of contemptuous pity, dread, and suspicion with
which he was regarded by his neighbours in Raveloe. Yet few men could
be more harmless than poor Marner. In his truthful simple soul, not
even the growing greed and worship of gold could beget any vice
directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite put out,
and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all the force of
his nature to his work and his money; and like all objects to which a
man devotes himself, they had fashioned him into correspondence with
themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its
turn wrought on him, and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving
for its monotonous response. His gold, as he hung over it and saw it
grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard isolation like
its own.

As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to
wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it would be
pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his unwonted
feast. For joy is the best of wine, and Silas's guineas were a golden
wine of that sort.

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his
loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed the
bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but
the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once--only terror,
and the eager effort to put an end to the terror. He passed his
trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his
eyes had deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and examined
it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook so violently
that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to his head, trying
to steady himself, that he might think. Had he put his gold somewhere
else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then forgotten it? A man
falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding
stones; and Silas, by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded
off the moment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his
bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven
where he laid his sticks. When there was no other place to be
searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more all round the hole.
There was no untried refuge left for a moment's shelter from the
terrible truth.

Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the prostration
o