g piece of statuary could not, however, be relied on as a vane,
owing to the neighbouring hill, which formed variable currents in the
wind.

The leafy and quieter wing of the mill-house was the part occupied by
Mrs. Garland and her daughter, who made up in summer-time for the
narrowness of their quarters by overflowing into the garden on stools and
chairs. The parlour or dining-room had a stone floor--a fact which the
widow sought to disguise by double carpeting, lest the standing of Anne
and herself should be lowered in the public eye. Here now the mid-day
meal went lightly and mincingly on, as it does where there is no greedy
carnivorous man to keep the dishes about, and was hanging on the close
when somebody entered the passage as far as the chink of the parlour
door, and tapped. This proceeding was probably adopted to kindly avoid
giving trouble to Susan, the neighbour's pink daughter, who helped at
Mrs. Garland's in the mornings, but was at that moment particularly
occupied in standing on the water-butt and gazing at the soldiers, with
an inhaling position of the mouth and circular eyes.

There was a flutter in the little dining-room--the sensitiveness of
habitual solitude makes hearts beat for preternaturally small reasons--and
a guessing as to who the visitor might be. It was some military
gentleman from the camp perhaps? No; that was impossible. It was the
parson? No; he would not come at dinner-time. It was the well-informed
man who travelled with drapery and the best Birmingham earrings? Not at
all; his time was not till Thursday at three. Before they could think
further the visitor moved forward another step, and the diners got a
glimpse of him through the same friendly chink that had afforded him a
view of the Garland dinner-table.

'O! It is only Loveday.'

This approximation to nobody was the miller above mentioned, a hale man
of fifty-five or sixty--hale all through, as many were in those days, and
not merely veneered with purple by exhilarating victuals and drinks,
though the latter were not at all despised by him. His face was indeed
rather pale than otherwise, for he had just come from the mill. It was
capable of immense changes of expression: mobility was its essence, a
roll of flesh forming a buttress to his nose on each side, and a deep
ravine lying between his lower lip and the tumulus represented by his
chin. These fleshy lumps moved stealthily, as if of their own accord,
wheneve