It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to
Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man, with prominent,
short-sighted brown eyes, whose appearance would have had nothing
strange for people of average culture and experience, but for the
villagers near whom he had come to settle it had mysterious
peculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of his
occupation, and his advent from an unknown region called
'North'ard'. So had his way of life: he invited no comer to step
across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to
drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheel-wright's: he
sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in
order to supply himself with necessaries; and it was soon clear to the
Raveloe lasses that he would never urge one of them to accept him
against her will- quite as if he had heard them declare that they
would never marry a dead man come to life again. This view of Marner's
personality was not without another ground than his pale face and
unexampled eyes; for Jem Rodney, the mole-catcher, averred that, one
evening as he was returning homeward, he saw Silas Marner leaning
against a stile with a heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the
bag on the stile as a man in his senses would have done; and that,
on coming up to him, he saw that Marner's eyes were set like a dead
man's, and he spoke to him, and shook him, and his limbs were stiff,
and his hands clutched the bag as if they'd been made of iron; but
just as he had made up his mind that the weaver was dead, he came
all right again, like, as you might say, in the winking of an eye, and
said 'Good-night', and walked off.
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