Godfrey came with the doctor and looked at the dead woman in the snow, and he said nothing. Nobody learned that the child was his. Silas asked to keep her. It's a lone thing, and I'm a lone thing, he said. My money's gone, I don't know where, and this is come from I don't know where. He named her Eppie, after his little sister who had died. Dolly Winthrop, a kind neighbour, showed him how to wash and dress her and told him to take the child to church. As Eppie grew, she pulled Silas out of his cottage into the fields and the lanes and the company of the village. The gold had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, but the child made him look forward. Sixteen years passed, and the weaver's face grew gentle.