urch. Silas feels a sense of fulfillment merely in holding his newly earned money and looking at it. Around this time Silas notices Sally Oates, suffering the symptoms of heart disease and dropsy. Sally makes Silas remember his mother, who died of similar causes. He gives Sally herbal medicine that his mother had used to ease the pain of the disease. The medicine worked, so the villagers began to think that Silas had healing powers. Mothers began to bring their sick children to his house to be cured, and men with rheumatism offered Silas silver to cure them. Irritated, Silas would just send them all away. The townspeople's hope in Silas's healing power turns to fear and they come to blame him for accidents that happen to them. Having wanted only to help Sally Oates, Silas began to find himself further isolated from his neighbors. Silas gradually begins to make more money, working sixteen hours a day and obsessively counting his money. He keeps the coins in an iron pot hidden under the floor below his loom, and takes it out only a
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