wn wants, trying to solve the
problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours a day on
as small an outlay as possible. . . . He handled them, he counted
them, till their form and colour were like the {160} satisfaction of a
thirst to him; but it was only in the night, when his work was done,
that he drew them out to enjoy their companionship. He had taken up
some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he made a hole
in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas and silver
coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced them. Not
that the idea of being robbed presented itself often or strongly to his
mind: hoarding was common in country districts in those days; there
were old labourers in the parish of Raveloe who were known to have
their savings by them, probably inside their flock-beds; but their
rustic neighbours, though not all of them as honest as their ancestors
in the days of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough to lay a
plan of burglary. How could they have spent the money in their own
village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to "run
away"--a course as dark and dubious as a balloon journey.

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his
guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening
itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction
that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself
to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of
an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process
has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off
from faith and love--only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas,
they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some
well-knit theory. Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent
themselves {161} into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of
his life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle
or a crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart. The prominent
eyes that used to look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if they had
been made to see only one kind of thing that was very small, like tiny
grain, for which they hunted everywhere; and he was so withered and
yellow, that, though he was not yet forty, the children always called
him "Old Master Marner."

Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident happe