s young life that had been sent to
him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking
what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything
produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of custom
and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life; and as, with
reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to
ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new
impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity between his
past and present. The sense of presiding goodness and the human trust
which come with all pure peace and joy, had given him a dim impression
that there had been some error, some mistake, which had thrown that
dark shadow over the days of his best years; and as it grew more and
more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually
communicated to her all he could describe of his early life. The
communication was necessarily a slow and difficult process, for Silas's
meagre power of explanation was not aided by any readiness of
interpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward experience gave her no
key to strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder that
arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only by
fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly time to revolve what she
had heard till it acquired some familiarity for her, that Silas at last
arrived at the climax of the sad story--the drawing of lots, and its
false testimony concerning him; and this had to be repeated in several
interviews, under new questions on her part as to the nature of this
plan for detecting the guilty and clearing the innocent.

"And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o' that, Master Marner--the
Bible as you brought wi' you from that country--it's the same as what
they've got at church, and what Eppie's a-learning to read in?"

"Yes," said Silas, "every bit the same; and there's drawing o' lots in
the Bible, mind you," he added in a lower tone.

"Oh, dear, dear," said Dolly in a grieved voice, as if she were hearing
an unfavourable report of a sick man's case. She was silent for some
minutes; at last she said--

"There's wise folks, happen, as know how it all is; the parson knows,
I'll be bound; but it takes big words to tell them things, and such as
poor folks can't make much out on. I can never rightly know the
meaning o' what I hear at church, only a bit here and there, but I know
it's good words--I d