“That’s the pest of the village, Tom. Nice young scoundrel. An idle dog, who has had a dozen places and will not stay in them, though he has no Cousin Sam to quarrel with.”
Tom winced, for the words were a decided hit at him.
“So he has settled down into a regular nuisance, who does a bit of poaching, steals fruit, breaks windows, and generally annoys every one in the place. If he were not such an ugly, shambling cub some recruiting sergeant might pick him up. As it is, we have to put up with him and his ways.”
“Yah!” came from a distance; and Tom’s nerves tingled, for he did not like to hear the insult directed at his uncle, however strange he might be.
“There, let’s go on with our inspection, my boy,” and the gate was closed again, and they walked together up the slope into the mill.
There was not much to see on the ground-floor, save the whitened brick walls, a huge pillar or post in the middle, and a ladder-like flight of steps on one side, up which Uncle Richard led the way; and as Tom emerged from a trap-door, he found himself in a circular chamber, a little less than the one below, with three windows at the sides, the doorway he had seen from without, and three pairs of millstones placed horizontally, and connected by shafts with the mechanism above the cobwebby and flour-whitened ceiling. There was a flight of steps, too, here, and Tom now noticed that there was a trap-door overhead, formed with two flaps and a hole in the middle, while a similar one was at his feet.
“For sending the sacks up and down,” said Uncle Richard. “The floors are thoroughly solid, and made of good stuff. Excellent,” he continued. “Let’s go up to the top.”
He led the way up the second flight of steps into the next chamber, which was wonderfully like the floor below, minus the millstones; but the roof, instead of being a flat ceiling of boards and beams, was a complication of rafters, ties, posts, and cog-wheels, while at one side was the large pivot passing out through well-greased and blackened bearings, which bore the five sails of the mill, balanced to a great extent by the projecting fan, which, acted upon by the wind, caused the whole of the wooden cap which formed the top to revolve.
“There’s the way out to repair the sails, or oil the great fan,” said Uncle Richard, pointing to a little sloping doorway in the curved cap roof. “Think the place will do? It’s a good fifteen feet from the floor to the curve.”
“Do, sir?”