“But suppose it were naught but an idle tale?” said the merry youth, with a smile.
“Oh no, Valentine,” said the maiden seriously. “All my life long have I dwelt here on the shore, and heard the mysterious echoes from the hills. Sometimes the sound is of the lowing of cattle, sometimes of the threshing of grain, sometimes ’tis the creaking of a hay wain in a field. And always the old and wise tell of the Husbandman of the Hills. Some day a mortal will find the hidden Husbandman—do you but wait and see.”
It was the early summer now, and all went merry as a marriage bell. The heavy water-wheel turned with a rolling thunder and a sound of endless splashing; and the four arms of the windmill spun with a windy thrum and a clock-like clack from the rising of the wind to the calm of sundown and the eve.
And now, alas, events were at hand which were to shatter the plans of the two millers and wreck the hopes of Cecily and Valentine!
At the close of the harvest-tide, the Princess Celestia, only daughter of the King and Queen of the country, was going to be married. Now it chanced that the Queen, her mother, was famous in the land as a maker of cake, and presently this good lady promised her daughter a wedding cake so splendid and delicious that painters would beg to be allowed to paint its portrait, and poets to praise it in glorious and immortal song.
Yes, the Queen would make the cake with her own white hands, the batter should be mixed in a golden bowl with a golden spoon, the two best hens in the kingdom should be summoned to lay the eggs, the oven should have a door of diamonds, and as for the flour, that should come from the finest fields and the best mill in all the land.
“I know what I’ll do; I’ll offer a rich reward for the best flour,” said the good Queen. And calling the royal herald to her presence, she bade him summon all good millers to strive for the prize, and to bring of their new flour to the palace at the close of the harvest yield.
Now it chanced that the Queen’s herald, all dressed in blue-and-white and sounding a silver horn, came cantering first to the water-miller’s door.
“I should like to win that treasure,” said the water-miller to himself, musing in the doorway.
“After all, my flour is better than the wind-miller’s meal. That treasure should be mine, must be mine. Yes, mine, mine, mine!”