Silas Marner
“A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
—WORDSWORTH.
Contents
CHAPTER I.
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—andeven great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toyspinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far awayamong the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersizedmen, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of adisinherited race. The shepherd’s dog barked fiercely when one of thesealien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset;for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale menrarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself,though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but flaxenthread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that thread, was notquite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could becarried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off timesuperstition clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted,or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the pedlar orthe knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had their homes or theirori