“A boy,” said a voice from the door, and the miller’s wife, with a suppressed shriek of timidity, became aware of a man whose entrance she had not perceived, and to whom she dropped a hasty courtesy.

He was a man slightly above the middle height, whose slenderness made him seem taller.  An old cloak, intended as much to disguise as to protect him, did not quite conceal a faultlessness of costume beneath it, after the fashion of the day.  Waistcoats of three kinds, one within the other, a frilled shirt, and a well-adjusted stock, were to be seen, though he held the ends of the old cloak tightly across him, as the wind would have caught them in the doorway.  He wore a countryman’s hat, which seemed to suit him as little as the cloak, and from beneath the brim his dark eyes glared with a restless, dissatisfied look, and were so dark and so fierce and bright that one could hardly see any other details of his face, unless it were his smooth chin, which, either from habit or from the stiffness of his stock, he carried strangely up in the air.

“Indeed, sir,” said the windmiller’s wife, courtesying, and setting a chair, with her eyes wandering back by a kind of fascination to those of the stranger; “be pleased to take a seat, sir.”

The stranger sat down for a moment, and then stood up again.  Then he seemed to remember that he still wore his hat, and removed it, holding it stiffly before him in his gloved hands.  This displayed a high, narrow head, on which the natural hair was worn short and without parting, and a face which, though worn, was not old.  And, for no definable reason, an impression stole over the windmiller’s wife that he, like her husband, had some wish to conciliate, which in his case struggled hard with a very different kind of feeling, more natural to him.

Then he took out a watch of what would now be called the old turnip shape, and said impatiently to the miller, “Our time is short, my good man.”

“To be sure, sir,” said the windmiller.  “Missus! a word with you here.”  And he led the way into the round-house, where his wife followed, wondering.  Her wonder was not lessened when he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and, with flushed cheek and a tone of excitement that once more recalled the Foresters’ annual meeting, said, “We’ve had some sore times, missus, of late, but good luck have come our way to-night.”

“And how then, maester?” faltered his wife.

“That child,” said the windmiller, turning his broad thumb expressively towards the inner room, “belongs to folk that want to get a home for un, and can afford to pay for un, too.  And the place being healthy and out of the way, and having heard of our trouble, and you just bereaved of a little un” —

“No! no! no!” shrieked the poor mother, who now understood all.  “I couldn’t, maester, ’tis unpossible, I could not.  Oh dear! oh dear! isn’t it bad enough to lose the sweetest child that ever saw light, without taking in an outcast to fill that dear angel’s place?  Oh dear! oh dear!”