Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains

JAN went back to school. Though his foster-mother was indignant, and ready to do battle both with Dame Datchett and with William Smith’s aunt (with whom, in lieu of parents, the...

“Horful p’ticklers of the plague in a village in —shire!” they screamed under the windows. Not that Mr. Ford heard them. But in five minutes the noiseless door opened, and a cle...

So the windmiller might have said, if he had been in the habit of putting his thoughts into an epigrammatic form, as a groan from his wife and a growl of thunder broke simultane...

The good clerk developed another talent in him. Jan learned to sing, and to sing very well; and he was put into the choir-seats in the old church, where he sang with enthusiasm...

On the morning in question, he dressed himself in the cleanest of smocks, greased his boots, stuck a bloody warrior, or dark-colored wallflower, in his bosom, put a neatly folde...

POOR Abel was not fated to get much regular schooling. He particularly liked learning, but the interval was all too brief between the time when his mother was able to spare him...

WHEN Jan returned to the windmill, and gravely announced that he had hired himself out as pig-minder to Master Salter, Mrs. Lake was, as she said, “put about.” She considered pi...

THE MILLER’S MAN AT THE MOP.—A LIVELY COMPANION.—SAL LOSES HER PURSE.—THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.—THE POCKET-BOOK TWICE STOLEN.—GEORGE IN THE KING’S ARMS.—GEORGE IN THE KING’S SERV...

A MOP is a local name for a hiring-fair, at which young men and women present themselves to be hired as domestic servants or farm laborers for a year. It was at a mop that the w...

I REMEMBER a “cholera year” in a certain big village. The activity of the sanitary authorities (and many and vain had been the efforts to rouse them to activity _before_) was, f...

“I HOPE, Jan,” said Master Swift, “that the gentleman will overlook my want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was to me to see your face again.”

THE white horse lived to see good days. He got safely home, and spent the winter in a comfortable stable, with no work but being exercised for the good of his health by the stab...

ONE of the earliest of Jan’s remembrances—of those remembrances, I mean, which remained with him when childhood was past—was of little Miss Amabel, from the Grange, being held i...

The day before the school opened, Jan came to the cottage. “Master Swift,” said he, “I be come to tell ye that I be afraid I can’t come to school.”

JAN stopped at last from lack of breath to go on. His feet had been winged by terror, and he looked back even now with fear to see the Cheap Jack’s misshapen figure in pursuit....

THIS shock seemed to give a last jar to the frail state of Mrs. Lake’s health, and the sleep into which she fell that night passed into a state of insensibility in which her sor...

Then, when she had once got over her repugnance to adopting him, he did do much to heal the old grief, and to fill the empty place in her heart as well as in the cradle.

IT was a lovely autumn evening the same year, when the school having broken up for the day, Master Swift returned to his home for tea. He lived in a tiny cottage on the opposite...

To “make letters” on his slate had been the utmost of his ambition, and as he made them he learned them. But after the Cheap Jack’s visit his constant cry was, “Jan make pitcher...

SQUIRE AMMABY was the most good-natured of men. He was very fond of his wife, though she was somewhat peevish, with weak health and nerves, and though she seemed daily less able...

“MANAGE it as you like,” the artist had said to the master of the Boys’ Home. “Lend him, sell him, apprentice him, give him to me,—whichever you prefer. Say I want a boot-black—...

ON Sunday morning Jan took his place in church with unusual feelings. He looked here, there, and everywhere for the little damsel of the wood, but she was not to be seen. Meanwh...

JAN took the fever. He was very ill, too, partly from grief at Abel’s death. He had also a not unnatural conviction that he would die, which was unfavorable to his recovery.

EXCITEMENT, the stifling atmosphere of the public-house, and the spirits he had drunk at his friend’s expense, had somewhat confused the brains of the miller’s man by the time t...

THERE was a large crowd, but large crowds gather quickly in London from small causes. It was in an out-of-the-way spot too, and the police had not yet tried to disperse it.

“So I have, my dear,” said the Cheap Jack; “any thing for a livelihood; an _honest_ livelihood, you know, George.” And he winked at the miller’s man, who relaxed his sulkiness f...

There was a small herd of pigs which changed hands three times in ten days. The last purchaser hesitated, and was only induced by the cheapness of the bargain to suppress a feel...

MIDSUMMER came, and the Dame’s school broke up for the holidays. Jan had longed for them intensely. Not that he was oppressed by the labors of learning, but that he wanted to be...

He had been spending an afternoon at the windmill, and the painter had been sketching the old church from the water-meadows, when they met on the little bridge near Dame Datchet...

IT was a great and important time to Abel when Jan learned to walk; but, as he was neither precocious nor behindhand in this respect, his biographer may be pardoned for not dwel...

THE windmiller went back to his work. He had risked something over this business in leaving the mill in the hands of others, even for so short a time. Then the storm abated some...

The wonderful beauty of the night sky and the moon had been fully felt by the artist-nature of the child Jan; but about this time he took to the study of a totally different sub...

ABEL went to school again in the spring, and, though George would have been better pleased had he forgotten the whole affair, he remembered the word in George’s young woman’s lo...

JAN was very happy, and the brief dream of the “jook” was over, but his heart clung to his old home. If love and care, if tenderness in sickness and teaching in health, are pare...

AS he had resolved, the painter secured the help of the police in tracing Jan’s pedigree. He did not take the bow-legged boy into his confidence, but that young gentleman recogn...

JAN found favor with his new friends. The master’s sharp eyes noted that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to the new boy, and the superintendent of the...

The man of business wrote to say that the gentleman who had visited the mill on a certain night had, at that date, lost a pocket-book, which he thought might have been picked up...

THE business men were half way to their business when the shadow of the sooty church still fell upon one or two of the congregation who dispersed more slowly; a few aged poor wh...

A SOUTH-WEST wind is blowing over the plains. It drives the “messengers” over the sky, and the sails of the windmill, and makes the dead leaves dance upon the graves. It does mu...

THE Ammabys were in London. Amabel preferred the country; but she bore the town as she bore with many other things that were not quite to her taste, including painfully short pe...

AFTER the nurse and baby had left the mill, Mrs. Lake showered extra caresses upon the little Jan. It had given her a strange pleasure to see him in contact with the Squire’s ch...

IT had been a wet morning. The heavy rain-clouds rolled over the plains, hanging on this side above the horizon as if in an instant they must fall and crush the solid earth, and...

WHEN the Cheap Jack’s horse came to the brow of the hill, it stopped, and with drooping neck stood still as before. The Cheap Jack was busy with George, and it was at no word fr...

THE MILLER’S MAN AT THE MOP.—A LIVELY COMPANION.—SAL LOSES 127 HER PURSE.—THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.—THE POCKET-BOOK TWICE STOLEN.—GEORGE IN THE KING’S ARMS.—GEORGE IN THE KING’S...