In Raveloe Silas worked at his loom from morning till night, like a spider spinning, without thinking. The farmers' wives paid him in gold, and he had nobody to spend it on. He began to love the coins for their own sake. At night he locked the door, closed the shutters, and lifted two bricks from the floor under his loom. Out of the hole he took two leather bags, and he poured the guineas on the table and bathed his hands in them. He counted them into regular heaps and felt their rounded outlines between his fingers. They were his companions, and he talked to them, and he loved their faces. For fifteen years his life narrowed and hardened, until it was nothing but the loom and the gold.