Silas hoards a treasure that destroys his spirit until fate steals it from him and replaces it with a golden-haired child. Where she came from, who her parents were, and who really stole the gold are the secrets that fill this moving tale of guilt and innocence.

A moral allegory of the redemptive power of love, it is also a finely drawn portrait of early nineteenth-century England in the days when spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses, and of a simple way of life that was soon to disappear.