standing in the pathway of his life.

He rapped at the farm door and a step came slowly down the stone-paved
passage. Then Billy Blee, the miller's right-hand man, opened to him.
Bent he was from the small of the back, with a highly coloured, much
wrinkled visage, and ginger hair, bleached by time to a paler shade. His
poll was bald and shining, and thick yellow whiskers met beneath a
clean-shorn chin. Billy's shaggy eyebrows, little bright eyes, and long
upper lip, taken with the tawny fringe under his chops, gave him the
look of an ancient and gigantic lion-monkey; and indeed there was not
lacking in him an ape-like twist, as shall appear.

"Hullo! boy Blanchard! An' what might you want?" he asked.

"To see Miller."

"Come in then; we'm all alone in kitchen, him and me, awver our grog and
game. What's the matter now?"

"A private word for Miller's ear," said Will cautiously.

"Come you in then. Us'll do what we may for 'e. Auld heads be the best
stepping-stones young folks can have, understood right; awnly the likes
of you mostly chooses to splash through life on your awn damn silly
roads."

Mr. Blee, whose friendship and familiarity with his master was of the
closest, led on, and Will soon stood before Mr. Lyddon.

The man who owned Monks Barton, and who there prosperously combined the
callings of farmer and miller, had long enjoyed the esteem of the
neighbourhood in which he dwelt, as had his ancestors before him,
through many generations. He had won reputation for a sort of silent
wisdom. He never advised any man ill, never hesitated to do a kindly
action, and himself contrived to prosper year in, year out, no matter
what period of depression might be passing over Chagford. Vincent Lyddon
was a widower of sixty-five--a grey, thin, tall man, slow of speech and
sleepy of eye. A weak mouth, and a high, round forehead, far smoother
than his age had promised, were distinguishing physical features of him.
His wife had been dead eighteen years, and of his two children one only
survived. The elder, a boy toddling in early childhood at the water's
edge, was unmissed until too late, and found drowned next day after a
terrible night of agony for both parents. Indeed, Mrs. Lyddon never
recovered from the shock, and Phoebe was but a year old when her mother
died. Further, it need only be mentioned that the miller had heard of
Will's courting more than once, but absolutely refused to allow the
matter serious considerat