CHAPTER XXI.

[_See Note T, Addenda._]

THE MILLER'S FRIEND--A TALE.

You might have travelled many a long summer's day and not met with such another. The very look of him was enough to dispel all ideas of hunger: he was so big and so stout, yet withal so rosy and hardy. His voice had a cheery ring with it, which, combined with the merry twinkle in his eye, set you on good terms with yourself at once, if indeed it did not make you laugh outright. As for _his_ laugh, to hear it once was to remember it for ever. It was hearty, it was musical; in pitch something between the _Ha! ha! ha!_ and the HO! HO! HO! and it rang through the old mill, wakening a dozen sleeping echoes, and causing the old bulldog to bark, although that quadruped had to lean against a pillar to perform the feat. The miller wasn't a young man by any means; but though he had no wife, he was the jolliest widower ever you saw, albeit his hair and whiskers were like the powdery snow. But his voice--ay, that was the bit--you should have heard it rising in song-snatches, and rolling high over the double bass of the grinding wheels and the shrill clack-clack of that merry old mill.

He was honest moreover. No one in the parish had ever been heard to accuse him of giving light weight, or adding sand to the meal to make it turn the scale sooner. And, as a matter of course, he was a general favourite, especially among the farmer's daughters and servant-maids; so much so indeed, that all round the country it became the general custom to take meal by the stone, instead of by the bushel, that the "errands to the mill" might be all the more frequent. And indeed, however dull a lass might be, when she was going to the mill, she never left it without a rosier blush on her bonnie cheek, and a smile playing around her lips, as she trundled cheerily along with her bag upon her head. Yes, indeed, had he wanted a wife, the miller might have married the youngest of them all. Such was the miller, and such too were the race he sprang from,--they were in the habit of getting young again, just at the age that other folks began to get old. They were in their prime at eighty, and never thought of departing this life, until the dial shadow of their existence began to creep near the hundred. Then all at once it used to strike Old Death, that he had forgotten all about them, so he would lift his scythe, and cut them down smartly and suddenly.

And as the miller was jolly, so everything about that old mill was jolly too. There was music in the mill-lead as the waters leapt joyously from under the sluice, and hurried along to their task, and the great wheel itself, as it turned slowly and steadily round, seemed actually bursting with suppressed merriment. Then you should have seen the sweet little bit of scenery the mill was set down in. Ah! English tourists have yet to learn, that there is one part of Scotland yet unhackneyed, yet uncockneyed, yet unspoiled, but still romantic enough to repay a journey from London-town. The mill was built by the banks of the wimpling Don,--built in a dingle, green rolling braes sloping up at one side, steep rocks on the other, and the river, here broad and fordable, rippling between. On the top of the rocks waved a tall pine forest; some of the trees hung by their roots over the cliff just as the storm had left them. 'Twas sweet in summertime to hear the birds singing in that forest, or to see the crimson glow of sunset glimmering through the branches; but how tall and dark and weirdly looked those trees, as they stretched their branches up into the green frosty sky of a quiet winter's gloaming.

To my friend the miller this wood had an especial attraction, for within its shade he had wooed his first, his early love. If you had scaled the little foot-path, that struggled up through the rocks, at the place where they were less precipitous, and finally gained the cliff, just at the point where Snuffie Sandy tumbled over in the dark and broke his neck, you would have come to a little foot-path, that went windingly away among the tall solemn Scotch pines, to the roots of which the sun never penetrated even at noon, and whose massive trunks might have been mistaken in the sombre light, for the pillars in some gigantic cavern. Onward for a quarter of an hour, and you would suddenly have found yourself in a clearing in the midst of the forest. This clearing was fully a square mile in extent, and was tastefully laid out as a little farm, neat cottage and garden, barnyard, field, and fence, and all complete, as snug a little place as you could wish to see. Owing to its situation, there was quite an understanding between the domestic animals, and the denizens of the surrounding wood. In summertime the hare and the rabbit, browsed peacefully beside the cows and the sheep; the birds came regularly to the latter for a supply of wool to line their nests; the hens and ducks shared their oats amicably with the wild pigeons; and old Dobbin the horse, who used to be tethered among the clover, didn't mind the crows a bit: they used his back as a sort of moving hustings on which to debate politics or have an occasional stand-up fight, and when Dobbin lay down to rest they lovingly picked his teeth. And everything immediately around the cottage, was as natty and neat as the little farm itself. The greenest of garden gates led you into the sprucest of little gardens; the box was neatly trimmed; never a blade of grass grew on the gravel; and although there were not many flowers, it did one's heart good in early spring to see the blue and yellow crocuses, peeping through the dun earth, and the sweet-scented primrose discs, diamonded with dew, reclining on the delicate green of their tender leaves. There was a rustic porch around the cottage door; it was formed of the unbarked stems of the spruce fir-tree, with just an inch of branch left on for effect, and the door itself boasted of a brass knocker, bright enough to shave at; and had you knocked and been invited "ben" to the best-parlour, you would have found everything there too both trig and trim. There was nothing either on the mantle-piece or on the walls to offend your feelings. There were no hideous ornaments or foxy lithographs, but shells, and grass, and moss, and a few modest engravings and photo's of friends. Instead of a chiffonier there was a neat chest of drawers, and instead of a piano a spinning-wheel. At this latter, Nannie, when not milking or attending to household matters, sat birring all day long, making music which, if not operatic, was at least natural, and suited Nannie and pleased the cat to a nicety. Nannie of course was the presiding goddess of the cottage and farm. The place was all her own. She kept a man and a laddie to do the out-work, and a tidy bit of a girl to assist her in-doors. Nannie from all accounts must have been alarmingly near forty, though she looked a full dozen of years younger, and beautiful for even that age,--beautiful in regularity of features, in just sufficient colour, and in a lack of all coarseness. Taking her, figure and all combined, you would have said that, if not a lady, she was at least born to adorn a higher sphere. She had never been married, but didn't look an old maid by any means. For Nannie had had her little history. And merry and cheerful as she always was during the day, still, when the day's duties were over, and she had retired to her little chamber, after she had read her chapter and psalm and sat down to muse, there would come a strange sad look in her eyes, and at times a tear stood there, as she took from her pocket a portrait and a lock of dark brown hair. And that portrait on which she grazed so fondly, although the face was younger, was the miller's; his, too, though different in colour, that lock of hair tied with blue, that seemed to cling caressingly around poor Nannie's finger. For the miller and she had loved each other all their lives long. Oh! their story is quite a common one,--a lover's quarrel, a harsh word, and a silent parting: that was all. And the miller had gone off in a pet, and married a woman double his age. The marriage was as uncongenial as snow in summer; but now, though his wife had been long in her grave, the miller, though he knew he could get forgiveness at once from Nannie, never went to ask it, feeling he had erred too deeply to deserve it. So they had lived for years--those two loving hearts--with only the dark pine forest and the broad river between them.

One dark Christmas morning the miller was astir long before his usual time, for there was more to do than he could well manage. There was barley to prepare for Christmas broth, and meal for Christmas brose; so long before the sun had dreamt of getting out of bed, he had hauled up the sluice. The waters rushed headlong on towards the great mill-wheel; the great mill-wheel turned slowly round; and suddenly the old mill, previously as silent and dark as the grave itself, became instinct with life and sound.

It was a good quarter of a mile walk, from the mill-dam sluice to the