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SILAS MARNER
The Weaver of Raveloe
by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
1861
"A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."
--WORDSWORTH.

PART ONE



CHAPTER I

In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the
farmhouses-- and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had
their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in
districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills,
certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny
country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The
shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men
appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what
dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely
stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The shepherd himself,
though he had good reason to believe that the bag held nothing but
flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong linen spun from that
thread, was not quite sure that this trade of weaving, indispensable
though it was, could be carried on entirely without the help of the Evil
One. In that far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or
thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occasional
merely, like the visits of the pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew
where wandering men had their homes or their origin; and how was a
man to be explained unless you at least knew somebody who knew his
father and mother? To the peasants of old times, the world outside their
own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery: to their
untravelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the
winter life of the swallows that came back with the spring; and even a
settler, if he came from distant parts, hardly ever ceased to be viewed
with a remnant of distrust, which would have prevented any surprise if
a long course of inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the
commission of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for
knowledge, or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether
in the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in some other
art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspicious: honest folk, born
and bred in a visible manner, were mostly not overwise or clever--at
least, not beyond such a matter as knowing the signs of the weather;
and the process by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were
acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of
conjuring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered
linen-weavers--emigrants from the town into the country--were to the
last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted

the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness.
In the early years of this century, such 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. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so
unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the
simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the
Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting
to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a
certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of
scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises,
along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it
happened that Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread,
became aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time,
he liked their intrusion