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 so ill that he would descend from his loom, and,
opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that was always enough to
make them take to their legs in terror. For how was it possible to
believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale
face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them,
and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets,
or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had,
perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner
could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more
darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might
save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of
the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent
listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with
difficulty associates the idea of power and benignity. A shadowy
conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to
refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the
sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been
pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil
has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith.
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