NovelGuide: Silas Marner: Novel Summary: Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

Chapter five gives some background on Silas’s decision to leave his home unattended and unlocked. He was simply doing a routine errand, briefly leaving the cabin. He didn’t lock the door because after fifteen years of this pattern of living, any alteration, such as a robbery, seemed almost incomprehensible to the weaver hermit.
Upon Silas’s return, he checks under the bricks where his gold is kept and to his shock and horror sees that it has been stolen. Silas immediately descends into a mode of panic, thinking that the "cruel power" of God has made him "a second time desolate." He rushes into town, determined to see the constable and put an end to this sudden misery.