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The Owner Of The Mill Farm
by
But the young man seemed to be saddened by the view of the mill, which had burned some years before. It seemed like the charred body of a living thing, this heap of blackened and twisted shafts and pulleys, lying half buried in tangles of weeds.
It appealed so strongly to young Morris that he uttered an unconscious sigh as he walked on across the bridge and clambered the shelving road, which was cut out of the yellow sandstone of the hillside.
The road wound up the sandy hillside and came at length to a beautiful broad terrace of farm land that stretched back to the higher bluffs. The house toward which the young fellow turned was painted white, and had the dark-green blinds which transplanted New-Englanders carry with them wherever they go.
Soldierly Lombardy poplar trees stood in the yard, and beds of flowers lined the walk. Mrs. Miner was at work in the beds when he came up.
“Good day,” he said cordially. “Glorious spring weather, isn’t it?” He smiled pleasantly. “Is this Mrs. Miner?”
“Yes, sir.” She looked at him wonderingly.
“I’m one of Wilber’s men,” he explained. “He couldn’t get away, so he sent me up to see what needed doing.”
“Oh,” she said, with a relieved tone. “Very well; will you go look at it?”
They walked, side by side, out toward the barn, which had the look of great age in its unpainted decay. It was gray as granite and worn fuzzy with sleet and snow. The young fellow looked around at the grass, the dandelions, the vague and beautiful shadows flung down upon the turf by the scant foliage of the willows and apple trees, and took off his hat, as if in the presence of something holy. “What a lovely place!” he said–“all but the mill down there; it seems too bad it burnt up. I hate to see a ruin, most of all, one of a mill.” She looked at him in surprise, perceiving that he was not at all an ordinary carpenter. He had a thoughtful face, and the workman’s dress he wore could not entirely conceal a certain delicacy of limb. His voice had a touch of cultivation in it.
“The work I want done is on the barn,” she said at length. “Do you think it needs reshingling?”
He looked up at it critically, his head still bare. She was studying him carefully now, and admired his handsome profile. There was something fine and powerful in the poise of his head.
“You haven’t been working for Mr. Wilber long,” she said.
He turned toward her with a smile of gratification, as if he knew she had detected something out of the ordinary in him.
“No, I’m just out of Beloit,” he said, with ready confidence. “You see that I’m one of these fellows who have to work my passage. I put in my vacations at my trade.” He looked up at the roof again, as if checking himself. “Yes, I should think from here that it would have to be reshingled.”
She sighed resignedly, and he knew she was poor. “Well, I suppose you had better do it.”
She thought of him pleasantly, as he walked off down the road after the lumber and tools that were necessary. And, in his turn, he wondered whether she were a widow or not. It promised to be a pleasant job. She was quite handsome, in a serious way, he decided–very womanly and dignified. Perhaps this was his romance, he thought, with the ready imagination upon this point of a youth of twenty-one.
He returned soon with a German teamster, who helped him unload his lumber and erect his stagings. When noon came he was working away on the roof, tearing the old shingles off with a spade.
He was a little uncertain about his dinner. It was the custom to board carpenters when they were working on a farm, but this farm was so near town, possibly Mrs. Miner would not think it necessary. He decided, however, to wait till one o’clock, to be sure. At half past twelve, a man came in out of the field with a team–a short man, with curly hair, curly chin beard, and mustache. He walked with a little swagger, and his legs were slightly bowed. Morris called him “a little feller,” and catalogued him by the slant on his hat.