The complete torpor came at last; the fingers lost their tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the blue eyes of the child opened wide on the cold starlight.  At first there was a little peevish cry of “Mammy,” as the child rolled downward; and then, suddenly, its eyes were caught by a bright gleaming light on the white ground, and with the ready transition of infancy it decided the light must be caught.

In an instant the child had slipped on all fours, and, after making out that the cunning gleam came from a very bright place, the little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow—­toddled on to the open door of Silas Marner’s cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where was a bright fire.

The little one, accustomed to be left to itself for long hours without notice, squatted down on the old sack spread out before the fire, in perfect contentment.  Presently the little golden head sank down, and the blue eyes were veiled by their delicate half-transparent lids.

But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had come to his hearth?  He was in the cottage, but he did not see the child.  Since he had lost his money he had contracted the habit of opening his door, and looking out from time to time, as if he thought that his money might, somehow, be coming back to him.

That morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was New Year’s Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung out, and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his money back again.  Perhaps this friendly Raveloe way of jesting had helped to throw Silas into a more than usually excited state.  Certainly he opened his door again and again that night, and the last time, just as he put out his hand to close it, the invisible wand of catalepsy arrested him, and there he stood like a graven image, powerless to resist either the good or evil that might enter.

When Marner’s sensibility returned he was unaware of the break in his consciousness, and only noticed that he was chilled and faint.

Turning towards the hearth it seemed to his blurred vision as if there was a heap of gold on the floor; but instead of hard coin his fingers encountered soft, warm curls.  In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees to examine the marvel:  it was a sleeping child, a round, fair thing, with soft, yellow rings all over its head.  Could this be the little sister come back to him in a dream—­his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died?  That was the first thought. Was it a dream?  It was very much like his little sister.  How and when had the child come in without his knowledge?

But there was a cry on the hearth; the child had awakened, and Marner stooped to lift it on to his knee.  He had plenty to do through the next hour.  The porridge, sweetened with some dry brown sugar, stopped the cries of the little one for “mammy.”  Then it occurred to Silas’s dull bachelor mind that the child wanted its wet boots off, and this having been done, the wet boots suggested that the child had been walking on the snow.