Then the minister, taking out a pocket-knife, showed it to Silas, and asked him if he knew where he had left that knife? Silas said, he did not know that he had left it anywhere out of his own pocket--but he was trembling at this strange interrogation.He was then exhorted not to hide his sin, but to confess and repent.The knife had been found in the bureau by the departed deacon's bedside--found in the place where the little bag of church money had lain, which the minister himself had seen the day before.Some hand had removed that bag; and whose hand could it be, if not that of the man to whom the knife belonged? For some time Silas was mute with astonishment: then he said, "God will clear me: I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money being gone.Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but three pound five of my own savings, which William Dane knows I have had these six months." At this William groaned, but the minister said, "The proof is heavy against you, brother Marner.The money was taken in the night last past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden sickness from going to take his place as usual, and you yourself said that he had not come; and, moreover, you neglected the dead body.""I must have slept," said Silas.Then, after a pause, he added, "Or I must have had another visitation like that which you have all seen me under, so that the thief must have come and gone while I was not in the body, but out of the body.But, I say again, search me and my dwelling, for I have been nowhere else."The search was made, and it ended--in William Dane's finding the well-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas's chamber! On this William exhorted his friend to confess, and not to hide his sin any longer.Silas turned a look of keen reproach on him, and said, "William, for nine years that we have gone in and out together, have you ever known me tell a lie? But God will clear me.""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 everyone 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 messengers to work at his loom again.In little more than a month from that time, Sarah was married to William Dane; and not long afterwards it was known to the brethren in Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the town.
