 any kind were
acquired was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of conjuring. In
this way it came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers - emigrants from the
town into the country - were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic
neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state
of loneliness.
    In the early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner,
worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows
near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit.
The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting
of the winnowing machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful
fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or
birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a
certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of
scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along
with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened that
Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became aware of the
small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, he liked their intrusion so ill
that he would descend from his loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a
gaze that was always enough to make them take to their legs in terror. For how
was it possible to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas
Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to
them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or
a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard
their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folk's rheumatism if
he had a mind, and add, still more darkly, that if you could only speak the
devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange
lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by
the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with
difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of
power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is
the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men
who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of
hard
