and lumpy, that one might have thought the wood of it had taken to growing again in its old days, and so the wheel was losing by slow degrees the shape of a wheel, to become some new awful monster of a pollard.  As yet, however, it was going round; slowly, indeed, and with the gravity of age, but doing its work, and casting its loose drops in the alms-giving of a gentle rain upon a little plot of Master Rogers’s garden, which was therefore full of moisture-loving flowers.  This plot was divided from the mill-wheel by a small stream which carried away the surplus water, and was now full and running rapidly.

Beyond the stream, beside the flower bed, stood a dusty young man, talking to a young woman with a rosy face and clear honest eyes.  The moment they saw me they parted.  The young man came across the stream at a step, and the young woman went up the garden towards the cottage.

“That must be Old Rogers’s cottage?” I said to the miller.

“Yes, sir,” he answered, looking a little sheepish.

“Was that his daughter—­that nice-looking young woman you were talking to?”

“Yes, sir, it was.”

And he stole a shy pleased look at me out of the corners of his eyes.

“It’s a good thing,” I said, “to have an honest experienced old mill like yours, that can manage to go on of itself for a little while now and then.”

This gave a great help to his budding confidence.  He laughed.

“Well, sir, it’s not very often it’s left to itself.  Jane isn’t at her father’s above once or twice a week at most.”

“She doesn’t live with them, then?”

“No, sir.  You see they’re both hearty, and they ain’t over well to do, and Jane lives up at the Hall, sir.  She’s upper housemaid, and waits on one of the young ladies.—­Old Rogers has seen a great deal of the world, sir.”

“So I imagine.  I am just going to see him.  Good morning.”

I jumped across the stream, and went up a little gravel-walk, which led me in a few yards to the cottage-door.  It was a sweet place to live in, with honeysuckle growing over the house, and the sounds of the softly-labouring mill-wheel ever in its little porch and about its windows.

The door was open, and Dame Rogers came from within to meet me.  She welcomed me, and led the way into her little kitchen.  As I entered, Jane went out at the back-door.  But it was only to call her father, who presently came in.

“I’m glad to see ye, sir.  This pleasure comes of having no work to-day.  After harvest there comes slack times for the likes of me.  People don’t care about a bag of old bones when they can get hold of young men.  Well, well, never mind, old woman.  The Lord’ll take us through somehow.  When the wind blows, the ship goes; when the wind drops, the ship stops; but the sea is His all the same, for He made it; and the wind is His all the same too.”

He spoke in the most matter-of-fact tone, unaware of anything poetic in what he said.  To him it was just common sense, and common sense only.