“Brother,” said William, “how do I know what you may have done in the secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan an advantage over you?”

Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush came over his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, when he seemed checked again by some inward shock, that sent the flush back and made him tremble. But at last he spoke feebly, looking at William.

“I remember now: the knife wasn’t in my pocket.”

William said, “I know nothing of what you mean.” The other persons present, however, began to inquire where Silas meant to say that the knife was, but he would give no further explanation. He only said, “I am sore stricken; I can say nothing. God will clear me.”

On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. Any resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, according to which prosecution was forbidden to Christians, even had the case held less scandal to the community. But the members were bound to take other measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and drawing lots. This resolution can be a ground of surprise only to those who are unacquainted with that obscure religious life which has gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his brethren, relying on his own innocence being certified by immediate divine interference, but feeling that there was sorrow and mourning behind for him even then—that his trust in man had been cruelly bruised. The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty. He was solemnly suspended from church membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money; only on confession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received once more within the folds of the church. Marner listened in silence. At last, when every one rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and said in a voice shaken by agitation,—

“The last time I remember using my knife was when I took it out to cut a strap for you. I don’t remember putting it in my pocket again. You stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door. But you may prosper, for all that. There is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the innocent.”

There was a general shudder at this blasphemy.

William said meekly, “I leave our brethren to judge whether this is the voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray for you, Silas.”

Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul—that shaken trust in God and man which is little short of madness to a loving nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit he said to himself, “She will cast me off too.” And he reflected that, if she did not believe the testimony against him, her whole faith must be upset as his was. To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that simple untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection. We are apt to think it inevitable that a man in Marner’s position should have begun to question the validity of an appeal to the divine judgment by drawing lots; but to him this would have been an effort of independent thought such as he had never known, and he must have made the effort at a moment when all his energies were turned into the anguish of disappointed faith. If there is an angel who records the sorrows of men as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.

Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned by despair, without any impulse to go to Sarah and attempt to win her belief in his innocence. The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief by getting into his loom and working away as usual; and before many hours were past, the minister and one of the deacons came to him with the message from Sarah that she held her engagement to him at an end. Silas received the message mutely, and then turned away from the messenger to work at his loom again. In little more than a month from that time Sarah was married to William Dane; and not