By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect
that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate
the forms of custom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life;
and as, with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he had
begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them
with his new impressions, till he recovered a consciousness of unity
between his past and present. The sense of presiding goodness and
the human trust which come with all pure peace and joy, had given
him a dim impression that there had been some error, some mistake,
which had thrown that dark shadow over the days of his best years; and
as it grew more and more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly
Winthrop, he gradually communicated to her all he could describe of
his early life. The communication was necessarily a slow and difficult
process, for Silas's meagre power of explanation was not aided by
any readiness of interpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward
experience gave her no key to strange customs, and made every
novelty a source of wonder that arrested them at every step of the
narrative. It was only by fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly
time to revolve what she had heard till it acquired some familiarity
for her, that Silas at last arrived at the climax of the sad story-
the drawing of lots, and its false testimony concerning him; and
this had to be repeated in several interviews, under new questions
on her part as to the nature of this plan for detecting the guilty and
clearing the innocent.
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