ew tall and
big--taller than they used to be, he thought--and they could run
quick, and so forth; but there was no stamina, no power of endurance,
of withstanding exposure like there was formerly. The mere measure of
a man, he was certain, had nothing to do with his strength; and he
could never understand how it was that the army folk would have men
precisely so high and so many inches round. Just then he was called
away to a carter who had brought up his team and waggon at the door,
and as he was gone some time I went up under the roof, whence there
was a beautiful view down over the plain.

The swifts, which had but just arrived, were rushing through the sky
in their headlong way; they would build presently in the roof. The
mill was built at the mouth of a coombe on the verge of the Downs; the
coombe was narrow and steep, as if nature had begun a cutting with the
view of tunnelling through the mass of the hills. At the upper end of
the coombe the spring issued, and at the lower was the millpond. There
is something peculiarly human in a mill--something that carries the
mind backwards into the past, the days of crossbow and lance and
armour. Possibly there was truth in Tibbald's idea that men grow
larger in the present time without corresponding strength, for is it
not on record that some at least of the armour preserved in
collections will not fit those who have tried it on in recent times?
Yet the knight for whom it was originally made, though less in stature
and size, may have had much more vigour and power of endurance.

The ceaseless rains last year sent the farmers in some places to the
local millers once more somewhat in the old style. Part of their wheat
proved so poor that they could not sell it at market; and, rather than
waste it, they had it ground at the village mills with the idea of
consuming as much of the flour as possible at home. But the flour was
so bad as to be uneatable. As I parted with Tibbald that morning he
whispered to me, as he leaned over the hatch, to say a good word for
him with Hilary about the throw of oak that was going on in one part
of the Chace. 'If you was to speak to he, he could speak to the
steward, and may be I could get a stick or two at a bargain'--with a
wink. Tibbald did a little in buying and selling timber, and, indeed,
in many other things. Pleased as he was to show me the mill, and to
talk about it by the hour together, the shrewd old fellow still had an
eye to busines