ng at the Red House. And Godfrey Cass recognised that
it was his own child he saw in Marner's arms.

The woman was dead--had been dead for some hours, the doctor said; and
Godfrey, who had accompanied him to Marner's cottage, understood that he
was free to marry Nancy Lammeter.

"You'll take the child to the parish to-morrow?" Godfrey asked, speaking
as indifferently as he could.

"Who says so?" said Marner sharply. "Will they make me take her? I shall
keep her till anybody shows they've a right to take her away from me.
The mother's dead, and I reckon it's got no father. It's a lone thing,
and I'm a lone thing. My money's gone--I don't know where, and this is
come from I don't know where."

Godfrey returned to the Red House with a sense of relief and gladness,
and Silas kept the child. There had been a softening of feeling to him
in the village since the day of his robbery, and now an active sympathy
was aroused amongst the women. The child was christened Hephzibah, after
Marner's mother, and was called Eppie for short.

_IV--Eppie's Decision_

Eppie had come to link Silas Marner once more with the whole world. The
disposition to hoard had utterly gone, and there was no longer any
repulsion around to him.

As the child grew up, one person watched with keener, though more
hidden, interest than any other the prosperous growth of Eppie under the
weaver's care. The squire was dead, and Godfrey Cass was married to
Nancy Lammeter. He had no child of his own save the one that knew him
not. No Dunsey had ever turned up, and people had ceased to think of
him.

Sixteen years had passed, and now Aaron Winthrop, a well-behaved young
gardener, is wanting to marry Eppie, and Eppie is willing to have him
"some time."

"'Everybody's married some time,' Aaron says," said Eppie. "But I told
him that wasn't true, for I said look at father--he's never been
married."

"No, child," said Silas, "your father was a lone man till you was sent
to him."

"But you'll never be lone again, father," said Eppie tenderly. "That was
what Aaron said--'I could never think o' taking you away from Master
Marner, Eppie.' And I said, 'It 'ud be no use if you did, Aaron.' And he
wants us all to live together, so as you needn't work a bit, father,
only what's for your own pleasure, and he'd be as good as a son to
you--that was what he said."

The proposal to separate Eppie from her foster-father came from Godfrey
Cass.

When the old stone