f thought under an overpowering passion: it was that expectation of
impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images, which is still
distinct from madness, because it is capable of being dissipated by the
external fact. Silas got up from his knees trembling, and looked round
at the table: didn't the gold lie there after all? The table was bare.
Then he turned and looked behind him--looked all round his dwelling,
seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible appearance of the
bags where he had already sought them in vain. He could see every
object in his cottage--and his gold was not there.

Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing
scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, he stood
motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first maddening
pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towards his loom, and
got into the seat where he worked, instinctively seeking this as the
strongest assurance of reality.

And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock of
certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself, and he
entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to
restore the gold. The thought brought some new strength with it, and
he started from his loom to the door. As he opened it the rain beat in
upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily. There were no
footsteps to be tracked on such a night--footsteps? When had the thief
come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the door had been locked,
and there had been no marks of any inroad on his return by daylight.
And in the evening, too, he said to himself, everything was the same as
when he had left it. The sand and bricks looked as if they had not
been moved. _Was_ it a thief who had taken the bags? or was it a
cruel power that no hands could reach, which had delighted in making
him a second time desolate? He shrank from this vaguer dread, and
fixed his mind with struggling effort on the robber with hands, who
could be reached by hands. His thoughts glanced at all the neighbours
who had made any remarks, or asked any questions which he might now
regard as a ground of suspicion. There was Jem Rodney, a known
poacher, and otherwise disreputable: he had often met Marner in his
journeys across the fields, and had said something jestingly about the
weaver's money; nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the
fire when he called to