SILAS MARNER

The Weaver of Raveloe

by George Eliot

(Mary Anne Evans)

1861

"A child, more than all other gifts

That earth can offer to declining man,

Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts."

--WORDSWORTH.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--

and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their

toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in

districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the

hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny

country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The

shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men

appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for

what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale

men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The

shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that the bag

held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls of strong

linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that this trade of

weaving, indispensable though it was, could be carried on entirely

without the help of the Evil One. In that far-off time superstition

clung easily round every person or thing that was at all unwonted,

or even intermittent and occasional merely, like the visits of the

pedlar or the knife-grinder. No one knew where wandering men had

their homes or their origin; and how was a man to be explained

unless you at least knew somebody who knew his father and mother?