was then simply a pallid young man with prominent, short-sighted brown
eyes. To the villagers among whom he had come to settle he seemed to
have mysterious peculiarities, chiefly owing to his advent from an
unknown region called "North'ard." He invited no comer to step across
his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at
the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheel-wrights'; he sought no man or
woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply
himself with necessaries.

At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things
about Silas Marner as at the beginning. There was only one important
addition which the years had brought; it was that Master Marner had laid
by a fine sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men
than himself."

But while his daily habits presented scarcely any visible change,
Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis as that of
every fervid nature must be when it has been condemned to solitude. His
life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the close
fellowship of a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman had the
chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech; and Marner was
highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as the
church assembling in Lantern Yard. He was believed to be a young man of
exemplary life and ardent faith, and a peculiar interest had been
centred in him ever since he had fallen at a prayer-meeting into a
trance or cataleptic fit, which lasted for an hour.

Among the members of his church there was one young man, named William
Dane, with whom he lived in close friendship; and it seemed to the
unsuspecting Silas that the friendship suffered no chill, even after he