The Miller of Old Church | Page 4

Mullen can't move him, he's so terrible set."
"Well, he ain't my Redeemer, though doubtless he'd be cast down if he
was to hear as I'd said so," chuckled the elder. "The over earnest, like
the women folk, are better not handled at all or handled techily. I'm
near blind as it is, but ain't that the man yonder leadin' his horse out of
the Applegate road?"
"'Taint the rector, but the miller," responded his son. "He's bringin' over
Mrs. Bottom's sack of meal on the back of his grey mare."
"Ah, he's one of the folks that's gone over neck an' crop to the

Episcopals," said Solomon Hatch. "His folks have been Presbyterians
over at Piping Tree sence the time of Noah, but he recites the Creed
now as loud as he used to sing the doxology. I declar his voice boomed
out so in my ears last Sunday that I was obleeged to put up my hands to
keep 'em from splittin'. Have you ever marked, Mr. Doolittle, havin'
had the experience of ninety years, that when a man once takes up with
a heresy, he shouts a heap louder than them that was born an' baptised
in it? It seems as if they can't desert the ancient ways without defying
'em as well."
"'Tis so, 'tis so," admitted old Adam, wagging his head, "but Abel
Revercomb was al'ays the sort that could measure nothin' less than a
bushel. The pity with big-natured folk is that they plough up a
mountain and trip at last over a pea-vine!"
From the gloom and brightness of the Applegate road there emerged
the large figure of a young man, who led a handsome grey mare by the
halter. As he moved against the coloured screen of the leaves
something of the beauty of the desolate landscape showed in his
face--the look of almost autumnal sadness that one finds, occasionally,
in the eyes of the imaginative rustic. He wore a pair of sheepskin
leggins into which the ends of his corduroy trousers were stuffed
slightly below the knees. His head was bare, and from the open neck of
his blue flannel shirt, faded from many washings, the muscles in his
throat stood out like cords in the red-brown flesh. From his uncovered
dark hair to his heavy boots, he was powdered with the white dust of
his mill, the smell of which floated to the group under the mulberry tree
as he passed up the walk to the tavern.
"I lay he seed Molly Merryweather comin' up from the low grounds,"
remarked Solomon, when the young man had moved out of earshot.
"Thar's truth spoken for once, if only by accident," retorted old Adam.
"Yonder comes Reuben Merryweather's wagon now, laden with fodder.
Is thar anybody settin' on it, young Adam? My eyes is too po' to make
out."
"Molly Merryweather, who else?" responded the younger.

The wagon approached slowly, piled high with fodder and drawn by a
pair of old oxen. In the centre of the load a girl was sitting, with a pink
sunbonnet on her shoulders, and the light wind, which drove in gusts
from the river, blowing the bunch of clustering brown curls on her neck.
She was a small vivid creature, with a sunburned colour and
changeable blue eyes that shone almost green in the sunlight.
"Terr'ble light minded as you can tell to look at her," said Solomon
Hatch, "she's soft enough, so my wife says, where sick folks an'
children an' animals are consarned, but she acts as if men war born
without common feelin's of natur an' didn't come inside the
Commandments. It's beyond me how a kind-hearted woman can be so
unmerciful to an entire sex."
"Had it been otherwise 'twould have been downright disproof of God's
providence and the bond of matrimony," responded old Adam.
"True, true, Mr. Doolittle," admitted Solomon, somewhat abashed.
"Thar ain't any in these parts as can equal you on the Scriptures, as I've
said over an' over agin. It's good luck for the Almighty that He has got
you on His side, so to speak, to help Him confound His enemies."
"Thar're two sides to that, I reckon, seein' I confound not only His
enemies, but His sarvents. Sech is the shot an' shell of my logic that the
righteous fall before it as fast as the wicked--faster even I might say if I
war speakin' particular. Have you marked how skeery Mr. Mullen has
growed about meetin' my eyes over the rail of the pulpit? Why, 'twas
only yesterday that I brought my guns to bear on the resurrection of the
body, an' blowed it to atoms in his presence. 'Now thar's Reuben
Merryweather who buried one leg at Manassas, Mr. Mullen,' I said as
pleasant an' natchel