One evening he brought home a newspaper from the Heart of Oak, and when Mrs. Lake had taken the baby, he persuaded Abel to come into the round-house and give him a lesson.  Abel could read so much of it that George was quite overwhelmed by his learning.

“Thee be’s mortal larned, Abel, sartinly.  But I’ll never read like thee,” he added, despairingly.  “Drattle th’ old witch; why didn’t she give I some schooling?” He spoke with spiteful emphasis, and Abel, too well used to his rough language to notice the uncivil reference to his mother, said with some compassion, —

“Were you never sent to school then, Gearge?”

“They should ha’ kept me there,” said George, self-defensively.  “I played moocher,” he continued,—­by which he meant truant,—­“and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home, the old vool!”

“Well, Gearge, thee must work hard, and I’ll teach thee, Gearge, I’ll teach thee!” said little Abel, proudly.  “And by-and-by, Gearge, we’ll get a slate, and I’ll teach thee to write too, Gearge, that I will!”

George’s small eyes gave a slight squint, as they were apt to do when he was thinking profoundly.

“Abel,” said he, “can thee read writing, my boy?”

“I think I could, Gearge,” said Abel, “if ’twas pretty plain.”

“Abel, my boy,” said George, after a pause, with a broad sweet smile upon his “voolish” face, “go to the door and see if the wind be rising at all; us mustn’t forget th’ old mill, Abel, with us larning.  Sartinly not, Abel, mun.”

Proud of the implied partnership in the care of the mill, Abel hastened to the outer door.  As he passed the inner one, leading into the dwelling-room, he could hear his mother crooning a strange, drony, old local ditty, as she put the little Jan to sleep.  As Abel went out, she was singing the first verse:  —

     “The swallow twitters on the barn,
      The rook is cawing on the tree,
      And in the wood the ringdove coos,
      But my false love hath fled from me.”

Abel opened the door, and looked out.  One of those small white moths known as “millers” went past him.  The night was still,—­so utterly still that no sound of any sort whatever broke upon the ear.  In dead silence and loneliness stood the mill.  Even the miller-moth had gone; and a cat ran in by Abel’s legs, as if the loneliness without were too much for her.  The sky was gray.

Abel went back to the round-house, where George was struggling to fix the candlestick securely in the wall.

“Cuss the thing!” he exclaimed, whilst the skin of his face took a mottled hue that was the nearest approach he ever made to a blush.  “The tallow’ve been a dropping, Abel, my boy.  I think ’twas the wind when you opened the door, maybe.  And I’ve been a trying to fix un more firmly.  That’s all, Abel; that’s all.”

“There ain’t no signs of wind,” said Abel.  “It’s main quiet and unked too outside, Gearge.  And I do think it be like rain.  There was a miller-moth, Gearge; do that mean any thing?”