Now, the French burr was not only hard but mild, and seemed to feel the corn as it crushed it.

A sack of wheat lost 4 lb.
in grinding.

I asked about the toll: he showed me the old measure, reckoned at the tenth of a sack; it was a square box.

When the lord's tenants in the olden times were forced to have their corn ground at the lord's mill, the toll was liable to be abused in a cruel manner; hence the universal opinion that a miller must be a knave.

Even in much more recent times, when the labourers took part of their wages in flour, there is said to have been a great deal of sleight-of-hand in using the toll-box, and the miller's thumb grew fat by continually dipping into other folk's sacks.
But Tibbald had an argument even here, for he said that men nowadays never grew so strong as they used to do when they brought their own wheat to be ground at the mill, and when they made their bread and baked it at home.