An ox-team with a load of grain creaked up the hill and stopped at the mill door. The driver, seeing Friend Barton's broad-brimmed drab felt hat against the dark interior of the barn, came down the short lane leading from the mill, past the house and farm-buildings.
“Fixin' up for travelin', Uncle Tommy?”
Vain compliments, such as worldly titles of Mr. and Mrs., were unacceptable to Thomas Barton, and he was generally known and addressed as “Uncle Tommy” by the world's people of a younger generation.
“It is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps, neighbor Jordan. I am getting myself in readiness to obey the Lord, whichever way He shall call me.”
Farmer Jordan cast a shrewd eye over the premises. They wore that patient, sad, exhumed look which old farm-buildings are apt to have in early spring. The roofs were black with rain, and brightened with patches of green moss. Farmer Jordan instinctively calculated how many “bunches o' shingle” would be required to rescue them from the decline into which they had fallen, indicated by these hectic green spots.
“Wal, the Lord calls most of us to stay at home and look after things, such weather as this. Good plantin' weather; good weather for breakin' ground; fust-rate weather for millin'! This is a reg'lar miller's rain, Uncle Tommy. You'd ought to be takin' advantage of it. I've got a grist back here; wish ye could manage to let me have it when I come back from store.”
The grist was ground and delivered before Friend Barton went in to his supper that night. Dorothy Barton had been mixing bread, and was wiping her white arms and hands on the roller towel by the kitchen door, as her father stamped and scraped his feet on the stones outside.
“There! I do believe I forgot to toll neighbor Jordan's rye,” he said, as he gave a final rub on the broom Dorothy handed out to him. “It's wonderful how careless I get!”
“Well, father, I don't suppose thee'd ever forget, and toll a grist twice!”
“I believe I've been mostly preserved from mistakes of that kind,” said Friend Barton gently. “Well, well! To be sure,” he continued musingly. “It may be the Lord who stays my hand from gathering profit unto myself while his lambs go unfed.”