lly into narrower isolation. Unlike the gold
which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in close-locked
solitude--which was hidden away from the daylight, was deaf to the song
of birds, and started to no human tones--Eppie was a creature of
endless claims and ever-growing 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 ever-repeated
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 limit--carried 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
winter-flies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and
warming him into joy because _she_ had joy.

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
Stone-pits 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 "Dad-dad's" attention continually by bringing
him the flowers. Then she would turn her ear to some sudden bird-note,
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 w