h unnoticed, and threw himself into
his chair.

Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to keep
away, will you?" said Godfrey; and when the door was closed again he
exerted himself to speak more distinctly.

"Sit down, Nancy--there," he said, pointing to a chair opposite him.
"I came back as soon as I could, to hinder anybody's telling you but
me. I've had a great shock--but I care most about the shock it'll be
to you."

"It isn't father and Priscilla?" said Nancy, with quivering lips,
clasping her hands together tightly on her lap.

"No, it's nobody living," said Godfrey, unequal to the considerate
skill with which he would have wished to make his revelation. "It's
Dunstan--my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen years ago.
We've found him--found his body--his skeleton."

The deep dread Godfrey's look had created in Nancy made her feel these
words a relief. She sat in comparative calmness to hear what else he
had to tell. He went on:

"The Stone-pit has gone dry suddenly--from the draining, I suppose; and
there he lies--has lain for sixteen years, wedged between two great
stones. There's his watch and seals, and there's my gold-handled
hunting-whip, with my name on: he took it away, without my knowing, the
day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last time he was seen."

Godfrey paused: it was not so easy to say what came next. "Do you
think he drowned himself?" said Nancy, almost wondering that her
husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those years
ago to an unloved brother, of whom worse things had been augured.

"No, he fell in," said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as if he
felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added: "Dunstan was
the man that robbed Silas Marner."

The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and shame,
for she had been bred up to regard even a distant kinship with crime as
a dishonour.

"O Godfrey!" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had
immediately reflected that the dishonour must be felt still more keenly
by her husband.

"There was the money in the pit," he continued--"all the weaver's
money. Everything's been gathered up, and they're taking the skeleton
to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell you: there was no hindering
it; you must know."

He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. Nancy would
have said some words of comfort under this disgrace, but she re