Cornish Saints & Sinners

by J. Henry Harris

THE OLD MILL.

There was an old miller, living at an old mill not so very far away, who had the reputation of knowing more about piskies than any man breathing. It was only a walking distance for the Bookworm, and Guy took his rod with him, having been told that below the mill he might cast a fly with some prospect of sport. Whipping a stream is something, and Guy said he'd rather cast at shadows than hang about a dusty old mill, listening to a foolish old man prating about foolish things. In fact, he was a little strong in his language, as he usually was when talking about people or things which did not interest him very much.

The old piskie man at the mill was, in fact, the Bookworm's "find," which was quite enough, as a rule, to put Guy in opposition, and incline him to use epigrammatic language touched with red.

We reached the mill, the like of which is hardly to be found again within the four corners of the kingdom. It was a one-story building, and that so low that we had to be careful when inside not to knock our heads against the beams, and the machinery was as primitive as the process of grinding corn between revolving stones driven by water power. The ancient hopper was being slowly consumed by worms, and the "bolting" cloths hung limp and dusty, like the cloths sent home from Egyptian tombs. We first spied the miller looking through a ventilation hole, which served as a window. When we entered the mill he was sitting on the lid of a thick oak chest, which had outlived the centuries, and seemed quite capable of lasting for ever.

The miller was withered, like the chest, and might have been believed if he said he was as old as the mill, only his eyes were bright and ferrety as they took stock of us through the flour dust accumulated on his eyebrows and lashes—a sort of flour mummy outside of his grave-clothes out for an airing, he looked. The machinery was in motion when we entered, and a fine dust soon settled upon us, and then set us coughing and choking, so that we made a hasty retreat through the door, the top half of which was already open.

The miller's cottage was a thatched dwelling tacked on to the mill, which was also thatched, but nothing was visible of the cottage but windows, on account of the clustering roses and myrtles and fuschias which clung to the old "cob" walls, and crept along the eaves, and scrambled along the thatch.

The old miller followed us out into the open, and stopped the wheel by turning off the water; and then we noticed that the dripping wheel was festooned with lichen, and was half-hidden under the shadow of a huge flowering laurel. There were only three other cottages in the village, and these were all flower-laden; and now the clat, clat, clatter of the old wheel was stopped, the air was musical with the hum of insect symphonies. And then the perfume!

We looked at one another and wondered.

"Quiet like," said the old man; and that was all he had to say about this antique gem in a garden of myrtles and roses. "Quiet like," indeed! Surely men may live in beauty until they cease to see it.