He rose and grasped an outstretched hand.
“He is gone,” said the guests. “The exertion has been too much for him.” And his pupils and friends came round him, the tears standing in their eyes.
At that moment a gust of wind ran through the open doors of the hall, and the black cloak, which its owner had laid on a window-sill before he sat down at the table, was blown from it and flew out into the air. No one saw it go, but it rose on the sudden wind and sailed upwards, above the town, above the steeple, and disappeared like a dark cloud into the distant spaces of sky.
“Some day,” said the miller to little Peter, “I’ll take you to the town in my cart and show you the statue of that man in the wall of the old house.”
“And you’ll let me hold the end of the reins and the whip, and drive too, won’t you?” shouted the little boy.
“Well, perhaps I will,” laughed the miller, “only Janet must come too, to keep you in order.”
CONCLUSION
It was not long after this that the miller kept his promise. The horse was harnessed and away they drove to the town. He and Janet sat together, with Peter between them; the little boy held the end of the reins in one hand and the whip in the other, shouting and flourishing the lash about and thinking that coachmen were even better people than millers. Janet was happy too. She sat smiling and holding the tail of his coat, for fear he should overbalance himself and fall out into the road.
They left the cart at an inn, and went to see the house with its statue in the niche of the wall and carved gable-ends turned towards the street. It was now inhabited by poor families, whose washing flapped from the upper story like a row of banners over the head of the stone image. They stood on the pavement of the High Street and looked up to the giddy point of the steeple, where the weathercock twirled, more than a hundred feet in the air; they wondered at the quaint houses, with their outside staircases and their little wooden triangles of drying haddocks nailed against the wall. Then they strolled to the docks and stood at the place from which the lovely Nix had dived into the salt water. The tide lapped and gurgled against the quays, and the wind sang in the rigging of the ships alongside, and the fair-haired sailors talked in a foreign tongue, shouting to the fishwives who passed in their blue petticoats and amber necklaces along the cobbled roadway. The lighthouse stood on the promontory and the North Sea rolled and heaved outside the bar. It was a delightful holiday.