Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud. Silas suddenly appears in the middle of the tavern, his agitation giving him a strange, unearthly appearance. For a moment, everyone present, regardless of his stance in the previous argument about the supernatural, believes he is looking at a ghost.
Silas, short of breath after his hurried walk to the inn, finally declares that he has been robbed. The landlord tells Jem Rodney, who is sitting nearest Silas, to seize him, as he is delirious. Hearing the name, Silas turns to Rodney and pleads with him to give his money back, telling him that he will give him a guinea and will not press charges. Rodney reacts angrily, saying that he will not be accused.
The tavern-goers make Silas take off his coat and sit down in a chair by the fire. Everyone calms down, and Silas tells the story of the robbery. The landlord vouches for Jem Rodney, saying that he has been in the inn all evening. Silas apologizes to Rodney, and Mr.
Dowlas, the farrier, asks how much money was lost. Silas tells him the exact figure, which is more than pounds. Dowlas also offers to ask the constable to appoint him deputy-constable, which sets off an argument. Macey objects that no doctor can also be a constable and that Dowlas—whose duties as a farrier including the treatment of livestock diseases—is a sort of doctor. A compromise is reached wherein Dowlas agrees to act only in an unofficial capacity.
Godfrey returns home from the dance to find that Dunsey has not yet returned. A tinder-box is found on the scene and is suspected to be somehow connected to the crime. Though a few villagers suspect that Silas is simply mad or possessed and has lied about the theft, others defend him. Silas then tries to think of what could have happened. He initially fears that a greater power removed the money to ruin him a second time, but banishes that thought in favor of the simpler explanation of a robbery.
He mentally runs through a list of his neighbors and decides that Jem Rodney, a well-known poacher, might have taken the gold. Silas decides to declare his loss to the important people of the town, including Squire Cass, in the hopes that they might be able to help recover his money. Silas goes to the Rainbow, the village inn and tavern, to find someone of authority. The Rainbow has two rooms, separating patrons according to their social standing.
The conversation in the tavern is quite animated by the time Silas arrives, though it has taken a while to get up to speed. The narrator describes this conversation in considerable detail. It begins with an aimless argument about a cow, followed by a story from Mr. Macey about a time when he heard the parson bungle the words of a wedding vow, a story that everyone in the tavern has heard many times before. Just before Silas appears, the conversation lapses back into an argument, this time about the existence of a ghost who allegedly haunts a local stable.
The argumentative farrier, Mr. Dowlas, does not believe in the ghost, and offers to stand out in front of the stable all night, betting that he will not see the ghost. Snell, argues that some people are just unable to see ghosts.
This is the second theft we have encountered so far in the novel. The original theft, which drove Silas out of Lantern Yard, made him an outcast from his tight-knit community and deprived him of any faith except in money. The conversation Silas interrupts in the tavern provides Eliot with an opportunity to show a slice of life of the Raveloe community. The tavern provides a public counterpart. Unlike church, the other significant public space in the town, the tavern is a participatory atmosphere.
Everyone is invited to chime in to the arguments and stories.
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