his shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold.
Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to
hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather bags, which
wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent themselves flexibly to
every corner. How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of the
dark leather mouths! The silver bore no large proportion in amount to
the gold, because the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work
were always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he supplied
his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpences to
spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, but he would not change
the silver--the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings,
begotten by his labour; he loved them all. He spread them out in heaps
and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in
regular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and
fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned
by the work in his loom, as if they had been unborn children--thought
of the guineas that were coming slowly through the coming years,
through all his life, which spread far away before him, the end quite
hidden by countless days of weaving. No wonder his thoughts were still
with his loom and his money when he made his journeys through the
fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his
steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the lane-side in search of
the once familiar herbs: these too belonged to the past, from which his
life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the
grassy fringe of its old breadth into a little shivering thread, that
cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand.

But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year, a second great change
came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular
manner with the life of his neighbours.

CHAPTER III

The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in the large red
house with the handsome flight of stone steps in front and the high
stables behind it, nearly opposite the church. He was only one among
several landed parishioners, but he alone was honoured with the title
of Squire; for though Mr. Osgood's family was also understood to be of
timeless origin--the Raveloe imagination having never ventured back to
that fearful blank when there were no Osgoods--still, he merely own