‘The mill not going to-day, Beauty?’ bawled Milly.

‘No—­a, Beauty; it baint,’ replied the girl, loweringly, and without stirring.

‘And what’s gone with the stile?’ demanded Milly, aghast.  ’It’s tore away from the paling!’

‘Well, so it be,’ replied the wood nymph in the red petticoat, showing her fine teeth with a lazy grin.

‘Who’s a bin and done all that?’ demanded Milly.

‘Not you nor me, lass,’ said the girl.

‘’Twas old Pegtop, your father, did it,’ cried Milly, in rising wrath.

‘’Appen it wor,’ she replied.

‘And the gate locked.’

‘That’s it—­the gate locked,’ she repeated, sulkily, with a defiant side-glance at Milly.

‘And where’s Pegtop?’

‘At t’other side, somewhere; how should I know where he be?’ she replied.

‘Who’s got the key?’

‘Here it be, lass,’ she answered, striking her hand on her pocket.  ’And how durst you stay us here?  Unlock it, huzzy, this minute!’ cried Milly, with a stamp.

Her answer was a sullen smile.

‘Open the gate this instant!’ bawled Milly.

‘Well, I won’t.’

I expected that Milly would have flown into a frenzy at this direct defiance, but she looked instead puzzled and curious—­the girl’s unexpected audacity bewildered her.

’Why, you fool, I could get over the paling as soon as look at you, but I won’t.  What’s come over you?  Open the gate, I say, or I’ll make you.’

‘Do let her alone, dear,’ I entreated, fearing a mutual assault.  ’She has been ordered, may be, not to open it.  Is it so, my good girl?’

‘Well, thou’rt not the biggest fool o’ the two,’ she observed, commendatively, ‘thou’st hit it, lass.’

‘And who ordered you?’ exclaimed Milly.

‘Fayther.’

’Old Pegtop.  Well, that’s summat to laugh at, it is—­our servant a-shutting us out of our own grounds.’

‘No servant o’ yourn!’

‘Come, lass, what do you mean?’

‘He be old Silas’s miller, and what’s that to thee?’

With these words the girl made a spring on the hasp of the padlock, and then got easily over the gate.

‘Can’t you do that, cousin?’ whispered Milly to me, with an impatient nudge.  ‘I wish you’d try.’

‘No, dear—­come away, Milly,’ and I began to withdraw.

’Lookee, lass, ’twill be an ill day’s work for thee when I tell the Governor,’ said Milly, addressing the girl, who stood on a log of timber at the other side, regarding us with a sullen composure.

‘We’ll be over in spite o’ you,’ cried Milly.

‘You lie!’ answered she.

‘And why not, huzzy?’ demanded my cousin, who was less incensed at the affront than I expected.  All this time I was urging Milly in vain to come away.

‘Yon lass is no wild cat, like thee—­that’s why,’ said the sturdy portress.