“The Mill Farm.”
“I can’t think. Those Larkin folks hev worked the land these two years past, but the mill hasn’t run this long while,—not since the winter Mis’ O’More died and the ice bulged the dam; the fodder trade has all gone away, and I don’t know what ’Biram Slocum can turn it to ’nless he can insure the water an’ then let it loose somehow.”
“There is a party of engineer fellows, or something of the sort, just come to camp out up by Rooster Lake,—sort of a summer school, I guess, for there are some older men along that they call professors. They scatter all over the country surveyin’ and crackin’ up the rocks with little hammers to see what they are made of.
“This afternoon half a dozen of them came down to the shop to see some new kind of a boring tool that our foreman has designed, and Mr. Clarke was with them,—you know he is the man who started the Art and Trade School in Northboro, and has his finger in a dozen pies. Pretty soon the superintendent called me and said, ‘Here, Lane, you live out at Laurelville; these gentlemen wish to see the old Turner Mill Farm place. I’ll let you off the rest of the day if you’ll show them the way over.’
“I got in the runabout with Mr. Clarke and the others followed in a livery six-seater. The old gentleman asked me all sorts of questions about the water-power, and how low the stream fell in summer, and if the pond ever froze clear through, and one thing and another.
“When we got to the Mill Farm, there was no one at home but the dogs and hens; I suppose the folks had all gone to Northboro to the circus.”
“Sure enough, it is circus day! How did I forget it?” ejaculated Mrs. Lane. “That accounts for why there were so few folks on the roads this noon!”
“Yes, everybody seems to have gone but ourselves, even Lockwood’s field-hands took a day off.”
“They did? Then they didn’t go up and down the cemetery hill road this noon?”