Taking Tales.
by W.H.G. Kingston.
STORY ONE
CHAPTER 1.
THE MILLER OF HILLBROOK.
There are all sorts of mills: some go by water, undershot or overshot; but if the millpond is dry, or the stream runs low, they come to a standstill. They want help, they must have water, to go on. Next there are steam-mills, which make a great noise and do a great deal of work; but they want coals and water too: if both are not brought to them, they stop and can do nothing. And then there are wind-mills; but everybody knows that wind-mills, though they do stand on the tops of hills, in spite of their great long arms stuck out, are of no use if the wind does not blow. So a man may try to do a great deal of work; but if he tries to get on without the help of his neighbours, and without being willing to help them in return, he will soon find that he too has to come to a standstill. Yes, young or old, rich or poor, must all help each other.
Once there came on earth a great Person, great though poor, a carpenter"s son. He only stayed a short time, but all that time He went about doing good to men, helping His fellows; and He died that He might help all men still more, and in a way no other person could have helped them. He came to die, because all men have sinned. He came also to show men how to live--how to act one towards another.
Mark Page, the Miller of Hillbrook, owned a wind-mill on the top of a knoll just above the village. His house and sheds for his carts and horses stood below it, and round it were some fields which were his; so it will be seen that he was well to do in the world. He had a wife and a son and a daughter, and he ought to have been a happy man; but he was not. Things seemed never to go quite right with Mark. Either there was too much wind, or too little wind. If there was little wind he was sure to cry out for more, but once; and then he would have given his mill and his house and fields to have got the wind not to blow. About that I will tell by-and-by.
Sometimes the miller sang--
"When the wind blows, Then the mill goes: When the wind drops, Then the mill stops."
But he was wont to growl out, "The wind is sure to drop when I have most grist to grind--just to spite me."
Hillbrook was a nice spot. There was the brook which ran out of the hill, fresh and pure, right through the village. There was not water enough to turn a mill, but enough to give the people right good water to drink and to cook with. It is a sad thing not to have good water. Bad water, from ponds, or ditches, or wells near drains, makes many people ill, and kills not a few. The people of Hillbrook prized their good water. They said, "we have good water and pure air, and now what we have to do is to keep our cottages clean and we shall be well." They did keep the floors and the walls of their cottages clean, but somehow fevers still came. At times, when the sun was hot, many people were ill: no one could tell how it was.
There was a farm to let, called Hillside farm. No one would take it, for it was said that the land was cold and wet, and too open. At last one Farmer Grey came to see it. The rent was low, the terms fair; "I"ll take it on a long lease," he said; "and if G.o.d wills it, ere many years go by, it will yield good crops." Farmer Grey soon gave work to many hands, he paid good wages too, and was always among his men to see that each man did his proper work. He put deep down in the ground miles and miles of drain pipes, it was said.
Hillside was next to the Mill farm. When Mark Page saw the tons and tons of dung of all sorts, chalk, and guano, which comes from over the sea, put on the land, he said that Farmer Grey had put more gold on it than he would ever get out of it. Farmer Grey said, "Bide a bit, neighbour, and we shall see."
Farmer Grey heard some people one day talk about their good water and fine air and clean cottages, and yet that fevers came to the place. So he went into the village, and walked from cottage to cottage: "Look here, what is this hole for?" he asked one; "I must hold my nose while I stand near it. Why it"s just under the room where some of you sleep!"
"Oh, that"s just a hole where we empty slops, and throw in cabbage stalks and dirt of all sorts," said the good woman; "we take it out sometimes to spread on the garden."
"Now hear me, dame," said Farmer Grey, "that hole is just a nest sure to hatch a fever some day; drain it off, fill it up, and dig a new one at the end of the garden, and take care that none of the drainings run into your brook."
"Why is this green ditch close under your window, dame?" he asked of another.
"Why you see, farmer, it is there, it has always been there, and it"s so handy just to empty the slops and such-like dirt," said the dame; "to be sure it does smell bad sometimes, but that can"t be helped."
"Hear me, dame," said Farmer Grey, "I have a notion that G.o.d lets bad smells come out of such muck just to show us that if we breathe them they will do us harm; the bad air which comes out of the muck mixes with the air we are always taking into our insides, and that makes us ill.
You had one child die last summer of fever, and one is now ill. Now just do you get your good man to drain that off when he comes home, and tell him that he need not come to work till after breakfast to-morrow, or noon, if he has not done it."
In another cottage a drain full of filth ran right under the floor. A cesspool was close to a fourth cottage. In several the floors were clean; but all sorts of filth had dropped through and stayed there, and when it rained the water ran under the floor. "Just lift up a plank,"
said Farmer Grey; it was done, and he stuck his stick into a foot or more of black mud.
"Bad air--gas it is called--comes out of that stuff. That"s what brings fevers and kills the children," he said. "Oh, my friends, you must get rid of all these things if you wish to have health." The people in Hillbrook liked Farmer Grey; they knew that he wished them well, and the wise ones did what he told them. The cholera at last came to England.
No one was ill in those cottages near which the cesspools and green ditches and dirt holes had been filled up; but five or six died in the cottages where they were left, and the stuff from them mixed with the water they drank. Then people saw that Farmer Grey was right.
Somehow Mark Page did not like him, nor did Mistress Page, his wife, nor his son, young Ben Page; they all spoke an ill word of him when they could. Only Mary Page, of all in the house, would never do so. Mary was not like the rest in the miller"s house, she was sweet and kind.
She had been to a school where she had learned what was good and right, and what G.o.d loved her to do. Mark Page said that the water which ran off Farmer Grey"s land came on to his and did it harm. "I can prove it," he said. "Once my crops were as good as any which grew on that land. Now look you here, his crops are as fine as you would wish to see, and mine are not half as good. I"ll see if I can"t turn the water back again." Farmer Grey wished to make a road through his farm, and over some wild land, where, in winter, the carts often stuck fast.
There was no lack of gravel, but he had of course to drain the ground, and then by just making the road round--that is, the middle higher than the sides--the water ran off on both sides, and the road was as hard as stone.
"Ah! ah! see, Farmer Grey has sent the water which used to remain quiet on the top of the hill right down over my land, just to make his own road, as if a road was of use up there," said Mark Page. "I"ll be revenged on him some day, that I will." These words were told to Farmer Grey. "Will he?" he said; "Then I will heap coals of fire on his head, and try which will win the day."
"What can he mean?" asked one or two of those who heard him: "That"s not like how Farmer Grey is wont to speak. Does he mean that he will burn his house over his head?"
No, no; Farmer Grey did not mean that. He meant that he would do so many kind acts to Mark Page that he would soften his heart. These words are in the Bible. In the land where the Bible was written by G.o.d"s order, when people want to soften any hard meat, they put it into a pot with a top and put the pot into a hole full of hot coals, and then they pile more hot coals over the top, so that all parts of the pot are hot; so that to heap coals of fire on a man"s head has come to mean, to soften his heart by many kind deeds--heaping them upon his head.
Mark Page did not know what a kind man Farmer Grey was. The miller had a man to help in the mill, Sam Green by name. There is a saying, "Like master, like man." Sam was very like the miller--may be worse. Sam was a man of few words, the miller did not speak much--young Ben was like his father. One night the talk was about the new road. "Why not go and dig it up?" asked young Ben Page. "Best thing to do," growled out Sam Green. It was moonlight, so they all three went out with spades and picks to the road. "Where shall we dig, father?" asked Ben. The miller looked about; his farm was on the left of the road. "Stop these two or three drains here," he said, as he struck his spade on the left side.
"But it seems to me that most of the water runs to the right, off into the brook; still I don"t see what cause Farmer Grey had to go and make this road." The next day, Farmer Grey rode by and saw where the drains had been stopped. He might have known who did it. He said not a word, but sent a man to put them to rights.
STORY ONE, CHAPTER 2.
The more harm the miller tried to do to James Grey, the more he wished to do. When he could, he or Ben or Sam let his cows into the farmer"s fields; and much mischief they did. Ben, too, who might often be met with a gun in his hands, shot the farmer"s game, and his rabbits and pigeons.
One day, a fine dog the farmer was very fond of, came into one of Mark Page"s fields. Mark had a gun in his hand, and shot the dog. Farmer Grey met Mark soon after this.
"You shot my dog, Trust, I am told," said the farmer.
"Your dog came after my rabbits," said Mark.
"Friend, did I say one word to man or boy when your son not only came to my fields, but shot well-nigh half a score of my rabbits and my hares?"
asked the farmer. "You know he came."
"I shoot all dogs that come to my fields," said Mark, walking on, with his eyes on the ground, and a frown on his brow. He did not speak much that day when he got home. In the evening there was a breeze, and the mill went round and round quite rapidly. "I"ll not give in," he said to Sam Green, as they sat on the steps of the mill, while the grist they had just put in was grinding. "Hold on to the last; that"s what I say.
Farmer Grey wants to come it strong over me; but I"ll not let him."
"All right, master; stick to that," said Sam Green.
"So I will. He shan"t come it over me; that he shan"t," growled the miller.
""When the wind blows Then the mill goes; When the wind drops, Then the mill stops."
""I care for n.o.body--no, not I, If n.o.body cares for me.""
"That"s it, master; that"s what I call the right thing; just proper pride," said Sam, the miller"s man.
Poor Ben Page had a poor chance of being well brought up by such a man as Mark Page, with such a friend as Sam Green. Mrs Page, too, his mother, did not know how to teach him what was right, for she did not care to do what was right herself. She just did what she liked best, not what was right. She ought to have known, for she had her Bible, and time to read it; but she did not read it, neither Sundays nor week-days.
If we read the Bible only on Sunday, we pa.s.s more than three hundred days each year, on which days we do not learn what we ought to do in this life, or how we are to go to heaven.
Mary read her Bible every day, and she used to tell Ben what she had read, and to try very hard to get him to give up his bad ways. But though he loved her, yet he went on just the same. Now and then he would stay at home, and not go to the ale-house, or out with his gun at night, and sit and talk to Mary, or hear her read; but next day it was just as bad as ever. Off he would go, and, may be, come home drunk, or with some hares or other game, which showed what he had been about. The miller only said, "Ben, Ben, take care." And Ben laughed, and said, "Don"t fear; I"ll not be found out." And he packed up the game, and sent it off to London.
It seemed sure that Ben would come to a bad end, if he was to go on in this way. Mark Page did not know what the Bible says: "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs chapter 22, verse 6). But Mark trained up his child in the way he should not go; and what could he think but that, when he was old, he would not depart from it? that is to say, from the way he should not go. Ben Page"s mother let him do just, what he liked; she beat him, to be sure, when she was angry, but that was not for his good, and that Ben soon found out. If he was quiet, and did not break any of her things, she did not scold him.
Ben was a bad boy, but a worse man. His friends were wild and bad, and he soon broke all the laws of G.o.d and man. He was sure to bring grief to the heart of his father and his mother; yet what could they hope for else?
Farmer Grey had no wife nor child, but a brother of his died and left his only son to the farmer"s care. Young James Grey was quite a young man when he came to Hillside. He was a fine, tall lad, with a kind, good face, and people who saw him said that they were sure they should like him. There was no pride in him, it seemed, for he went about the village and talked to those he met in a pleasant way, which won all hearts. He was to help his uncle on the farm, it was said, though he did not look much like a farmer. His hands were fair, and his cheeks and brow showed that he had not been out much in the sun.