is missing, and the presence of Silas's pocketknife in the drawer seems to indicate that he dropped it there when he stole the money.

Silas vehemently protests his innocence, but it is all to no avail. The church members draw lots to determine his fate, and the majority find him guilty. Silas is furious; he knows that he is completely innocent. He now remembers that he lent his pocketknife to William Danes. He must have put the pocketknife in the Deacon's drawer and then hidden the money in Silas's chamber to make it look like he stole the money. But no one is prepared to listen to Silas; as far as the congregation is concerned, he is guilty as sin.

Silas is sure that God will clear his name. But after the guilty verdict of the congregation is passed, Silas vents his anger at the Almighty and turns his back on both the town of Lantern Yard and God himself.

Silas had been sitting with the aging Deacon and thought him to be getting better when he noticed that the man had in fact perished and William had not shown up to relieve him.  He was then summoned to Lantern Yard.

William produces Silas' pocket knife and claims that it was found in the drawer near the bag of money that had belonged to the deacon and which had been emptied, thus implying that Silas had stolen the money.  The bag was also found, empty, in Silas' apartment.  After this he was suspended from the church membership and it wasn't long after until William had married Sarah and soon Silas ran off to live in Raveloe.

George Eliot's narrative describes a time before the spinning jenny of the Industrial Revolution replaced individual weavers. In fact, the weaver was an important citizen of communities as it was he who provided people with the necessary thread. Nevertheless, weaving was a singular and lonely business. 

In the little religious community of Lantern, Yard Silas Marner was well-respected: "He was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith." When he fell into a spiritual trance one time in a religious meeting, Marner would not interpret it in any way. In contrast, his friend William Dane assuredly declares that he perceives words "call and election sure" on the pages of the Bible. Whereas Silas is honest about his uncertainty, Dane exhibits the utmost confidence, and he suggests that the devil has visited Silas when he was in this trance. Because of this suggestion, the rigid and backward religious community becomes suspicious of him when his supposed friend William Dane and some others accuse Marner of having killed the ailing deacon over whom he kept vigil one night. When his knife is found near the deacon's bed, at the same spot where the money bag had been, suspicion of Silas is certainly aroused. The minister urges Silas to confess and repent his sin since his knife has been discovered in the very spot where the deacon kept his little bag of church money. He adds that since Silas was the only one there, who else could have committed this crime?

 For some time Silas was mute with astonishment; then he said, “God will clear me; I know nothing about the knife being there or the money being gone. Search me and my dwelling; you will find nothing but three pound five of my own savings, which William Dane knows I have had these six months.” 

But Silas is denounced as guilty of the crime. He is suspended from membership in the church and told that he must confess and only when he is repentant will he be allowed to rejoin the fold. Silas moves toward the man he has considered his friend and says that the last time he remembers using the knife was to cut a strap for William and he knows that he did not place it back in his pocket. He accuses William,

"You stole the money and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door....there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the innocent."

After uttering this "blasphemy" Silas returns home to his loom and works on it until the minister and deacons come to his door to inform him that his betrothed has broken their engagement; Silas makes no comment, but only continues weaving. In a month or so Sarah marries William Dane, and Silas Marner, a man without faith, departs from the town.

The drawing of lots was a turning point for Silas Marner. The man he had thought was his friend, Willian Dane, had stolen the dead deacon's money and set events up so that it looked as if Silas were the culprit. Silas declared his innocence, so his strict church sect at Lantern's Yard decided to draw lots as a test of whether Silas stole the money. The lots showed he was the guilty party—even though he was completely innocent. As a result, he was cast out of the church.

Silas knows he was betrayed by William and fears he will lose his fiancée after having been labeled a thief. In this he is right: Sarah marries William Dane in less than a month's time.

Silas has undergone a traumatic experience that has soured his faith in God and his fellow man. After a life of trusting innocence, he has nothing left to believe in and no one left to turn to. He has lost religion, reputation, friends, and his beloved. As the narrator states:

Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul—that shaken trust in God and man, which is little short of madness to a loving nature.

Silas Marner is marked for more than a decade by this terrible and unjust twist of fate. He leaves Lantern Yard and lives as a bitter recluse in Raveloe, unable to love or trust his fellow man. This state lasts until little Eppie stumbles into his cottage on a cold night like a flash of gold. She becomes more precious than anything to him and allows to find renewed meaning and purpose in life.