The mill of silence

My story begins like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a miller who had three sons. Here, however, the resemblance ceases. At this late date I, the last stricken inmate o...

Jason--so named, at any period (I never saw a register of the christening of any one of us) because of his golden fleece, shook it and set to whistling softly.

The outer appearance of the old mill in which we lived and grew up I have touched upon; and now I take up my pen to paint in black and white the old, moldering interior of the s...

He always treated us boys as if we were so much dirt, and we respected his strength just sufficiently to try no pranks on him in the absence of the ruling power. But nevertheles...

Jason she still held at arm’s length, which, despite my admiration of my brother, I secretly congratulated my heart on, for--let me get over it at the outset--from first to last...

Full of dissatisfaction I wandered into the shed and loitered aimlessly about. As I stood there Jason came clattering homeward, his coat collar turned up and his curly head bowe...

Morning brought a pitcher of comfort with it on its gossamer wings. Who, at 17, can wake from restoring sleep to find the June sun on his face and elect to breakfast on bitter w...

He asked me if I would like to ride with it inside. The mere suggestion was terror to me, and I stammered out that I would rather walk, for I had tried my best already and had g...

Often the first shock of some unexpected mental blow shakes from the soul, not its corresponding emotion, but that emotion’s exact antithesis. Thus, when Jason spoke I laughed....

For some three weeks I had lain racked and shriveled in a nervous, delirious fever. It left me at last, the ghost of my old self, to face once more the problems of a ruined life...

“I dare anything,” he said, “where I have a particular object in view.” He never took his eyes off me, and the cold devil in them froze my blood that had only now run so hotly.

One November morning--my suffering had endured all these months--my father and Dr. Crackenthorpe stood before the sitting-room fire, talking, while I sat with a book at the tabl...

In the year 1860, of which I now write, so much of prejudice against railways still existed among many people of a pious or superstitious turn of mind, that I can quote much imm...

It was broad day when we emerged from the inclosure, and sound was awakening along the wintry streets. London stood before me rosy and refreshed, so that she looked no longer fo...

“Trender,” said Duke, unexpectedly after a silence the next morning, as we loitered over breakfast, “pay attention to one thing. I don’t ask you for a fragment of your past hist...

We loitered on the river till the short day was threatening dusk, and then we were still no further on our homeward way than a half-mile short of Kingston. A little cold wind, m...

For nearly four years did I work persistently, striving to redeem my past, at the offices in Great Queen Street. At this period my position was greatly improved, my services est...

Dolly had been unusually silent during the afternoon, and now, as we turned to retrace our steps in the direction of the station from which we were to take train for London, she...

I went to bed, but never to sleep. All night long I tossed, struggling to unravel the disorder in my brain. I could think out nothing collectively--warp and woof were inextricab...

At first I hardly grasped the import of my brother’s words, or the fact that here was the old fateful destiny upon me again, so lost were the few faculties I could command in wo...

That evening, in the luminous dusk of our sitting-room, I sat up and gave Duke my history. He would have stopped me at the outset, but I would brook no eccentric philosophy in t...

Long after the storm had broken and rolled away were we still sitting talking in the dim lamplight. In these hours I learned what dark confidences my friend had to give me as to...

Dolly met me the next morning, looking shy and half-frightened as a child caught fruit-picking. She gave me her hand with no show of heartiness, and withdrew it at once as if it...

“Then you know a very charming fellow. Why, what a dolt you are! Here’s a pother because I play cavalier to a girl whom you throw over in a fit of sulks. I couldn’t do less in c...

As to the first, it would seem that I should have no great reason for insuperable regret. The situation had been made for, not by me; I was free to let my thoughts revert unhamp...

Dolly never came to work the next morning, but there arrived a little letter from her to Mr. Ripley, giving notice, that was all, with no address or clew to her whereabouts, and...

Distempered walls; a high desk, a railed dock, where creatures were put to the first question like an experimental torture; black windows high in the wall and barred with networ...

“I’ll give it over. I don’t want to keep it, man. There was an address on it--there must have been, I swear; and if you don’t let me know it, there’ll be murder--do you understa...

In the first shock of the vision I did not realize to its full extent the profoundness of my brother’s villainy or of my own loss. Indeed, for the moment I was so numbed with am...

The inquest was over; the jury had returned a merciful verdict; the mortal perishing part of poor, weak and lovable Dolly was put gently out of sight for the daisies to grow ove...

So much of strange incident had crowded with action the long years of my life in London, that, as I walked from the station down into the old cathedral town, a feeling of wonder...

“Dad,” I said, softly, “once before, if you remember, I came to you heart-full of the question that I am now going to put to you again. I was a boy then, and likely you did righ...

I roamed the country as of old and renewed my acquaintance with bird, fish and insect. Starting to gather a collection of butterflies and moths--many of which were local and rar...

In the cool of the evening I knocked at Dr. Crackenthorpe’s front door. No one answering--his one servant was gadding, probably--I tried the handle, found it to be on the latch...

All that night I tossed and tossed, in vain effort to court the sleep that should quench the fever in my racked and bewildered brain. My errand had been a failure. In every sens...

The autumn of that year broke upon us with sobbing winds and wild, wet gusts of tempest laden with flying leaves. In the choked trenches, drowned grasses swayed and swung like t...

I walked home that night in a dream. The white road lay a long, luminous ribbon before me; the wet hedges were fragrant with scented mist; there was only the sound in my ears of...

Dark was falling as on my return I came within sound of the mill race. I thought I could make out a little group of people leaning over the stone balustrade of the bridge as I a...

I rushed across the room and looked out through the dim glass. At first I could make out nothing until a faint form resolved itself suddenly into a face, gray and set as the blo...

Had Jason fainted, as I thought he had, his enemy would have been upon him before I was aware of his presence even. As it was, in an instant I had interposed my body between them.

Nine months had passed since my parting with Duke on the hillside, and my life in the interval had flowed on with an easy uneventful monotony that was at least restorative to my...

The panic increased in him. I could see the tortured soul moving, as it were, behind the flesh of his face. When the nerve of endurance snapped he staggered and fell forward in...

It behooves me now to pass over a period of two years during which so little happened that bore directly upon the fortunes of any concerned in this lamentable history that to to...

He shambled aside, murmuring to himself. A little tremulous sigh issued from the throat of the poor stricken figure. I leaned over, seized the bottle of brandy from the bed, and...

The day that followed the unlooked-for visit of my brother Jason to the mill my father spent in bed. When, in the morning, I took him up his breakfast, I could not help noticing...

If it had many a time occurred to me, since first I heard of the jar of coins, that the secret of their concealment was connected somehow within the room of silence, it must hav...

In the first horror of blackness I came near to letting go the rope and falling from my perch on the blade. My brain went with a swing and turn and a sick wave overwhelmed my he...

November had come, with early frosts that flattened the nasturtiums in the town gardens and stiffened belated bees on the Michaelmas daisies, that were the very taverns of natur...

One result of Dr. Crackenthorpe’s visit was that I determined to then and there push my secret inquiries to a head in the direction of my friend, the sexton of St. John’s.

I fully expected to be summoned as a witness to the inquest held on George White. However, as it turned out, they left me alone, and for that I was thankful, though indeed I had...

For ten minutes, during which the city was blind with hail, I could see nothing but a thicket of white strings dense as the threads in a loom; hear nothing but the pounding cras...

It was not immediate death that had alighted, but death’s forerunner, paralysis. I realized this in a moment. The mute and stricken figure; the closed eyes; the darkly flushed f...

My escape from that strong net of fatality that had enmeshed so many years of my still young life, had been, it seemed, only a merciful respite. Now the toils, regathering about...

For a minute or more I must have stood gazing down on the damning words, unmoving, breathless almost. Then I glanced at the quiet face on the pillow and back again to the tablet...

I thought that the old woman, startled by our entrance, had merely stepped back, tripped and so come to the ground; but the doctor uttered an exclamation, ran to the prostrate f...

Like one in a dream I heard the doctor’s footstep recede down the stairs and heard the yard door close dully on him as he left the house. In my suffering soul I felt one cruel s...

About 4 of the afternoon my father, who had lain for some hours in a state bordering on stupor, and whose breathing had latterly become harsh and difficult, rose suddenly in his...

She was a slender mite of four or thereabouts, with a delicate thin face, oval like a blushing rose petal, and a quaint, solemn manner of movement and broken speech.

That night when the flood waters rose to a head was a terrible one for Winton--one ghastly in the extreme for all lost souls whose black destinies guided their footsteps to the...

Momentarily I saw--a black mote in that flickering violet transparency--the figure of Duke as he ran before me bobbing up and down like the shadow of the invisible man. Drawn by...

In the instant of realization, as I stood near, death-stricken, where I had stopped, I felt the whole room shake and tremble as the torrent leaped upon the wheel with a flinging...