ugh white and dim, and lay about
in long powdery shafts, and these were white, too, instead of yellow. So
was the very dust white; or rather, it was good oatmeal and wheat flour
that lay thick and crumbling on the rafters above, and the wheels and
pulleys and other gear. As for Ham, the first time Yvon saw him in the
mill, he cried out "Mont Blanc!" and would not call him anything else
for some time. For Ham was whiter than all the rest, in his
working-dress, cap and jacket and breeches, white to begin with, and
powdered soft and furry, like his face and eyebrows, with the flying
meal. Down-stairs there was plenty of noise; oats and corn and wheat
pouring into the hoppers, and the great stones going round and round,
and wheels creaking and buzzing, and belts droning overhead. Yvon could
not talk at all here, and I not too much; only Ham's great voice and his
father's (old Mr. Belfort was Ham over again, gray under the powder,
instead of pink and brown) could roar on quietly, if I may so express
it, rising high above the rattle and clack of the machinery, and yet
peaceful as the stream outside that turned the great wheels and set the
whole thing flying. So, as he could not live long without talking, Yvon
loved best the loft above, where the corn was stored, both in bags and
unground, and where the big blowers were, and the old green fire-engine,
and many other curious things. I had known them all my life, but they
were strange to him, and he never tired, any more than if he had been a
boy of ten. Sometimes I wondered if he could be twenty-two, as he said;
sometimes when he would swing himself on to the slide, where the bags of
meal and flour were loaded on to the wagons. Well, Melody, it was a
thing to charm a boy's heart; it makes mine beat a little quicker to
think of it, even now; perhaps I was not much wiser than my friend,
after all. This was a slide some three feet wide, and say seven or eight
feet long, sloping just enough to make it pleasant, and polished till it
shone, from the bags that rubbed along it day after day, loading the
wagons as they backed up under it. Nothing would do but we must slide
down this, as if, I say, we were children of ten years old, coming down
astride of the meal-sacks, and sending a plump of flour into the air as
we struck the wagon. Father Belfort thought Yvon was touched in the
brain; but he was all the more gentle on this account. Boys were not
allowed on the slide, unless it were a h