o. But what lies upo' your mind--it's this, Master
Marner: as, if Them above had done the right thing by you, They'd never
ha' let you be turned out for a wicked thief when you was innicent."

"Ah!" said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly's phraseology,
"that was what fell on me like as if it had been red-hot 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 halves--mine 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 un--I 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 when I was
sitting still."

Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportunities of
illumination of the kind she alluded to, and she was not long before
she recurred to the subject.

"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 'em--it 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 night, but nothing could I say."

"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