It was to the village inn Silas Marner went, where the parish clerk and a select company were assembled, and told the story of his loss—­L272 12s. 6d. in all.  The machinery of the law was set in motion, but no thief was ever captured, nor could grounds be found for suspicion against any persons.

What had really happened was that Dunsey Cass, Squire Cass’s second son—­a mean, boastful rascal—­on his way home on foot from hunting, saw the light in the weaver’s cottage, and knocked, hoping to borrow a lantern, for the lane was unpleasantly slippery, and the night dark.  But all was silence in the cottage, for the weaver at that moment had not yet reached home.  For a minute Dunsey thought that old Marner might be dead, fallen over into the stone pits.  And from that came the decision that he must be dead.  If so, the question arose, what would become of the money that everybody said the old miser had put by?

Dunstan Cass was in difficulties for want of money, and he had killed his brother’s horse that day on the hunting-field.  Who would know, if Marner was dead, that anybody had come to take his hoard of money away?

There were only three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers’ hoards being found:  the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor.  His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been more carefully spread.

Dunstan found the hole and the money, now hidden in two leathern bags.  From their weight he judged they must be filled with guineas.  Quickly he hastened out into the darkness with the bags, and Dunstan Cass was seen no more alive.

At the very moment when he turned his back on the cottage Silas Marner was not more than a hundred yards away.

III.—­Silas Marner’s Visitor

It was New Year’s Eve, and Squire Cass was giving a dance to the neighbouring gentry of Raveloe.  There had been snow in the afternoon, but at seven o’clock it had ceased, and a freezing wind had sprung up.

A woman, shabbily dressed, with a child in her arms, was making her way towards Raveloe, seeking the Red House, where Squire Cass lived.  It was not the squire she wanted, but his eldest son, Godfrey, to whom she was secretly married.  The marriage—­the result of rash impulse—­had been an unhappy one from the first, for Godfrey’s wife was the slave of opium.  The squire had long desired that his son should marry Miss Nancy Lammeter, and would have turned him out of house and home had he known of the unfortunate marriage already contracted.  Cold and weariness drove the woman, even while she walked, to the only comfort she knew.  She raised the black remnant to her lips, and then flung the empty phial away.  Now she walked, always more and more drowsily, and clutched more and more automatically the sleeping child at her bosom.  Soon she felt nothing but a supreme longing to lie down and sleep; and so sank down against a straggling furze-bush, an easy pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft.  The cold was no longer felt, but her arms did not at once relax their instinctive clutch, and the little one slumbered on.