In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stone-pits by the side of Dolly, who, though feeling that she was entirely in her place in encountering cold and snow on an errand of mercy, was much concerned at a young gentleman’s getting his feet wet under a like impulse.

“You’d a deal better go back, sir,” said Dolly, with respectful compassion. “You’ve no call to catch cold; and I’d ask you if you’d be so good as tell my husband to come, on your way back—he’s at the Rainbow, I doubt—if you found him anyway sober enough to be o’ use. Or else, there’s Mrs. Snell ’ud happen send the boy up to fetch and carry, for there may be things wanted from the Doctor’s.”

“No, I’ll stay; now I’m once out, I’ll stay outside here,” said Godfrey when they came opposite Marner’s cottage. “You can come and tell me if I can do anything.”

“Well, sir, you’re very good; you’ve a tender heart,” said Dolly, going to the door.

Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of self-reproach at this undeserved praise. He walked up and down, unconscious that he was plunging ankle deep in snow, unconscious of everything but trembling suspense about what was going on in the cottage, and the effect of each alternative on his future lot. No, not quite unconscious of everything else. Deeper down, and half-smothered by passionate desire and dread, there was the sense that he ought not to be waiting on these alternatives; that he ought to accept the consequences of his deeds, own the miserable wife, and fulfil the claims of the helpless child. But he had not moral courage enough to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy as possible for him; he had only conscience and heart enough to make him for ever uneasy under the weakness that forbade the renunciation. And at this moment his mind leaped away from all restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliverance from his long bondage.

“Is she dead?” said the voice that predominated over every other within him. “If she is, I may marry Nancy; and then I shall be a good fellow in future, and have no secrets, and the child—shall be taken care of somehow.” But across that vision came the other possibility—“She may live, and then it’s all up with me.”

Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the cottage opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He went forward to meet his uncle, prepared to suppress the agitation he must feel, whatever news he was to hear.

“I waited for you, as I’d come so far,” he said, speaking first.

“Pooh! it was nonsense for you to come out; why didn’t you send one of the men? There’s nothing to be done. She’s dead—has been dead for hours, I should say.”

“What sort of woman is she?” said Godfrey, feeling the blood rush to his face.

“A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. Some vagrant—quite in rags. She’s got a wedding- ring on, however. They must fetch her away to the workhouse to-morrow. Come, come along.”

“I want to look at her,” said Godfrey. “I think I saw such a woman yesterday. I’ll overtake you in a minute or two.”

Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cottage. He cast only one glance at the dead face on the pillow, which Dolly had smoothed with decent care; but he remembered that last look at his unhappy, hated wife so well that at the end of sixteen years every line in the worn face was present to him when he told the full story of this night.

He turned immediately towards the hearth, where Silas Marner sat lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet now, but not asleep—only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into that wide-gazing calm which makes us older human beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child,