CHAPTER IV

Dunstan Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at the judiciously
quiet pace of a man who is obliged to ride to cover on his hunter,
had to take his way along the lane which, at its farther extremity,
passed by the piece of unenclosed ground called the Stone-pit, where
stood the cottage, once a stone-cutter's shed, now for fifteen years
inhabited by Silas Marner. The spot looked very dreary at this
season, with the moist trodden clay about it, and the red, muddy
water high up in the deserted quarry. That was Dunstan's first
thought as he approached it; the second was, that the old fool of a
weaver, whose loom he heard rattling already, had a great deal of
money hidden somewhere. How was it that he, Dunstan Cass, who had
often heard talk of Marner's miserliness, had never thought of
suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten or persuade the old
fellow into lending the money on the excellent security of the young
Squire's prospects? The resource occurred to him now as so easy and
agreeable, especially as Marner's hoard was likely to be large
enough to leave Godfrey a handsome surplus beyond his immediate
needs, and enable him to accommodate his faithful brother, that he
had almost turned the horse's head towards home again. Godfrey
would be ready enough to accept the suggestion: he would snatch
eagerly at a plan that might save him from parting with Wildfire.
But when Dunstan's meditation reached this point, the inclination to
go on grew strong and prevailed. He didn't want to give Godfrey
that pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed.
Moreover, Dunstan enjoyed the self-important consciousness of having
a horse to sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain,
swaggering, and possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the
satisfaction attendant on selling his brother's horse, and not the
less have the further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow
Marner's money. So he rode on to cover.

Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure they would
be--he was such a lucky fellow.

"Heyday!" said Bryce, who had long had his eye on Wildfire,
"you're on your brother's horse to-day: how's that?"

"Oh, I've swopped with him," said Dunstan, whose delight in lying,
grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the
likelihood that his hearer would not believe him--"Wildfire's
mine now."

"What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned hack of yours?"
said Bryce, quite aware that he should get another lie in answer.

"Oh, there was a little account between us," said Dunsey,
carelessly, "and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him by
taking the horse, though it was against my will, for I'd got an itch
for a mare o' Jortin's--as rare a bit o' blood as ever you threw
your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him,
though I'd a bid of a hundred and fifty for him the other day, from
a man over at Flitton--he's buying for Lord Cromleck--a fellow
with a cast in his eye, and a green waistcoat. But I mean to stick
to Wildfire: I shan't get a better at a fence in a hurry. The
mare's got more blood, but she's a bit too weak in the
hind-quarters."

Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and
Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many
human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner); and they
both considered that the bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce
replied ironically--

"I wonder at that now; I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never
heard of a man who didn't want to sell his horse getting a bid of
half as much again as the horse was worth. You'll be lucky if you
get a hundred."

Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated.
It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and
twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at
the Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise
for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley,
and, having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him
home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run,
encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy
from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not
easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take
the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took
one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake.
His own ill-favoured person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped
without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned
on his flank and painfully panted his last. It happened that
Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his
stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which
had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and
under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would
soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident
happened; and hence he was between eager riders in advance, not
troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and far-off
stragglers, who were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the
line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it
was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote
consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all
over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of
witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make enviable.
Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and much
swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his right
hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make his way to
Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt.
His first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home
forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand, and
along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as to
other spirited young men of his kind. He did not much mind about
taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same
time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he
always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which he
himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick
long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The
idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it
had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance
with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter
the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of
his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous
plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was
ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three
small coins his forefinger encountered there were of too pale a
colour to cover that small debt, without payment of which the
stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with
Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the direction in which the run
had brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he
was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness
of head, was only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception
that there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented course
of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock, and a mist was
gathering: the sooner he got into the road the better. He
remembered having crossed the road and seen the finger-post only a
little while before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his coat,
twisting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the handle,
and rapping the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if
to assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set
off with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of
bodily exertion, which somehow and at some time he should be able to
dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the
Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so
exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a
desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of
unwontedness in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through
the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was
Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it
had a gold handle; of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it,
that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was cut in deep letters on that gold
handle--they could only see that it was a very handsome whip.
Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in
whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen
when people get close to each other; but when he at last found
himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a soul,
he silently remarked that that was part of his usual good luck. But
now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more of a screen
than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which his feet were liable
to slip--hid everything, so that he had to guide his steps by
dragging his whip along the low bushes in advance of the hedgerow.
He must soon, he thought, be getting near the opening at the
Stone-pits: he should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He
found it out, however, by another circumstance which he had not
expected--namely, by certain gleams of light, which he presently
guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's cottage. That cottage and
the money hidden within it had been in his mind continually during
his walk, and he had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting
the weaver to part with the immediate possession of his money for
the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a
little frightening added to the cajolery, for his own arithmetical
convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible
demonstration as to the advantages of interest; and as for security,
he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him
believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on the
miser's mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure to hand over to
his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made up his mind to
that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks
of Marner's shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had
become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a
natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be
several conveniences attending this course: the weaver had possibly
got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was
still nearly three-quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was
becoming unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain.
He turned up the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the
right way, since he was not certain whether the light were in front
or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the ground before him
cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the
door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old
fellow would be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no
movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the weaver
gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a
strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more
loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through
the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the
latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened.
But, to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he
found himself in front of a bright fire which lit up every corner of
the cottage--the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table--
and showed him that Marner was not there.

Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting to Dunsey than
the bright fire on the brick hearth: he walked in and seated himself
by it at once. There was something in front of the fire, too, that
would have been inviting to a hungry man, if it had been in a
different stage of cooking. It was a small bit of pork suspended
from the kettle-hanger by a string passed through a large door-key,
in a way known to primitive housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. But
the pork had been hung at the farthest extremity of the hanger,
apparently to prevent the roasting from proceeding too rapidly
during the owner's absence. The old staring simpleton had hot meat
for his supper, then? thought Dunstan. People had always said he
lived on mouldy bread, on purpose to check his appetite. But where
could he be at this time, and on such an evening, leaving his supper
in this stage of preparation, and his door unfastened? Dunstan's
own recent difficulty in making his way suggested to him that the
weaver had perhaps gone outside his cottage to fetch in fuel, or for
some such brief purpose, and had slipped into the Stone-pit. That
was an interesting idea to Dunstan, carrying consequences of entire
novelty. If the weaver was dead, who had a right to his money? Who
would know where his money was hidden? _Who would know that anybody
had come to take it away?_ He went no farther into the subtleties of
evidence: the pressing question, "Where _is_ the money?" now took
such entire possession of him as to make him quite forget that the
weaver's death was not a certainty. A dull mind, once arriving at
an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the
impression that the notion from which the inference started was
purely problematic. And Dunstan's mind was as dull as the mind of a
possible felon usually is. There were only three hiding-places
where he had ever heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the
thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner's cottage had no
thatch; and Dunstan's first act, after a train of thought made rapid
by the stimulus of cupidity, was to go up to the bed; but while he
did so, his eyes travelled eagerly over the floor, where the bricks,
distinct in the fire-light, were discernible under the sprinkling of
sand. But not everywhere; for there was one spot, and one only,
which was quite covered with sand, and sand showing the marks of
fingers, which had apparently been careful to spread it over a given
space. It was near the treddles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan
darted to that spot, swept away the sand with his whip, and,
inserting the thin end of the hook between the bricks, found that
they were loose. In haste he lifted up two bricks, and saw what he
had no doubt was the object of his search; for what could there be
but money in those two leathern bags? And, from their weight, they
must be filled with guineas. Dunstan felt round the hole, to be
certain that it held no more; then hastily replaced the bricks, and
spread the sand over them. Hardly more than five minutes had passed
since he entered the cottage, but it seemed to Dunstan like a long
while; and though he was without any distinct recognition of the
possibility that Marner might be alive, and might re-enter the
cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread laying hold on
him, as he rose to his feet with the bags in his hand. He would
hasten out into the darkness, and then consider what he should do
with the bags. He closed the door behind him immediately, that he
might shut in the stream of light: a few steps would be enough to
carry him beyond betrayal by the gleams from the shutter-chinks and
the latch-hole. The rain and darkness had got thicker, and he was
glad of it; though it was awkward walking with both hands filled, so
that it was as much as he could do to grasp his whip along with one
of the bags. But when he had gone a yard or two, he might take his
time. So he stepped forward into the darkness.