However childlike in some respects himself, George was not fond of children, and he had hitherto seemed to have a particular spite against Abel.  He, quite as often as the miller, would drive the boy from the round-house, and thwart his fancy for climbing the ladders to see the processes of the different floors.

Abel would have been happy for hours together watching the great stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper on its way to the stones below.  Many a time had he crept up and hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out as a dog worries a cat, crying, “Come out, thee little varment!  Master Lake he don’t allow thee hereabouts.”

The cleverness of the miller’s man in discovering poor Abel’s retreats probably arose from the fact that he had so rooted a dislike for the routine work of his daily duties that he would rather employ himself about the mill in any way than by attending to the mill-business, and that his idleness and stupidity over work were only equalled by his industry and shrewdness in mischief.

Poor Abel had a dread of the great, gawky, mischievous-looking man, which probably prevented his complaining to his mother of many a sly pinch and buffet which he endured from him.  And George took some pains to keep up this wholesome awe of himself, by vague and terrifying speeches, and by a trick of what he called “dropping on” poor Abel in the dusk, with hideous grimaces and uncouth sounds.

He once came thus upon Abel in an upper floor, and the boy fled from him so hastily that he caught his foot in the ladder and fell headlong.  Though it must have been quite uncertain for some moments whether Abel had not broken his neck, the miller’s man displayed no anxiety.  He only clapped his hands upon his knees, in a sort of uncouth ecstasy of spite, saying, “Down a comes vlump, like a twoad from roost.  Haw, haw, haw!”

Happily, Abel fell with little more damage to himself than the mill-cats experienced in many such a tumble, as they fled before the tormenting George.

But, after all this, it was with no small surprise that Abel found himself the object of attentions from the miller’s man, which bore the look of friendliness.

At first, when George made civil speeches, and invited Abel to “see the stwones a-grinding,” he only felt an additional terror, being convinced that mischief was meant in reality.  But, when days and weeks went by, and he wandered unmolested from floor to floor, with many a kindly word from George, and not a single cuff or nip, the sweet-tempered Abel began to feel gratitude, and almost an affection, for his quondam tormentor.

George, for his part, had hitherto done some violence to his own feelings by his constant refusal to allow Abel to help him to sweep the mill or couple the sacks for lifting.  He would have been only too glad to put some of his own work on the shoulders of another, had it not been for the vexatious thought that he would be giving pleasure by so doing where he only wanted to annoy.  And in his very unamiable disposition malice was a stronger quality even than idleness.