance in him

set free, not without a touch of parental fierceness. "Then, sir," he answered, with an accent of bitterness that

had been silent in him since the memorable day when his youthful hope had perished"then, sir, why didn't

you say so sixteen year ago, and claim her before I'd come to love her, i'stead o' coming to take her from me

now, when you might as well take the heart out o' my body? God gave her to me because you turned your

back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine: you've no right to her! When a man turns a blessing from his

"I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I've repented of my conduct in that matter," said Godfrey, who could not

"I'm glad to hear it, sir," said Marner, with gathering excitement; "but repentance doesn't alter what's been

going on for sixteen year. Your coming now and saying "I'm her father" doesn't alter the feelings inside us.

"But I think you might look at the thing more reasonably, Marner," said Godfrey, unexpectedly awed by the

weaver's direct truthspeaking. "It isn't as if she was to be taken quite away from you, so that you'd never see

her again. She'll be very near you, and come to see you very often. She'll feel just the same towards you."

"Just the same?" said Marner, more bitterly than ever. "How'll she feel just the same for me as she does now,

when we eat o' the same bit, and drink o' the same cup, and think o' the same things from one day's end to

Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern the pregnancy of Marner's simple words, felt rather angry

again. It seemed to him that the weaver was very selfish (a judgment readily passed by those who have never

tested their own power of sacrifice) to oppose what was undoubtedly for Eppie's welfare; and he felt himself

"I should have thought, Marner," he said, severely"I should have thought your affection for Eppie would

make you rejoice in what was for her good, even if it did call upon you to give up something. You ought to

remember your own life's uncertain, and she's at an age now when her lot may soon be fixed in a way very

different from what it would be in her father's home: she may marry some low workingman, and then,

whatever I might do for her, I couldn't make her welloff. You're putting yourself in the way of her welfare;

and though I'm sorry to hurt you after what you've done, and what I've left undone, I feel now it's my duty to

It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie that was more deeply stirred by this last speech of

Godfrey's. Thought had been very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her old longloved

father and this new unfamiliar father who had suddenly come to fill the place of that black featureless shadow

which had held the ring and placed it on her mother's finger. Her imagination had darted backward in

conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this revealed fatherhood implied; and there were words in

Godfrey's last speech which helped to make the previsions especially definite. Not that these thoughts, either

of past or future, determined her resolution_that_ was determined by the feelings which vibrated to every

word Silas had uttered; but they raised, even apart from these feelings, a repulsion towards the offered lot and

Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, and alarmed lest Godfrey's accusation should be

truelest he should be raising his own will as an obstacle to Eppie's good. For many moments he was mute,

struggling for the selfconquest necessary to the uttering of the difficult words. They came out tremulously.

"I'll say no more. Let it be as you will. Speak to the child. I'll hinder nothing."

Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affections, shared her husband's view, that Marner was

not justifiable in his wish to retain Eppie, after her real father had avowed himself. She felt that it was a very

hard trial for the poor weaver, but her code allowed no question that a father by blood must have a claim

above that of any fosterfather. Besides, Nancy, used all her life to plenteous circumstances and the

privileges of "respectability", could not enter into the pleasures which early nurture and habit connect with all

the little aims and efforts of the poor who are born poor: to her mind, Eppie, in being restored to her

birthright, was entering on a too long withheld but unquestionable good. Hence she heard Silas's last words

"Eppie, my dear," said Godfrey, looking at his daughter, not without some embarrassment, under the sense

that she was old enough to judge him, "it'll always be our wish that you should show your love and gratitude

to one who's been a father to you so many years, and we shall want to help you to make him comfortable in

every way. But we hope you'll come to love us as well; and though I haven't been what a father should ha'

been to you all these years, I wish to do the utmost in my power for you for the rest of my life, and provide

for you as my only child. And you'll have the best of mothers in my wifethat'll be a blessing you haven't

"My dear, you'll be a treasure to me," said Nancy, in her gentle voice. "We shall want for nothing when we

Eppie did not come forward and curtsy, as she had done before. She held Silas's hand in hers, and grasped it

firmlyit was a weaver's hand, with a palm and fingertips that were sensitive to such pressurewhile she

"Thank you, ma'amthank you, sir, for your offersthey're very great, and far above my wish. For I should

have no delight i' life any more if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at home,

athinking of me and feeling lone. We've been used to be happy together every day, and I can't think o' no

happiness without him. And he says he'd nobody i' the world till I was sent to him, and he'd have nothing

when I was gone. And he's took care of me and loved me from the first, and I'll cleave to him as long as he

"But you must make sure, Eppie," said Silas, in a low voice "you must make sure as you won't ever be

sorry, because you've made your choice to stay among poor folks, and with poor clothes and things, when

His sensitiveness on this point had increased as he listened to Eppie's words of faithful affection.

"I can never be sorry, father," said Eppie. "I shouldn't know what to think on or to wish for with fine things

about me, as I haven't been used to. And it 'ud be poor work for me to put on things, and ride in a gig, and sit

in a place at church, as 'ud make them as I'm fond of think me unfitting company for 'em. What could _I_

Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained questioning glance. But his eyes were fixed on the floor, where he

was moving the end of his stick, as if he were pondering on something absently. She thought there was a

"What you say is natural, my dear childit's natural you should cling to those who've brought you up," she

said, mildly; "but there's a duty you owe to your lawful father. There's perhaps something to be given up on

more sides than one. When your father opens his home to you, I think it's right you shouldn't turn your back

"I can't feel as I've got any father but one," said Eppie, impetuously, while the tears gathered. "I've always

thought of a little home where he'd sit i' the corner, and I should fend and do everything for him: I can't think

o' no other home. I wasn't brought up to be a lady, and I can't turn my mind to it. I like the workingfolks,

and their victuals, and their ways. And," she ended passionately, while the tears fell, "I'm promised to marry a

Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed face and smarting dilated eyes. This frustration of a purpose

towards which he had set out under the exalted consciousness that he was about to compensate in some

degree for the greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the air of the room stifling.

"We won't talk of this any longer now," said Nancy, rising. "We're your wellwishers, my dearand yours

In this way she covered her husband's abrupt departure, for Godfrey had gone straight to the door, unable to

Nancy and Godfrey walked home under the starlight in silence. When they entered the oaken parlour,

Godfrey threw himself into his chair, while Nancy laid down her bonnet and shawl, and stood on the hearth

near her husband, unwilling to leave him even for a few minutes, and yet fearing to utter any word lest it

might jar on his feeling. At last Godfrey turned his head towards her, and their eyes met, dwelling in that

meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like

the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great dangernot to be interfered with by

speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.

But presently he put out his hand, and as Nancy placed hers within it, he drew her towards him, and said

She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she stood by his side, "Yes, I'm afraid we must give up the hope of

having her for a daughter. It wouldn't be right to want to force her to come to us against her will. We can't

"No," said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast with his usually careless and unemphatic

speech"there's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by.

While I've been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growingit's too late now. Marner was in the

right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted

to pass for childless once, NancyI shall pass for childless now against my wish."

Nancy did not speak immediately, but after a little while she asked "You won't make it known, then, about

"No: where would be the good to anybody?only harm. I must do what I can for her in the state of life she

"If it won't do any good to make the thing known," said Nancy, who thought she might now allow herself the

relief of entertaining a feeling which she had tried to silence before, "I should be very thankful for father and

Priscilla never to be troubled with knowing what was done in the past, more than about Dunsey: it can't be

"I shall put it in my willI think I shall put it in my will. I shouldn't like to leave anything to be found out,

like this of Dunsey," said Godfrey, meditatively. "But I can't see anything but difficulties that 'ud come from

telling it now. I must do what I can to make her happy in her own way. I've a notion," he added, after a

moment's pause, "it's Aaron Winthrop she meant she was engaged to. I remember seeing him with her and

"Well, he's very sober and industrious," said Nancy, trying to view the matter as cheerfully as possible.

Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Presently he looked up at Nancy sorrowfully, and said

"Yes, dear; and with just your hair and eyes: I wondered it had never struck me before."

"I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my being her father: I could see a change in her manner

"She couldn't bear to think of not looking on Marner as her father," said Nancy, not wishing to confirm her

"She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. She thinks me worse than I am. But she _must_

think it: she can never know all. It's part of my punishment, Nancy, for my daughter to dislike me. I should

never have got into that trouble if I'd been true to youif I hadn't been a fool. I'd no right to expect anything

but evil could come of that marriageand when I shirked doing a father's part too."

Nancy was silent: her spirit of rectitude would not let her try to soften the edge of what she felt to be a just

compunction. He spoke again after a little while, but the tone was rather changed: there was tenderness

"And I got _you_, Nancy, in spite of all; and yet I've been grumbling and uneasy because I hadn't something

"You've never been wanting to me, Godfrey," said Nancy, with quiet sincerity. "My only trouble would be

"Well, perhaps it isn't too late to mend a bit there. Though it _is_ too late to mend some things, say what they

The next morning, when Silas and Eppie were seated at their breakfast, he said to her

"Eppie, there's a thing I've had on my mind to do this two year, and now the money's been brought back to us,

we can do it. I've been turning it over and over in the night, and I think we'll set out tomorrow, while the

fine days last. We'll leave the house and everything for your godmother to take care on, and we'll make a little

"To my old countryto the town where I was bornup Lantern Yard. I want to see Mr. Paston, the

minister: something may ha' come out to make 'em know I was innicent o' the robbery. And Mr. Paston was a

man with a deal o' lightI want to speak to him about the drawing o' the lots. And I should like to talk to

him about the religion o' this countryside, for I partly think he doesn't know on it."

Eppie was very joyful, for there was the prospect not only of wonder and delight at seeing a strange country,

but also of coming back to tell Aaron all about it. Aaron was so much wiser than she was about most

thingsit would be rather pleasant to have this little advantage over him. Mrs. Winthrop, though possessed

with a dim fear of dangers attendant on so long a journey, and requiring many assurances that it would not

take them out of the region of carriers' carts and slow waggons, was nevertheless well pleased that Silas

should revisit his own country, and find out if he had been cleared from that false accusation.

"You'd be easier in your mind for the rest o' your life, Master Marner," said Dolly"that you would. And if

there's any light to be got up the yard as you talk on, we've need of it i' this world, and I'd be glad on it

So on the fourth day from that time, Silas and Eppie, in their Sunday clothes, with a small bundle tied in a

blue linen handkerchief, were making their way through the streets of a great manufacturing town. Silas,

bewildered by the changes thirty years had brought over his native place, had stopped several persons in

succession to ask them the name of this town, that he might be sure he was not under a mistake about it.

"Ask for Lantern Yard, fatherask this gentleman with the tassels on his shoulders astanding at the shop

door; he isn't in a hurry like the rest," said Eppie, in some distress at her father's bewilderment, and ill at ease,

besides, amidst the noise, the movement, and the multitude of strange indifferent faces.

"Eh, my child, he won't know anything about it," said Silas; "gentlefolks didn't ever go up the Yard. But

happen somebody can tell me which is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is. I know the way out o' that

With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inquiries, they reached Prison Street; and the grim walls of

the jail, the first object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him with the certitude, which

no assurance of the town's name had hitherto given him, that he was in his native place.

"Ah," he said, drawing a long breath, "there's the jail, Eppie; that's just the same: I aren't afraid now. It's the

"Oh, what a dark ugly place!" said Eppie. "How it hides the sky! It's worse than the Workhouse. I'm glad you

"My precious child," said Silas, smiling, "it isn't a big street like this. I never was easy i' this street myself,

but I was fond o' Lantern Yard. The shops here are all altered, I thinkI can't make 'em out; but I shall know

"Here it is," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, as they came to a narrow alley. "And then we must go to the left

again, and then straight for'ard for a bit, up Shoe Lane: and then we shall be at the entry next to the

o'erhanging window, where there's the nick in the road for the water to run. Eh, I can see it all."

"O father, I'm like as if I was stifled," said Eppie. "I couldn't ha' thought as any folks lived i' this way, so

"It looks comical to _me_, child, nowand smells bad. I can't think as it usened to smell so."

Here and there a sallow, begrimed face looked out from a gloomy doorway at the strangers, and increased

Eppie's uneasiness, so that it was a longedfor relief when they issued from the alleys into Shoe Lane, where

"Dear heart!" said Silas, "why, there's people coming out o' the Yard as if they'd been to chapel at this time o'

Suddenly he started and stood still with a look of distressed amazement, that alarmed Eppie. They were

before an opening in front of a large factory, from which men and women were streaming for their midday

"It's gone, child," he said, at last, in strong agitation "Lantern Yard's gone. It must ha' been here, because

here's the house with the o'erhanging windowI know thatit's just the same; but they've made this new

"Come into that little brushshop and sit down, fatherthey'll let you sit down," said Eppie, always on the

watch lest one of her father's strange attacks should come on. "Perhaps the people can tell you all about it."

But neither from the brushmaker, who had come to Shoe Lane only ten years ago, when the factory was

already built, nor from any other source within his reach, could Silas learn anything of the old Lantern Yard

"The old place is all swep' away," Silas said to Dolly Winthrop on the night of his return"the little

graveyard and everything. The old home's gone; I've no home but this now. I shall never know whether they

got at the truth o' the robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston could ha' given me any light about the drawing o' the

lots. It's dark to me, Mrs. Winthrop, that is; I doubt it'll be dark to the last."

"Well, yes, Master Marner," said Dolly, who sat with a placid listening face, now bordered by grey hairs; "I

doubt it may. It's the will o' Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but there's some things as I've

never felt i' the dark about, and they're mostly what comes i' the day's work. You were hard done by that

once, Master Marner, and it seems as you'll never know the rights of it; but that doesn't hinder there _being_ a

"No," said Silas, "no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as

myself, I've had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I

There was one time of the year which was held in Raveloe to be especially suitable for a wedding. It was

when the great lilacs and laburnums in the oldfashioned gardens showed their golden and purple wealth

above the lichentinted walls, and when there were calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant

milk. People were not so busy then as they must become when the full cheesemaking and the mowing had

set in; and besides, it was a time when a light bridal dress could be worn with comfort and seen to advantage.

Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the lilac tufts the morning that Eppie was married, for

her dress was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the

perfection of a weddingdress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals; so that

when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous

Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and down the village, she seemed to be attired in

pure white, and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her husband's arm, and with

"You won't be giving me away, father," she had said before they went to church; "you'll only be taking Aaron

Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband; and there ended the little bridal procession.

There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss Priscilla Lammeter was glad that she and her father had

happened to drive up to the door of the Red House just in time to see this pretty sight. They had come to keep

Nancy company today, because Mr. Cass had had to go away to Lytherley, for special reasons. That seemed

to be a pity, for otherwise he might have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood certainly would, to look

on at the weddingfeast which he had ordered at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the weaver

"I could ha' wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child like that and bring her up," said Priscilla to her

father, as they sat in the gig; "I should ha' had something young to think of then, besides the lambs and the

"Yes, my dear, yes," said Mr. Lammeter; "one feels that as one gets older. Things look dim to old folks:

they'd need have some young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be."

Nancy came out now to welcome her father and sister; and the wedding group had passed on beyond the Red

Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that old Mr. Macey, who had been set in his armchair outside his own

door, would expect some special notice as they passed, since he was too old to be at the weddingfeast.

"Mr. Macey's looking for a word from us," said Dolly; "he'll be hurt if we pass him and say nothingand

So they turned aside to shake hands with the old man. He had looked forward to the occasion, and had his

"Well, Master Marner," he said, in a voice that quavered a good deal, "I've lived to see my words come true. I

was the first to say there was no harm in you, though your looks might be again' you; and I was the first to

say you'd get your money back. And it's nothing but rightful as you should. And I'd ha' said the "Amens", and

willing, at the holy matrimony; but Tookey's done it a good while now, and I hope you'll have none the worse

In the open yard before the Rainbow the party of guests were already assembled, though it was still nearly an

hour before the appointed feast time. But by this means they could not only enjoy the slow advent of their

pleasure; they had also ample leisure to talk of Silas Marner's strange history, and arrive by due degrees at the

conclusion that he had brought a blessing on himself by acting like a father to a lone motherless child. Even

the farrier did not negative this sentiment: on the contrary, he took it up as peculiarly his own, and invited any

hardy person present to contradict him. But he met with no contradiction; and all differences among the

company were merged in a general agreement with Mr. Snell's sentiment, that when a man had deserved his

As the bridal group approached, a hearty cheer was raised in the Rainbow yard; and Ben Winthrop, whose

jokes had retained their acceptable flavour, found it agreeable to turn in there and receive congratulations; not

requiring the proposed interval of quiet at the Stonepits before joining the company.

Eppie had a larger garden than she had ever expected there now; and in other ways there had been alterations

at the expense of Mr. Cass, the landlord, to suit Silas's larger family. For he and Eppie had declared that they

would rather stay at the Stonepits than go to any new home. The garden was fenced with stones on two

sides, but in front there was an open fence, through which the flowers shone with answering gladness, as the

"O father," said Eppie, "what a pretty home ours is! I think nobody could be happier than we are."