of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever.

Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze as she
spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly
in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a
slowly-dying 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 pot--and 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
bruise its own roots.

Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying down his
knife and fork, and watching half-abstractedly 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 dark-blue
cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws
to one shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, 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 both--Snap 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 them.

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
comes. I'll make haste--I won't be long."

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 harm--a
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 thi