CHAPTER VI
THE OLD MILL COVE
He had known the mill all his life; at least he believed he had. He had gazed upon that awesome black ruin, keeping watch and ward over the wicked little cove below it, like some sentinel on guard over a dangerous criminal, with wide, childish eyes, and a mind full of terrified speculation. He had known it later, when, with boyish bravado, he had flouted the horrific stories of a superstitious countryside, and explored its barren, ruined recesses. He had known it still later, when, with manhood's eyes opening to a dim appreciation of all those things which have gone before in the great effort of life, he had seen in it a picturesque example of the endless struggle which has gone on since the dawn of life.
So he thought he knew it all.
Now the limitations of his knowledge were forcing themselves upon him. Now he was realizing that there were secrets by the score in those every-day things which a lifetime of contact may never reveal. The strangeness of it all set him marvelling. The limitations of human understanding seemed extraordinarily narrow.
He gazed down into the gaping cavity beneath his feet, and, by the dim rays of a lighted lantern, counted the worn stone steps until the darkness below swallowed up their outline.
Ruxton Farlow straightened himself up and glanced about him at the bare stone walls, from the joints of which the cement had long since fallen. He looked up at the worm-eaten, oaken rafters which had stood the wear of centuries. The flooring which they supported had long since fallen into decay, and he only wondered how much longer those sturdy oaken beams would continue to support the colossal weight of the millstones now resting from their grinding labors.
Through the rents which time and weather had wrought he saw the warm glow of daylight above, for all was ruin in the great old mill, ruin within and without. As it was with the walls of stone, and the great tower of woodwork above them, so it was with the outbuildings beyond the doorway, within which he stood. The walls remained, heavily buttressed by the hardy hands of a race of men who had understood so well the necessity for fortifying their homes against all eventualities, but the timbers of the roofs had long since fallen victims to the inclemencies of the seasons and the ruthless "North-easters" which, probably, since the time when the iron shores of Britain first emerged from beneath the waters, had beaten their relentless wings against the barrier which held up their freedom.
Ruxton set his lantern on the ground and moved away to the wide doorway, which no longer possessed the remotest sign of the old wooden doors which had probably been at one time heavy enough to resist a siege. Here he drew a letter from his pocket and read it carefully over by the light of the sunset.