Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with the
prostration of thought under an overpowering passion: it was that
expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contradictory images,
which is still distinct from madness, because it is capable of being
dissipated by the external fact. Silas got up from his knees
trembling, and looked round at the table: didn't the gold lie there
after all? The table was bare. Then he turned and looked behind
him--looked all round his dwelling, seeming to strain his brown
eyes after some possible appearance of the bags where he had already
sought them in vain. He could see every object in his cottage--
and his gold was not there.

Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild
ringing scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, he
stood motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first
maddening pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towards
his loom, and got into the seat where he worked, instinctively
seeking this as the strongest assurance of reality.

And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first shock
of certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to present itself,
and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and
made to restore the gold. The thought brought some new strength
with it, and he started from his loom to the door. As he opened it
the rain beat in upon him, for it was falling more and more heavily.
There were no footsteps to be tracked on such a night--footsteps?
When had the thief come? During Silas's absence in the daytime the
door had been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad on
his return by daylight. And in the evening, too, he said to