LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 629, 24 June 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AN OLD LOVE STORY, IN' THREE PARTS, Part I. My name is Edward Thane. My father was a small farmer in the North here; and in all the country round you could not pick a spot of colder clay than my father’s farm; nor could, in all the country round, have been found a man of better heart and of simpler faith than ho was. But I do believe the farm broke his good heart at the last, so cold it was and unyielding, I was a child when he died; but I remember well his hardworking faithful life, and his honest trust that I should grow to be like him and keep the place after him, for our people had been farmers there longer than any one had account of. But his sudden death made this impossible; and so it was that I was taken to live at Swarliug Mill, to be in a manner adopted by Stephen Brand, the miller, my father’s best and oldest friend, and the only one I had; for of relatives I Lad no :e that I knew of. My mother I cannot remember, for she died at my birth; hut her picture 1 have, and reverence. Stephen Brand, the miller (or ‘ Old Times,’ as the people of the neighbourhood called him), was a man of Anglo-Saxon mould, a man the like of whom you will seldom find in these days, even in the North, where the race of men has at all times run to strength of both mind and body. Indeed, when Uncle Stephen (as I always called him) died, many years ago, people told each other regretfully that he was certainly the last of his kind, and that his like would never again he amongst them. There was no successor to him in tho village, or anywhere near it; things had come to such a pass. It was a surprisingly modern age, they said, and everything seemed to bo changing, and neither the weather nor tho crops came with any regularity, as in bygone years. It was also dimly felt that new-fangled notions and strange inventions were eating into the heart of honest labour everywhere, and, as Uncle (Stephen himeelf said, men were being turned out like machines too, and not moulded as men should be, and as they Avcrc when Georg® 111 was in his prime. I took to my life at the mill as if I had been horn to it, the same as Willy Brand, the miller’s grandson. Willy was shy with me at first, and refused to play with me ; and during the first day or two we watched each other’s movements about the place with curious interest, mingled with a sort of shy misery, that seems to me now quite incomprehensable. But on the second or third day wo grew sufficiently familiar to throw stones at each other, and so we gradually became intimate ; and he shewed me all he knew, and I soon grew fond of him and the new home.

There was a general subdued excitement about the old mill that fascinated me, and held me captive by the novelty and puzzling nature of its internal parts. I have never forgotten, all my long life, the rapture with which I first listened to the mingled music of rushing water and clanging machinery; the splash, splash; the click, clack, and the mysterious rumble of it. Willy and I used to sit on the wall near the mill-stream and listen to the great rhythm by the hour; wondering greatly at the cleverness of men, and of millers in particular. Many a time did. wo earnestly beg of Uncle Stephen to promise that one day we should be millers too, ‘lt takes a mau to be a miller,’ he would reply gravely. This reply always made us feel our smallness more than ever. It seemed an improbable thing that we should ever rise to he men. But all the same, we resolved to be millers, and men if possible. Swarling Mill was a queer old red-tiled house, with diamond paued windows and pointed gables, with the timber rafters showing through the plastered walls. Add to this the actual mill itself, standing close at the rear, and beyond that again, the thatched stables; the yard, with carts laid along, and fat-throatod pigs and crazy turkey-cocks imitating their betters, and you have the dear old mill very much as I knew it. There was little change there. The death of Haco, our old mastiff, marks an era in my mind to this day, dividing two periods as much with me as Waterloo may with other people. The mill stood in a valley, and the summer view of it (it was summer when I was taken to live there) forms in my mind an ever present and ineffaceable picture; the clustering pinewood behind it, and the rough heather hill beyond that; the tiny brown river rushing down to the mill-pond, and then rushing out again, seemingly from the very foundations of the mill, and winding away down the meadows, where it became gentle again, and a mere trout-beck once more. But to Willy and me, who saw it tossed in foaming cascades over a mighty revolving wheel, it was never again the water of the upper stream.

Willy and I were fond of the river. We fished there, waded, bathed, and fought there. To ride the horses to it; to sit in triumph on their great quarters as they trudged to it wearily of an evening to drink, was always an event sweet to look forward to, and sweet to remember; and the fluttered astonishment of the ducks at our random riding seemed the essence of fun. Those were happy times indeedj for Willy and me ; shadowless days of young summer. There was keen fresh hungry enjoyment of life always. Hunting up hens’ nests, and trying to suck the eggs; or vexing the fatherly hearts of maddened ganders (puffed up with the responsibility of little yellow goslings;) tickling ’j trout :my memory is full of it all even now, when the joys and sorrows of my manhood are growing dim with time. Oh, for that splendid beech, with its giant limb hanging into the midstream of the quiet river ! To ns it was not a tree at all, hut a man-o’-war ship ; aud we wore its desperate crew, Willy and I, and a tame jackdaw, looking sidelong at everything. Many a half dozen Frenchmen each we slashed among its branches ; and often we climbed to imaginary mast-heads, shouting shrill ahoys to the pa«sers-by. Ahoy ! we knew to be a suitable sea-phrase, because drunken Bill, the wooden-legged sailor of the village, came once to our church-door while prayers were going on, and 1 shouted ‘ Ahoy there ! ’ with a voice like a hull. So we grew up together, Willy and I, aud loved each other, sharing everything—the sweets of idleness and the bitters of school.

But there was one thing I could never iiuderstand, and that was, the extraordinary notice old Squire Harding and the ladies from the Hall used to take of Willy whenever we met them ; and. that was seldom enough, for we usually ran like hares from the presence of the gentry. We stood in much awe of them, dreading being asked our names, ages, and so forth ; which kindly meant inquiries, I am sorry to confess, were generally associated with the disagreeableness of the Church Cathechism, a single question from which, such as, ‘ What is your duty towards your neighbour?’ would suffice, even at my advanced age, to fill me with melancholy, and a lurking desire to hide myself from view. But as 1 have said, I could never at that time make out why so much notice was taken of Willy, and so much less of myself. Not that I minded that, but Willy did, for the task of talking to the great folks fell upon him with severity. He was very shy and sensitive, and on such occasions used to shrink pain fully from his kindly questioners ; trying to get behind me, to push me forward; whilst I was running over in my mind as much of the Ten Commandments and the ‘ Duty’ as I could remember. But when the squire was alone it was better, for he would often content himself with good-naturedly patting Willy on the head, and pinching my cheek. My noticeable cheeks at that time used to bo a burden to me, so chubby and red were they, and so many were the unfeeling remarks made about them by my elders. But Willy was pale and delicate, with large dark eyes, that used to flash and change with his moods, like the soft eyes of a spaniel. Willy and I had few companions in the village. Amongst our schoolfellows, Willy was shy; and,!, who was so fond of him, grew insensibly to imitate him in many of his ways, as young animals do with each other. But I was never like him really, for the gentle blood that was in his veins made him sensitive to the rude life of the village boys. Many a time have I stood between him and their maliciousness, for though Willy would light savagely, yet as soon as he saw his own blood he used to shiver, just like Uncle Stephen’s greyhound, and lose the firmness of his hands, for his nature was as gentle as a girl’s. But I was of a coarser mould, the product of a long inherited clay farm, and 1 never grew hot in a fight till my nose bled or a tooth gave way; then I always fought like a mule, with no more feeling concerning blows about the head than a cabbage. [To be continued.}