But presently the warmth had a lulling effect, and the
little golden head sank down on the old sack, and the blue eyes were
veiled by their delicate half-transparent lids.
But where was Silas Marner while this stranger-visitor had come
to his hearth? He was in the cottage, but he did not see the child.
During the last few weeks, since he had lost his money, he had
contracted the habit of opening his door, and looking out from time to
time, as if he thought that his money might be somehow coming back
to him, or that some trace, some news of it, might be mysteriously
on the road, and be caught by the listening ear or the straining
eye. It was chiefly at night, when he was not occupied in his loom,
that he fell into this repetition of an act for which he could have
assigned no definite purpose, and which can hardly be understood
except by those who have undergone a bewildering separation from a
supremely loved object. In the evening twilight, and later whenever
the night was not dark, Silas looked out on that narrow prospect round
the Stone-pits, listening and gazing, not with hope, but with mere
yearning and unrest.
This morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was
New Year's Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung out
and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his
money back again. This was only a friendly Raveloe-way of jesting with
the half-crazy oddities of a miser, but it had perhaps helped to throw
Silas into a more than usually excited state.
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