The boys in the village are fascinated by Silas Marner, who sits in his house alone and weaves using a loom whose sound is very different than that of the winnowing machines and flails with which the local boys are familiar. This drives them to peep into his cottage window, but when Silas "became aware of the small scoundrels," their intrusion irritated him, with the result that he would immediately cease weaving and come down to throw open the door and confront them. He would not say anything, but there was no need for him to do so. Instead, he would merely "fix on them a gaze" that so terrified them, they would immediately flee from his cottage. The "dreadful stare" of Silas Marner was such that the boys felt it could do all manner of damage to them, although Marner was actually shortsighted and generally not possessed of any of the witchlike powers the people in the village muttered about. (It was said that some muttered he could cure rheumatism if he chose to, suggesting that he was involved in witchcraft.)
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