Sky-gazing was an old habit with Jan, and his active imagination was not slow to follow his foster-mother’s fancies.  The niece did all the house-work, for the freakish state of Mrs. Lake’s memory made her help too uncertain to be trusted to.  But, with a restlessness which was perhaps part of her disease, she wandered from story to story of the windmill, guided by Jan, and the windmiller made no objection.

The country folk who brought grist to the mill would strain their ears with a sense of awe to catch Mrs. Lake’s mutterings as she glided hither and thither with that mysterious shadow on her spirit, and the miller himself paid a respect to her intellect now it was shattered which he had not paid whilst it was whole.  Indeed he was very kind to her, and every Sunday he led her tenderly to church, where the music soothed her as it soothed Saul of old.  As the brain failed, she became happier, but her sorrow was like a pain numbed by narcotics; it awoke again from time to time.  She would fancy the children were with her, and then suddenly arouse to the fact that they were not, and moan that she had lost all.

“Thee’ve got one left, mother dear,” Jan would cry, and his caresses comforted her.  But at times she was troubled by an imperfect remembrance of Jan’s history, and, with some echo of her old reluctance to adopt him, she would wail that she “didn’t want a stranger child.”  It cut Jan to the heart.  Ever since he had known that he was not a miller’s son, he had protested against the knowledge.  He loved the windmill and the windmiller’s trade.  He loved his foster-parents, and desired no others.  He had a miller’s thumb, and he flattened it with double pains now that his right to it was disputed.  He would press Mrs. Lake’s thin fingers against it in proof that he belonged to her, and the simple wile was successful, for she would smile and say, “Ay, ay, love!  Thee’s a miller’s boy, for thee’ve got the miller’s thumb.”

Two or three causes combined to strengthen Jan’s love for his home.  His revolt from the fact that he was no windmiller born gave the energy of contradiction.  Then to fulfil Abel’s behests, and to take his place in the mill, was now Jan’s chief ambition.  And whence could be seen such glorious views as from the windows of a windmill?

Master Lake was very glad of his help.  The quarterly payment had now been due for some weeks, but, in telling the schoolmaster, he only said, “I’d be as well pleased if they forgot un altogether, now.  I don’t want him took away, no time.  And now I’ve lost Abel, Jan’ll have the mill after me.  He’s a good son is Jan.”

And, as he echoed Jan’s praises, it never dawned on Master Swift that he was the cause of the allowance having stopped.  Jan was jealous of his title as Master Lake’s son, but the schoolmaster dwelt much in his own mind on the fact that Jan was no real child of the district; partly in his ambition for him, and partly out of a dim hope that he would himself be some day allowed to adopt him.  In stating that the windmiller had lost all his children by the fever, he had stated the bare fact in all good faith; and as neither he nor the Rector guessed the real drift of Mr. Ford’s letter, the mistake was never corrected.