and there. He stood and listened, and gazed for a long
while--there 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 it--but 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 door, powerless to resist either the good or the
evil that might enter there.

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 gold--brought 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 child--a 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 li