Jan of the Windmill | Page 6

checking himself in a look towards the child, he went out, followed by the woman.
In the round-house he paused however, and looked back into the meagre, dimly lighted room, where the little bundle upon the bed lay weeping. For a moment, a storm of irresolution seemed to seize him, and then muttering, "It can't be helped for the present, it can't be helped," he hurried towards the vehicle, in the back seat of which the woman was already seated.
The driver touched his hat to him as he approached, and turned the cushion, which he had been protecting from the rain. The stranger stumbled over the cloak as he got in, and, cursing the step, bade the man drive like something which had no connection with driving. But, as they turned, the windmiller ran out and after them.
"Stop, sir!" he cried.
"Well, what now?" said the stranger, sharply, as the horse was pulled back on his haunches.
"Is it named?" gasped the miller.
"Oh, yes, all that sort of thing," was the impatient reply.
"And what name?" asked the miller.
"Jan. J, A, N," said the stranger, shouting against the blustering wind.
"And--and--the other name?" said the windmiller, who was now standing close to the stranger's ear.
"What is yours?" he asked, with a sharp look of his dark eyes.
"Lake--Abel," said the windmiller.
"It is his also, henceforth," said the stranger, waving his hand, as if to close the subject,--"Jan Lake. Drive on, will you?"
The horse started forward, and they whirled away down the wet, gray road. And before the miller had regained his mill, the carriage was a distant speck upon the storm.

CHAPTER II.
THE MILLER'S CALCULATIONS.--HIS HOPES AND FEARS.--THE NURSE-BOY.--CALM.
The windmiller went back to his work. He had risked something over this business in leaving the mill in the hands of others, even for so short a time. Then the storm abated somewhat. The wind went round, and blew with less violence a fine steady breeze. The miller began to think of going into the dwelling-room for a bit of supper to carry him through his night's work. And yet he lingered about returning to his wife in her present mood.
He stuck the sharp point of his windmiller's candlestick {1} into a sack that stood near, and drawing up a yellow canvas "sample bag "-- which served him as a purse--from the depths of his pocket, he began to count the coins by the light of the candle. He counted them over several times with increasing satisfaction, and made several slow but sure calculations as to the sum of ten shillings a week by the month, the quarter, the half, and the whole year. He then began another set of calculations of a kind less pleasant, especially to an honest man,--his debts.
"There's a good bit to the doctor for both times," he murmured; "and there's the coffin, and something at the Heart of Oak for the bearers, and a couple of bottles red wine there, too, for the missus, when she were so bad. And both the boys had new shoes to follow in,--she would have it they should follow"-- And so on, and so on, the windmiller ran up the list of his petty debts, and saw his way to paying them. Then he put the money back into the sample bag, and folded it very neatly, and stowed it away. And then he drew near the inner door, and peeped into the room.
His poor wife seemed to be in no better case than before. She sat on the old rocking-chair, swinging backwards and forwards, and beating her hands upon her knees in silence, and making no movement to comfort the wailing little creature on the bed.
For the first time there came upon the windmiller a sense of the fact that it is an uncertain and a rather dangerous game to drive a desperate woman into a corner. His missus was as soft-hearted a soul as ever lived, and for her to sit unmoved by the weeping of a neglected child was a proof that something was very far wrong indeed. One or two nasty stories of what tender-hearted women had done when "crazed" by grief haunted him. The gold seemed to grow hot at the bottom of his pocket. He wished he had got at the stranger's name and address, in case it should be desirable to annul the bargain. He wished the missus would cry again, that silence was worse than any thing. He wished it did not just happen to come into his head that her grandmother went "melancholy mad" when she was left a young widow, and that she had had an uncle in business who died of softening of the brain.
He wished she would move across the room and take up the child, with an intensity that almost amounted to prayer. And,