When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas Marner was not more than a hundred yards away from it, plodding¹ along from the village with a sack thrown round his shoulders as an overcoat, and with a horn lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease, free from the presentiment² of change. The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists³ after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse⁴ of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic⁵ of habit, constantly alleged⁶ as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely⁷ the added condition which makes the event imminent⁸. A man will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he should apprehend⁹ no danger, though the roof is beginning to sink; and it is often observable, that the older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing conception of his own death. This influence of habit was necessarily strong in a man whose life was so monotonous¹⁰ as Marner's—who saw no new people and heard of no new events to keep alive in him the idea of the unexpected and the changeful; and it explains simply enough, why his mind could be at ease, though he had left his house and his treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas was thinking with double complacency of his supper: first, because it would be hot and savoury; and

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