For joy is the best of wine, and Silas's guineas were a
golden wine of that sort.
He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near
his loom, swept away the sand without noticing any change, and removed
the bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently,
but the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once- only
terror, and the eager effort to put an end to the terror. He passed
his trembling hand all about the hole, trying to think it possible
that his eyes had deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole
and examined it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook
so violently that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to
his head, trying to steady himself, that he might think. Had he put
his gold somewhere else, by a sudden resolution last night, and then
forgotten it? A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing
even on sliding stones; and Silas, by acting as if he believed in
false hopes, warded off the moment of despair. He searched in every
corner, he turned his bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he
looked in his brick oven where he laid his sticks. When there was no
other place to be searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more
all round the hole. There was no untried refuge left for a moment's
shelter from the terrible truth.
Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always come with the
prostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that
expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images,
which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of being
dissipated by the external fact.
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