so far from blaming that innocent little creature that she did not
even disclose the truth to her; but she was importunate with Tito that
he should make atonement to the man who had been a father to him. Then
came a day when Tito's treacheries were discovered by the party he was
supposed to serve, and he had to flee for his life through Florence.
Scattering jewels and gold to delay his pursuers, he leaped from the
bridge into the river, and swam in the darkness, leaving the bellowing
mob to think he was drowned.

But far down the stream there were certain eyes that saw him from the
banks of the river, and when he landed and fell, faint and helpless,
Baldassarre's hands closed on his throat; and next evening a passer-by
found the two dead bodies there.

* * * * *

Silas Marner

"Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe," begun about November,
1860, and published early in 1861, is in many respects the
most admirable of all George Eliot's works. It is not a long
story, but it is a most carefully finished novel--"a perfect
gem, a pure work of art," Mr. Oscar Browning describes it. Mr.
Blackwood, the publisher, found it rather sombre, and George
Eliot replied to him, "I hope you will not find it at all a
sad story as a whole, since it sets--or is intended to set--in
a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural, human
relations. I have felt all through as if the story would have
lent itself best to metrical rather than to prose fiction,
especially in all that relates to the psychology of Silas;
except that, under that treatment, there could not be an equal
play of humour." No novel of George Eliot's has received more
praise from men of letters than "Silas Marner."

_I.--Why Silas Came to Raveloe_

In the early years of the nineteenth century a linen-weaver named Silas
Marner worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the
nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge
of a deserted stone-pit.

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he
was then simply a pallid young man with prominent, short-sighted brown
eyes. To the villagers among whom he had come to settle he seemed to
have mysterious peculiarities, chiefly owing to his advent from an
unknown region called "North'ard." He invited no comer to step across
his door-sill, and he n