The Mill Mystery | Page 3

what she would
find; knew that her short dream of love was over, and that stretched
amongst the weeds which choked the entrance to the old mill lay the
dead form of the revered young minister, who, by his precept and
example, had won not only the heart of this young maiden, but that of
the whole community in which he lived and labored.

II.
A FEARFUL QUESTION.
Nay, yet there's more in this: I pray thee, speak to me as to thy
thinkings, As thou dost ruminate; and give thy worst of thoughts The
worst of words. --OTHELLO.
My room-mate was, as I have intimated, exceedingly frail and
unobtrusive in appearance; yet when we came upon this scene, the
group of men about the inanimate form of her lover parted
involuntarily as if a spirit had come upon them; though I do not think
one of them, until that moment, had any suspicion of the relations
between her and their young pastor. Being close behind her, I pressed
forward too, and so it happened that I stood by her side when her gaze
first fell upon her dead lover. Never shall I forget the cry she uttered, or
the solemn silence that fell over all, as her hand, rigid and white as that
of a ghost's, slowly rose and pointed with awful question at the pallid
brow upturned before her. It seemed as if a spell had fallen, enchaining
the roughest there from answering, for the truth was terrible, and we
knew it; else why those dripping locks and heavily soaked garments
oozing, not with the limpid waters of the stream we could faintly hear
gurgling in the distance, but with some fearful substance that dyed the
forehead blue and left upon the grass a dark stain that floods of rain
would scarcely wash away?
"What is it? Oh, what does it mean?" she faintly gasped, shuddering
backward with wondering dread as one of those tiny streams of strange
blue moisture found its way to her feet.

Still that ominous silence.
"Oh, I must know!" she whispered. "I was his betrothed"; and her eyes
wandered for a moment with a wild appeal upon those about her.
Whereupon a kindly voice spoke up. "He has been drowned, miss. The
blue----" and there he hesitated.
"The blue is from the remains of some old dye that must have been in
the bottom of the vat out of which we drew him," another voice went
on.
"The vat!" she repeated. "The vat! Was he found----"
"In the vat? Yes, miss." And there the silence fell again.
It was no wonder. For a man like him, alert, busy, with no time nor
inclination for foolish explorations, to have been found drowned in the
disused vat of a half-tumbled-down old mill on a lonesome and
neglected road meant----But what did it mean? What could it mean?
The lowered eyes of those around seemed to decline to express even a
conjecture.
My poor friend, so delicate, so tender, reeled in my arms. "In the vat!"
she reiterated again and again, as if her mind refused to take in a fact so
astounding and unaccountable.
"Yes, miss, and he might never have been discovered," volunteered a
voice at last, over my shoulder, "if a parcel of school-children hadn't
strayed into the mill this afternoon. It is a dreadful lonesome spot, you
see, and----"
"Hush!" I whispered; "hush!" and I pointed to her face, which at these
words had changed as if the breath of death had blown across it; and
winding my arms still closer about her, I endeavored to lead her away.
But I did not know my room-mate. Pushing me gently aside, she turned
to a stalwart man near by, whose face seemed to invite confidence, and
said:
"Take me in and show me the vat."
He looked at her amazed; so did we.
"I must see it," she said, simply; and she herself took the first step
towards the mill.
There was no alternative but to follow. This we did in terror and pity,
for the look with which she led the way was not the look of any
common determination, and the power which seemed to force her
feeble body on upon its fearful errand was of that strained and

unnatural order which might at any moment desert her, and lay her a
weak and helpless burden at our feet.
"It must be dark by this time down there," objected the man she had
appealed to, as he stepped doubtfully forward.
But she did not seem to heed. Her eyes were fixed upon the ruined
walls before her, rising drear and blank against the pale-green evening
sky.
"He could have had no errand here," I heard her murmur. "How then be
drowned here?--how?