Her mother was crazy for ten years before she died, and she taught Molly all that foolishness about the meanness of men." "Oh, well, it's all right," said Archie carelessly, "only look out that you don't go too near the fire and get scorched." Whistling to the hounds that were nosing among some empty barrels in a dark corner, he shouldered his gun more firmly and went off to his hunt.
After he had gone, the miller stood for a long while, watching the meal pour from the valve.

A bit of chaff had settled on his lashes, but without moving his hand to brush it away, he shook his head once or twice with the gesture of an animal that is stung by a wasp.

"Why do they keep at me about her ?" he asked passionately.

"Is it true that she is only playing with me as she plays with the others ?"--but the pain was too keen, and turning away with a sigh, he rested his elbows on the sill of the window and looked out at the moving wheel under the gauzy shadows.

The sound of the water as it rushed through the mill-race into the buckets and then fell from the buckets into the whirlpool beneath, was loud in his ears while his quick glance, passing over the drifting yellow leaves of the sycamore, discerned a spot of vivid red in the cornlands beyond.