As we returned towards Lucketts' Place, he pointed out to me a distant house upon which he said slates had been first used in that neighbourhood. Fifty or sixty years since no slates were to be seen there, and when they began to be introduced the old folk manifested great opposition. They said slate would never last—the moss would eat through it, and so cause holes; and, in fact, some of the slate that was brought up did decay and become useless. But that was, of course, an inferior kind, quite different to what is now employed. In so comparatively short a period has everything—even the mode of roofing—changed that the introduction of slates is still in many places within the memory of man. Hilary had still a lingering preference for thatch; and though he could not deny the utility of slate, his inclination was obviously in favour of straw. He assured me that good straw from a good harvest (for there was much difference in it), well laid on by a good thatcher, had been known to keep out the weather for forty-five years.
We looked into the garden at the Place, where Hilary particularly called my attention to the kidney-beans; for, said he, if the kidney-beans run up the sticks well, with a strong vine, then it would be a capital hop-year. On the contrary, if they were weak and poor, the hops would prove a failure. Thus the one plant was an index to the other, though they might be growing a hundred miles apart, both being particularly sensitive to the same atmospheric influences.
In a distant tree beyond the rickyard there was something hanging in the branches that I could not quite make out: it was a limb of a dead horse. A cart-horse belonging to a neighbouring farmer had met with an accident and had to be killed, when, according to old custom, portions were sent round to each adjacent farmstead for the dogs, which then had a feast. Thus, said Hilary, according to the old saw, the death of a horse is the life of a dog.
THE WATER-MILL. FIELD NAMES.
'Our time be a-most gone by,' said the miller looking up from his work and laying aside the millpeck for a moment as he rubbed his eyes with his white and greasy sleeve. From a window of the old mill by Okebourne I was gazing over the plain green with rising wheat, where the titlarks were singing joyously in the sunshine. A millstone had been 'thrown off' on some full sacks—like cushions—and Tibbald, the miller, was dexterously pecking the grooves afresh.
The millpeck is a little tool like a double adze, or perhaps rather like two chisels set in the head of a mallet. Though age was stealing upon him, Tibbald's eye and hand were still true, and his rude sculpture was executed with curious precision. The grooves, which are the teeth of the millstone, radiate from the centre, but do not proceed direct to the edge: they slant slightly.
'There bean't many as can do this job,' he said, 'I can put in sixteen or twenty to the inch. These old French burrs be the best stone; they be hard, but they be mild and takes the peck well.' Ponderous as the millstones appear, they are capable of being set so that their surfaces shall grind with extreme accuracy. The nether, called the 'bed stone,' is stationary; the upper millstone, or 'runner,' revolves, and the grain crushed between the two works out along the furrows to the edge.
Now and then the miller feels the grain as it emerges with his pudgy thumb and finger, and knows by touch how the stones are grinding. It is perceptibly warm at the moment it issues forth, from the friction: yet the stones must not grind too close, or they 'kill' the wheat, which should be only just cracked, so as to skin well. To attain this end, first, the surfaces of the stones must be level, and the grooves must be exactly right; and, secondly, the upper stone must be hung at the exact distance above the other to the smallest fraction of an inch. The upper millstone is now sometimes balanced with lead, which Tibbald said was not the case of old.