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.

'We used to have a good trade at this mill,' he continued, as he
resumed his pecking; 'but our time be a-most gone by. We be too fur
away up in these here Downs. There! Listen to he!' A faint hollow
whistle came up over the plain, and I saw a long white cloud of steam
miles away, swiftly gliding above the trees beneath which in the
cutting the train was running.

'That be th' express. It be that there steam as have done for us.
Everything got to go according to that there whistle: they sets the
church clock by he. The big London mills as be driven by steam does
the most of the work; and this here foreign wheat, as comes over in
the steamers, puts the market down, so as we yent got a chance to buy
up a lot and keep it till the price gets better. I seed in the paper
as the rate is gone down a penny: the steamers be going to ship the
American wheat a penny a bushel cheaper. So it bean't much good for
Hilary to talk about his wheat. I thenks that'll about do.'

He laid down the millpeck, and took his millstaff to prove the work he
had done. This was made of well-sea