pring; 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 clever--at 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 linen-weavers--emigrants from the town into the
country--were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic
neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to
a state of loneliness.

In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, 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 stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so
unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the
simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful 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, tread-mill 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