er
marry him nor any one else. I have not the right."

But they saw a long shadow come bobbing up the sunlit road. And then
came a shorter one bobbing by its side; and presently two strange
figures approached the church. The long shadow was made by Miss Phoebe
Summers, the organist, come to practise. Tommy Teague, aged twelve,
was responsible for the shorter shadow. It was Tommy's day to pump the
organ for Miss Phoebe, and his bare toes proudly spurned the dust of
the road.

Miss Phoebe, in her lilac-spray chintz dress, with her accurate little
curls hanging over each ear, courtesied low to Father Abram, and shook
her curls ceremoniously at Miss Chester. Then she and her assistant
climbed the steep stairway to the organ loft.

In the gathering shadows below, Father Abram and Miss Chester
lingered. They were silent; and it is likely that they were busy with
their memories. Miss Chester sat, leaning her head on her hand, with
her eyes fixed far away. Father Abram stood in the next pew, looking
thoughtfully out of the door at the road and the ruined cottage.

Suddenly the scene was transformed for him back almost a score of
years into the past. For, as Tommy pumped away, Miss Phoebe struck
a low bass note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air
that it contained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram
was concerned. The deep, booming vibration that shook the little
frame building was no note from an organ, but the humming of the mill
machinery. He felt sure that the old overshot-wheel was turning; that
he was back again, a dusty, merry miller in the old mountain mill. And
now evening was come, and soon would come Aglaia with flying colours,
toddling across the road to take him home to supper. Father Abram's
eyes were fixed upon the broken door of the cottage.

And then came another wonder. In the gallery overhead the sacks of
flour were stacked in long rows. Perhaps a mouse had been at one of
them; anyway the jar of the deep organ note shook down between the
cracks of the gallery floor a stream of flour, covering Father Abram
from head to foot with the white dust. And then the old miller stepped
into the aisle, and waved his arms and began to sing the miller's
song:

"The wheel goes round,
The grist is ground,
The dusty miller's merry."

--and then the rest of the miracle happened. Miss Chester was leaning
forward from her pew, as pale as the flour itself, her wide-open ey