CHAPTER III.
MILLVILLE HEARS EXCITING NEWS.
Millville is rather difficult to locate on the map, for the railroads found it impossible to run a line there, _Chazy_ Junction, the nearest station, is several miles away, and the wagon road ascends the foothills every step of the distance.

Finally you pass between Mount Parnassus (whoever named it that ?) and Little Bill Hill and find yourself on an almost level plateau some four miles in diameter, with a placid lake in the center and a fringe of tall pines around the edge.

At the South, where tower the northern sentries of the Adirondacks, a stream called Little Bill Creek comes splashing and dashing over the rocks to force its way noisily into the lake.

When it emerges again it is humble and sedate, and flows smoothly to Hooker's Falls, from whence it soon joins a tributary that leads it to far away Champlain.
Millville is built where the Little Bill rushes into the lake.

The old mill, with its race and sluice-gates, still grinds wearily the scanty dole of grain fed into its hoppers and Silas Caldwell takes his toll and earns his modest living just as his father did before him and "Little Bill" Thompson did before him.
Above the mill a rickety wooden bridge spans the stream, for here the highway from Chary Junction reaches the village of Millville and passes the wooden structures grouped on either side its main street on the way to Thompson's Crossing, nine miles farther along.