the ground.  Here people stood to smoke and consider things in muddy weather; and cats slept on the clean surfaces when it was hot.  In the large stubbard-tree at the corner of the garden was erected a pole of larch fir, which the miller had bought with others at a sale of small timber in Damer’s Wood one Christmas week.  It rose from the upper boughs of the tree to about the height of a fisherman’s mast, and on the top was a vane in the form of a sailor with his arm stretched out.  When the sun shone upon this figure it could be seen that the greater part of his countenance was gone, and the paint washed from his body so far as to reveal that he had been a soldier in red before he became a sailor in blue.  The image had, in fact, been John, one of our coming characters, and was then turned into Robert, another of them.  This revolving 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, whenever his fancy was tickled.

His eyes having lighted on the table-cloth, plates, and viands, he found himself in a position which had a sensible awkwardness for a modest man who always liked to enter only at seasonable times the presence of a girl of such pleasantly soft ways as Anne Garland, she who could make apples seem like peaches, and throw over her shillings the glamour of guineas when she paid him for flour.

‘Dinner is over, neighbour Loveday; please come in,’ said the widow, seeing his case.  The miller said something about coming in presently; but Anne pressed him to stay, with a tender motion of her lip as it played on the verge of a solicitous smile without quite lapsing into one—her habitual manner when speaking.

Loveday took off his low-crowned hat and advanced.  He had not come about pigs or fowls this time.  ‘You have been looking out, like the rest o’ us, no doubt, Mrs. Garland, at the mampus of soldiers that have come upon the down?  Well, one of the horse regiments is the --th Dragoons, my son John’s regiment, you know.’

The announcement, though it interested them, did not create such an effect as the father of John had seemed to anticipate; but Anne, who liked to say pleasant things, replied, ‘The dragoons looked nicer than the foot, or the German cavalry either.’

‘They are a handsome body of men,’ said the miller in a disinterested voice.  ‘Faith! I didn’t know they were coming, though it may be in the newspaper all the time.  But old Derriman keeps it so long that we never know things till they be in everybody’s mouth.’

This Derriman was a squireen living near, who was chiefly distinguished in the present warlike time by having a nephew in the yeomanry.

‘We were told that the yeomanry went along the turnpike road yesterday,’ said Anne; ‘and they say that they were a pretty sight, and quite soldierly.’

‘Ah! well—they be not regulars,’ said Miller Loveday, keeping back harsher criticism as uncalled for.  But inflamed by the arrival of the dragoons, which had been the exciting cause of his call, his mind would not go to yeomanry.  ‘John has not been home these five years,’ he said.

‘And what rank does he hold now?’ said the widow.

‘He’s trumpet-major, ma’am; and a good musician.’  The miller, who was a good father, went on to explain that John had seen some service, too.  He had enlisted when the regiment was lying in this neighbourhood, more than eleven years before, which put his father out of temper with him, as he had wished him to follow on at the mill.  But as the lad had enlisted seriously, and as he had often said that he would be a soldier, the miller had thought that he would let Jack take his chance in the profession of his choice.

Loveday had two sons, and the second was now brought into the conversation by a remark of Anne’s that neither of them seemed to care for the miller’s business.

‘No,’ said Loveday in a less buoyant tone.  ‘Robert, you see, must needs go to sea.’

‘He is much younger than his brother?’ said Mrs. Garland.

About four years, the miller told her.  His soldier son was two-and-thirty, and Bob was twenty-eight.  When Bob returned from his present voyage, he was to be persuaded to stay and assist as grinder in the mill, and go to sea no more.

‘A sailor-miller!’ said Anne.

‘O, he knows as much about mill business as I do,’ said Loveday; ‘he was intended for it, you know, like John.  But, bless me!’ he continued, ‘I am before my story.  I’m come more particularly to ask you, ma’am, and you, Anne my honey, if you will join me and a few friends at a leetle homely supper that I shall gi’e to please the chap now he’s come?  I can do no less than have a bit of a randy, as the saying is, now that he’s here safe and sound.’

Mrs. Garland wanted to catch her daughter’s eye; she was in some doubt about her answer.  But Anne’s eye was not to be caught, for she hated hints, nods, and calculations of any kind in matters which should be regulated by impulse; and the matron replied, ‘If so be ’tis possible, we’ll be there.  You will tell us the day?’

He would, as soon as he had seen son John.  ‘’Twill be rather untidy, you know, owing to my having no womenfolks in the house; and my man David is a poor dunder-headed feller for getting up a feast.  Poor chap! his sight is bad, that’s true, and he’s very good at making the beds, and oiling the legs of the chairs and other furniture, or I should have got rid of him years ago.’

‘You should have a woman to attend to the house, Loveday,’ said the widow.

‘Yes, I should, but—.