The day’s work was over for her, though it was only just beginning for the miller, and the mother had nothing to do but weep, and her tears fell and fell, and the rain poured and poured.  That last outburst had somewhat relieved her, and she almost wished her husband would come back, as a flash of lightning dazzled her eyes, and the thunder rattled round the old mill, as if the sails had broken up again, and were falling upon the roof of the round-house.  All her senses were acute to-night, and she listened for the miller’s footsteps, and so, listening, in the lull after the thunder, she heard another sound.  Wheels upon the road.

A pang shot through her heart.  Thus had the doctor’s gig sounded the night he came,—­alas, too late!  How long and how intensely she had listened for that!  She first heard it just beyond the mile-stone.  This one must be a good bit on this side of it; up the hill, in fact.  She could not help listening.  It was so like, so terribly like!  Now it spun along the level ground.  Ah, the doctor had not hurried so!  Now it was at the mill, at the door, and—­it stopped.

The miller’s wife rose to run out, she hardly knew why.  But in a moment she checked herself, and went back to her seat.

“I be crazed, surely,” said the poor woman, sitting down again.  “There be more gigs than one in the world, and folk often stops to ask their way of the maester.”

These travellers were a long time about the putting of such a simple question, especially as the night was not a pleasant one to linger out in.  The murmur of voices, too, which the woman overheard, betokened a close conversation, in which the familiar drawl of the windmiller’s dialect blended audibly with that kind of clean-clipt speaking peculiar to gentlefolk.

“He’ve been talking to master’s five minute an’ more,” muttered the miller’s wife.  “What can ’ee want with un?” The talking ceased as she spoke, and the windmiller appeared, followed by a woman carrying a young baby in her arms.

He was a ruddy man for his age at any time, but there was an extra flush on his cheeks just now, and some excitement in his manner, making him look as his wife was not wont to see him more than once a year, after the Foresters’ dinner at the Heart of Oak.  There was a difference, too.  A little too much drink made the windmiller peevish and pompous, but just now he spoke in a kindly, almost conciliating tone.

“See, missus!  Let this good lady dry herself a bit, and get warm, and the little un too.”

A woman—­ill-favored, though there was no positive fault to be found with her features, except that the upper lip was long and cleft, and the lower one very large—­came forward with the child, and began to take off its wraps, and the miller’s wife, giving her face a hasty wipe, went hospitably to help her.

“Tst! tst! little love!” she cried, gulping down a sob, due to her own sad memories, and moving the cloak more tenderly than the woman in whose arms the child lay.  “What a pair of dark eyes, then!  Is’t a boy or girl, m’m?”