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was only one important addition which the years had brought it was that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight of money somewhere.

Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the halfcrowns grew to a heap, and Silas began to think the money was conscious of him and he would on no account have exchanged those coins, which had become his familiars, for other coins with unknown faces. He handled them, he counted them; but it was only in the night, when his work was done, that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship. He had taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he had made a hole in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas and silver coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced them.

So, year after year Silas Marner had lived in solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot and his life narrowing and hardening.

But about the Christmas of the fifteenth year, after he came to Raveloe, a great change came over Marner's life.

One night, as he was about to sit down to his evening meal, Silas remembered that a bit of very fine twine was indispensable to a new piece of work, so taking up his lantern and his old sack, he left his cottage and set out on his errand. Returning from

the village, he reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done. He opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as he had left it except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of heat.

As soon as he was warm, he began to think that it would be a long time to wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and that it would be pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate. He rose and placed his candle on the floor near his loom, swept away the sand and removed the bricks. The hole was empty! His heart beat violently, but the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once. He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible that his eye 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 the gold somewhere else last night and then forgotten it? He searched in every corner; he turned his bed over and shook it; he looked in his brick oven where he laid his sticks. When, at length, there was no other place to be searched he kneeled down again and felt once more all around the hole.

His gold was not there. There was no shelter from the terrible truth.

One night, some weeks later, Silas stood in the doorway of his cottage, looking out at the wintry sky. Since he had lost his money he had contracted the habit of opening the door and looking out from time to time as if he thought that his money might be somehow coming back to him. Since the oncoming of twilight he had opened his door again and again, though only to shut it immediately at seeing all distance veiled by the falling snow. But the last time he opened it the snow had ceased, and the clouds were parting here and there. He stood and listened, and gazed for a long while, his heart touched with the chill of despair. He went in again, and put his right hand on the latch of the door to close it — but he did not close it. A strange wave of unconsciousness passed over him, and he stood like a graven image with wide but sightless eyes, holding open his door.

When Marner's sensibility returned, he closed his door, unaware of any change except that the light had grown dim, and that he was chilled and faint. He thought he had been too long standing at the door and looking out. Turning towards the hearth where the two logs had fallen apart and sent forth only a red, uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on

his fireside chair and was stooping to push his logs together, when to his blurred vision it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth.

Gold! - his own gold-brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable to stretch out his hand and

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seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin, his fingers encountered soft, warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees to examine the marvel; it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing with soft, yellow rings all over its head.

There was a cry on the hearth the child had awakened, and Marner stooped to lift it on his knee. It clung around his neck and burst loud and louder into cries, in the bewilderment of waking. Silas pressed it to him, and almost unconsciously uttered sounds of hushing tenderness while he bethought himself that some of his porridge which had got cool by the dying fire, would do to feed the child, if it were only warmed up a little.

The porridge stopped the cries of the little one and made her lift her blue eyes with a wide, quiet gaze at Silas, as he put the spoon into her mouth. Presently she slipped from his knee and began to toddle about, but with a pretty stagger that made Silas jump up and follow her, lest she should fall against anything that would hurt her.

It seemed to Silas that this little girl had been sent to him in some mysterious way, to take the place of his lost gold, and he determined to keep her for his own, naming her Eppie after his mother. As the weeks grew to months, the child created fresh and fresh links between his life and the lives of his neighbors from which he had before shrunk continually.

Unlike the gold which needed nothing, Eppie was a creature of endless claims and ever growing desires, seeking and loving sunshine, and living sounds and

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