"Know about the machinery?" he repeated vaguely. "Yes, I know the ins and outs. Your father explained it all to me one afternoon."
He no longer dared to look at Greta, but kept his eyes upon the grain, as the hopper doled it out to the shoe, and the shoe to the running-stone. The supply of grain stopped; a curious grating noise sounded from below, as the upper stone found no better work to do than to grind at its neighbour's face.
Suddenly Gabriel recalled what the miller had told him about the danger of leaving the stones unsupplied with grist. Like a flash he was down the ladder and across the littered floor to where the driving-belt was going its merry round. He took a stick that was lying close to his hand, and pushed the belt from one of the supporting pulleys; the belt hung limp, and the mill-wheel might turn as it would now for all Gabriel cared. The sweat was running off his face as he came back to Greta's side.
"What is the matter? What have you been doing?" she asked, at a loss to account for this fresh perturbation of his.
"Switching off the belt. Lass, if we had let those stones grind much longer, they would have blown the place up."
"Blown the mill up? But how?"
"They'd have grown hot enough to set fire to the dust between them—and that would have meant death to all in the house, Greta."
Greta, troubled with the glimmerings of a new hope, rested her forehead against the cool stonework of the window. The idea took shape at last; she turned to the preacher with a motherly, protecting air.
"Gabriel, suppose you have kil—suppose some one did fall over the quarry-edge—haven't you saved two lives to-night? If you had not come, I should never have known the danger, and—Gabriel, isn't it worth something to have saved my life?"