# Dorothy of the Mill

Extracted from The Miller's Holiday (1920) pp. 53-70. First published in The Northwestern Miller 1904.
DOROTHY OF THE MILL
By Robert Barr.
A painting of Elmsdell Mill might truthfully have been labeled "Peace." It occupied a romantic situation near the head of the valley. Above it lay the large millpond, or small lake, just as you choose to call it, placid in the sunlight, its margin, however, shaded by drooping trees, whose branches bent to drink, as it seemed, of the clear, still water. The pond was needed as a reservoir of power, for the mill was far up that valley, and the stream at this height was small. Lower down, where the rivulet became a river, there were mills in plenty that had no pond, and needed nothing more than a narrow channel cut to feed their small wheels. But Elmsdell Mill, to make the most of what water it had, possessed a wheel of great diameter, that the leverage of its spokes might make the most of the liquid force at its command. The stone mill itself was overgrown with ivy, and overshadowed by tall elms, and coming from the north, one would not suspect its existence, were it not for that mirror of a pond, which seemed framed with a green girdle. But the southern end of the mill was bare white stone in its lower story, overtopped by timber and plaster in the gable, and was a landmark for miles to any traveller coming up the winding road by the stream, he seeing the mill with its fringe of trees topping the upper valley.
It was a scene emblematic of the sweetest peace, yet was far from being typical of the state of affairs in England, for that grim fighter, Cromwell himself, was camped but half an hour's ride away down this vale of seeming content, resting from his latest battle, where he had put to flight those who scorned him, scattering them like chaff before the wind, and Dorothy, as with her apron she rubbed the white dust from the semi-obscured end window of the mill, saw a mounted man and a dozen foot soldiers hurrying up the road toward the mill. Dorothy was discontented with Cromwell, and thought him a most unreasonable man, yet had she cause for congratulation if she had only paused to think. Only the day before had a great fear been lifted from herself and her mother. News of a fierce battle had come to them, and after that, silence and racking anxiety, for her father and her two stalwart brothers were all three among Cromwell's forces. News of the conflict had been brought to that secluded vale by men who brought cartloads of wheat which were weighed into the mill, each man accepting a statement on paper of the weight of his load, written by the miller's wife. This incursion of grain was entirely unexpected by the two women in the cottage on the opposite side of the road to the mill, and all the bringers could say was that they had been ordered by officers of the Parliamentary army to deliver what wheat they had to Elmsdell Mill. One wise yeoman said he thought it was because the mill stood so secluded, thus less likely to fall into the hands of the Royalists, noted throughout the land as being scandalously ignorant of their own country, while every inch of the shire was known to the Cromwellian soldiers, and in this surmise the old yeoman was doubtless right. These men said a terrible battle had been fought, but what the outcome was not one of them knew. Their duty was to bring wheat to the mill, and they were inclined to suppose that the less they interfered in the affairs of the mighty, the better for them, for no man yet knew how the cat was to jump, though all admitted Cromwell seemed to be having the best of it.
The first tidings that all was well with their own folk came by mounted messenger up the valley, hurrying his horse so that the women, seeing him come, had their worst moment ere he spoke, their tremor of fear augmented rather than assuaged by seeing on nearer approach that the speeding messenger was a neighbor's son, Standfast Standish by name; and yet in spite of this suspense Dorothy's fair cheeks colored, and her eyes were downcast as young Standish sprang from his horse.
"What has befallen? What has befallen?" cried the miller's wife.
"The Lord has given us a great victory," said Standish solemnly, "and has crushed the ungodly."
"Yes, yes," cried the woman, "but what about my man and my two sons?"
"They are well," said Standish, "untouched, though they were in the thick of it."
"Thank God, thank God," repeated the wife two or three times, and then Dorothy looked up, saying with something almost of reproach in her tones:
"Why then did you ride so fast? You frightened us."
"I ride, Doll, under orders that are not to be slighted. When Cromwell himself gives the word, horseflesh or manflesh must not be spared. His orders are to grind, grind, grind, and turn the corn into meal: the army must be fed."
"How are we to grind," demanded the girl, "when he has taken our millers from us?"
"There lies the water; there stands the mill. Is there no corn?" asked the young man.
"Corn enough; the mill is full of it," replied the girl.
"Then Cromwell says 'Grind.'"
"Does he expect me to do it?" she asked.
"He cares not who does it, so 'tis done. That is Cromwell's way," replied the lad.
"You will eat here before going farther?" interrupted Mistress Mitford.
"I go no farther," said the lad.
"Surely you go on to your own home, if but to let them see you are safe and sound!" protested the miller's wife.
"I have no such leave," replied Standish, "and must return at once; indeed, I scarce dare spare time to eat, but if you have a mug of ale—"
"Tut, tut," cried the good woman, "come in. There is ale in plenty, and a meat pie on the table such as you do not get in the army. Dorothy will hold your horse till you come out again."
"Indeed," said the young man archly, "I shall put her to no such task, but shall tie the horse's bridle to this ring in the wall, so that Dorothy may accompany us within," and he cast a meaning glance from under his steel cap at the girl, who tossed her head indifferently.
"You need not so trouble yourself, Mr. Standish," she said; "I make nothing of holding a horse, even for so long a time as you take to a meal."
The young man made no reply to this flippant remark, but securely tied the leather strap in the iron ring, then turning to her, the mother having disappeared within the cottage, he said earnestly:
"Doll, my time is short, but I hope it will be long enough for the small word 'yes.'"
"Indeed," said she, in no way abashed, "'tis the longest word in the language for what it entails. Become a general, Standfast, and I'll say 'yes' right speedily. You know how ambitious I am, yet imprisoned here in this dull valley, with nothing happening."
"You do not value your good fortune," said the young man, solemnly. "Things happen elsewhere that are ill to look upon. Thank God for the quiet of the valley."
"I do," said the girl instantly, falling into his own mood of seriousness, "I do whenever I think of what is beyond."
"Then, Doll dear, will you not make the day brighter for one who has to go beyond, by saying the word I ask of you?" and with a clumsy attempt at lightness, he added, "Something will happen at once in this quiet valley if you do," whereupon he made an attempt to encircle her waist with his arm, but she whisked away from him.
"The word 'no,'" she said, "is even shorter than the one you mentioned. If you wish for brevity, why not accept that?"
Before he could reply, Mistress Mitford appeared at the door.
"I thought you were hurried," she said. "Your meat and malt are waiting for you."
"You will come in with me?" he whispered, pleading to the girl, who with flushed cheeks kept the distance more than arm's length between them.
"Yes, I shall come," she pouted, "I think I am safer by my mother's side than by yours," and so the two entered the cottage, the valiant Standish attacking the pie with no less valor than he had displayed in battle a few days before.
Mistress Mitford sat opposite him, and Dorothy some distance apart, the elder woman plying him with questions regarding the fight, which Standish answered with some reluctance, evidently wishing to forget it all. He had been a farmer before he was a fighter, and was not yet hardened to slaughter.
"'Tis none so bad," he said, "when the fight is on, and one's blood is up, but afterwards, when the night falls and the groaning is heard while we search the battlefield, 'tis a doleful business, and, after all, whoever is right, and whoever in the wrong of it, 'tis sad to see Englishmen fight Englishmen. Frenchmen, now, were a different matter."
"We are all God's creatures," said the woman, shaking her head in despondency.
"Not Frenchmen," protested young Standfast, and neither of the two women was sure enough about it to contradict him.
After the meal the young man rode down the valley again, satisfied in body, if not in spirit.
And now the two women were confronted with the problem of working the mill. "Grind," commanded Cromwell, and he was not one to be disobeyed. It is likely that if the miller had not been blessed with two strong sons who acted as his assistants, wife and daughter might have understood better the machinery of the mill, but as it was they were at a loss how to proceed. If they turned on the water, they might wreck the machinery, and thus, although obeying in the letter, there would be disobedience in the spirit, with the problem of feeding the army thereby rendered more acute.
After much labor they filled with grain the huge bin shaped like an inverted pyramid, through which the wheat flowed to the stones, and then they determined to send a messenger to camp and request the presence of either the father or one of the two sons. This was done the morning after the visit of Standish, and now Dorothy stood by the flour-obscured window, rubbing its panes with her apron, watching the approaching cavalcade and wondering if this were the expedition sent to her rescue. In that case Cromwell was slightly overdoing it: she had asked for one man, not for a dozen.
As the procession came near, she recognized her father among the foot soldiers. A miller never distinguishes himself on horseback, so old Mitford trailed a pike instead of being one of Cromwell's mounted Ironsides.
A cavalryman took his stand in the middle of the road, while the foot soldiers rapidly surrounded the mill. The upper half of the door was open. Mitford, followed by two or three men, unfastened the lower leaf and entered, his daughter coming forward to meet them.
"Why is the mill not working, Dorothy?" he asked anxiously. "Didn't you get the general's command?"
"Mother and I were afraid to let on the water, fearing we might destroy the mill, instead of making meal."
"Tut, tut," cried the old man impatiently, "the mill would come to no harm. I'll show you what to do when we have finished our business. Have you seen any loiterers about?"
"No."
"None in cavalier dress?"
"Not one."
"Lord Dorincourt was taken prisoner, and has escaped. He is thought to have come up the valley, and may be concealed in the mill. Come, my lads, I know every nook and cranny where even a rat might hide. If his lordship is here, we'll soon have him out."
The old building was searched from raftered attics to moss-covered cellars dripping with water, but no trace of the Royalist was found within its walls.
"He is not here, I'll vouch for that," reported the begrimed miller to the man on horseback.
Every one was then set at beating the bushes and thicket surrounding the pond, but this, too, was labor lost. Meanwhile the miller turned on the water : the great wheel slowly revolved, and the flour came pouring out.
"There's nought to do but keep the hopper full, and work till the pond runs dry, which it will not do for some weeks yet," said the father.
Then the man on horseback gathered his followers, and departed fruitlessly down the hill again. Dorothy stood by the transparent pane and watched them until they were finally shut from her sight. With a sigh she turned from the window, and then was startled by hearing a half-smothered voice cry:
"In the Fiend's name, Madam, are they gone? If so, I beg of you stop the mill."
She knew not from whence the voice came, but instinctively she turned to the lever, shut off the water, and the roar of machinery ceased.
"Who are you, and where are you?" she demanded.
For answer there were various sounds as of a man trying to clear his mouth so that he might speak. Then two hands appeared over the edge of the bin, whose load of wheat was still not perceptibly diminished, and a tousled head of blonde, curling hair rose up between the hands until a pair of sparkling eyes regarded her.
"A thousand thanks, my lady, for stopping the grinding stones. A moment more I had been gone between them, and the flower of my youth pulverized into flour for the Parliamentarians; curse them."
"You were in no danger," said the girl severely. "How came you there?"
"Are you alone, my lady?"
"Yes," replied the girl, backing toward the door.
"Let us thank God for that. Will you place me under further obligation by closing the door? Some one might pass, and really my apparel is in such a disarray that I have no anxiety to receive company."
"You are Lord Dorincourt," she said accusingly, without moving to realize his request.
"Oh, no, no, my fair girl," replied the unseen mouth, while the visible eyes laughed. "I am in reality Oliver Cromwell, but am so ashamed of the title that only the duress in which I find myself compels me to admit it."
"You are Lord Dorincourt," she repeated, with conviction.
"I was once, my lady, but not now, not now. I assure you I am a changed man, and I defy my dearest friend to recognize me. My doubtlet is as full of corn as ever were the tightest boots of the most bunion-footed Puritan that ever stepped."
"How dare you speak with levity, considering your danger?"
"Madam, you have just informed me that I am safe from the millstones."
"Yes, but not from the upper and nether millstones of the law."
"Dorothy, I am in no trouble from that source. To reach the hands of the rebels I must first be betrayed, and there is too much kindliness in your eyes to send even so worthless a fellow-creature as I to his death. In those charming and beautiful eyes I read, alas, disapproval of myself, but I see there no capital sentence, Mademoiselle Dorothy."
He had now raised himself up along the slanting boards until head and shoulders were above the rim of the bin. His doublet was fine, though sadly torn, but a tatter of throat gear remained to him, and his neck was scratched as if with brambles. His left arm he used with evident difficulty, and she saw the doublet cut away at the shoulder, and stained red as if from a wound but recently received. Her eyes moistened at this knowledge of his pitiable condition, so jauntily carried off, as if it were, upon the whole, a huge joke.
"How do you know my name is Dorothy?" she asked with less of accusation in her voice than had hitherto been the case.
"I heard your father call you so. 'Tis a lovely name, and lovingly I dwell on it," then seeing in her eyes a return of that disapproval which he had formerly noted, he added quickly: "I have a sister Dorothy, and an anxious girl she is this day, I warrant you, though her brother may have a jest on his parched lips, while mouth and throat are like the great desert with chaff and dust of the corn. Thus I venture to call you the Lady Dorothy, and again implore you to close that gaping door."
"No one passes this way," she said.
"Your pardon, Lady Dorothy, but those who have just gone may return. Surely you are not afraid of a wounded man?"
"We Puritans," she said proudly, "have no reason to fear: we can defend ourselves."
"Egad, Madam, and you speak truth," cried his lordship, laughing, "I can testify to that. I wish I had your courage. I fear the door opening upon the highway."
Without another word she went to the door and closed it. He made an attempt to throw a leg over the rim of his prison, but the exertion was too much for him, and he fell back groaning, his face going white like the flour that powdered the walls.
"Be not in such haste," she said, and taking a small stepladder she set it up against the bin, mounted lightly, and held out her hand to him. He smiled wanly up at her, and with her help was soon down upon the floor of the mill.
"Would you care for a mug of ale?" she asked him.
"Ale? Is there such a blessing in this ill-fated land? Has not that damned brewer—I humbly beg your pardon, Madam, I'm a wicked man and forgot myself—but that brewer Cromwell has driven ale and every other good thing out of the country he encumbers, thus ruining his own trade, curse him. Ale, did you say? It seems incredible! But angels may work miracles, therefore I shall believe that ale exists. And, Dorothy, a crust of bread for a starving dog!"
The girl, her compassion touched, fled to the house. The coast was clear, for her mother had walked down the valley with her father. When she returned he seized the tankard with an almost wolfish glitter in his eyes, and brought it near to his cracked lips. Then he thrust it from him and held it aloft, while his left hand removed the tattered hat, his wounded arm with difficulty obeying his will.
"The King! God bless him!" he cried.
"My lord, you dishonor hospitality," said Dorothy sternly. "I brought you the drink for no such toast."
He consumed half of what was in the tankard, before he set it down and replied, this time with more soberness than he had hitherto evinced:
"The texts are not all on your side, my Lady Dorothy. Tear God and honor the King,' says the Good Book. The hospitality of no household in England is dishonored when I obey the Bible, and pray God to bless the English King. Unfortunate man! Would that my prayer were as potent for him as this good ale is for me."
The young man was seated on the lowest step of the ladder, which still leaned against the bin of the hopper. His first thought had been to his thirst, and so he had taken a long drink from the generous flagon. Now, as he set it down on the stone floor, he remembered his supplication for a crust of bread when he saw on the broad trencher a heaping-up of meat pasty. He reached the trencher to his knees, and placed it there, then looked up at Dorothy with a smile, half whimsical, and wholly winning. She stood between him and the closed door, the light from the southern window enveloping her in luminous relief against the dark background of the wall. Her fair face was shadowed with perplexity, as she looked down on the young man smiling up at her, who, starving as he was, left for the moment his appetizing dish untouched.
He guessed her thoughts, and read his fate in those glorious, somber eyes. She was a true daughter of that vigorous race which had crumpled up the aristocracy of England as if it had been flimsy tinsel, which the young man began to suspect it really was. He saw that the girl pitied him as a hunted wanderer, but would nevertheless deliver him to his enemies as a traitor to his country. He knew that threats or persuasion would alike be useless, while, wounded and exhausted, he could not overcome her by physical force and thus accomplish his escape. Not even quiescence on her part would insure his safety. He must cross the marshy moor above the mill from which this stream took its source, and that journey were impossible unless he had a guide who knew the way. On the other side of the desolate moor, he was a free man once more. So he looked up at her smiling, and she looked down on him with deep melancholy. There was something in his glance and smile that filled her with vague uneasiness; she, the country maiden, he, the man of the world. Her eyes, clear and unpolluted as the crystal stream that turned the wheel; his, shadowed by the reflection of the city in fouler waters far below. She shivered a little, not relishing his scrutiny, and said with impatience:
"Sir, why do you not eat?"
"Dorothy, I dare not, until the problem in your mind is solved.
"There is no problem," she said shortly.
"Ah, yes, my lady, there is. Duty says harshly, 'Give him up to his foes'; humanity whispers, 'Mercy blesses her that gives and him that takes.'"
"I shall do my duty," she said, drawing a long, quivering breath.
"Then congratulations, Madam. The conflict is ended, and I shall not so wrong your gentle soul as to pretend that the victory has been welcome to you. Take away the trencher."
The young man leaned back wearily against the rounds of the ladder. His eyes closed, and his face went to a chalky whiteness. The girl, with a gasp of sympathy, took a step nearer to him.
"Surely you will eat?"
"Take it away: its very aroma is maddening to me. I have had nothing to eat for three days, save a mouthful of throat-parching corn while buried in this bin."
"Then why do you refuse now, when plenty is offered you? We do not starve our prisoners."
The young man sat up again, and was so inconsistent as to offer himself momentary refreshment from the lips of the flagon. The brief draft seemed to revive him.
"My Lady Dorothy, I am no prisoner of yours, nor are you authorized to hold me. I surrendered to your compassion, not to your vengeance. It is because of you I dare not eat. Were I in the tent of the most barbarous Arab that rides the desert, and did I break but a crust of bread with him, my life were sacred in his hands; yes, to be defended from peril even at risk of his own. Shall a Christian maiden in a civilized land be lower in the human scale than a heathen savage? Christ forbid! whose words, 'Neither do I condemn thee' should ring in every woman's ears."
"Eat, I beg of you," said Dorothy, with a sob.
"As a prisoner?" he asked, looking searchingly at her.
"No, no, as a hungry man. Finish your flagon, and I will refill it."
By the time she had returned with the brimming flagon, the pasty had well-nigh disappeared. All his old jauntiness had returned to the tattered noble.
"I swear to you, Dorothy, war is a stern schoolmaster. I understand now what I never could fathom before, why Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Yesterday I lay prone in a thicket of my own plantation. It was a foolish place to hide, for they said, 'He will make up the valley to his own estate,' and as I lay there with the Roundheads beating the bushes within twenty paces of me, the thought came to me: 'This land in which my face is buried is my birthright, and gladly would I sell it for a mess of pottage."
When the repast was finished, Dorothy took trencher and tankard to the house, and on her return the young man bolted the upper half of the mill door, which at the same time automatically sealed the lower half.
"I distrust this door," he said, seeing the girl seemed slightly alarmed at his action. "When it is open any chance passer-by may enter, and then it is too late to hide. Now he must knock."
"There are no chance passers-by in this lonely district," said the girl.
"Then there are those who come by design, and they are still more dangerous." The young man had scarcely finished his sentence when the reality of his apprehension was made audible to them. There was a clatter of iron-shod hoofs on the hard road.
"A troop of horse!" he whispered, and seeing all color leave her face he added, as if she were the one in danger, "They are like to pass on, I think."
The first part of his sentence was as correct as the last part was inaccurate. A strenuous voice rang out; a voice the girl had never heard before, but which thrilled her with instant fear.
"Halt! Dismount, and surround the mill."
"By God, Cromwell himself!" cried the young man, his right hand instinctively reaching his swordless hip. "Cromwell here, and I weaponless," he added bitterly, as his empty right hand swung round to his side again. "Would I had a thousand lives to exchange for his pestilent existence! But to be trapped like a rat!"
"Come this way," said Dorothy, as she raised a trapdoor, "hurry, hurry!"
The young man followed her down into the dark and the damp, stumbling awkwardly. She, however, knew her road, and threw open a door in the outer wall that allowed some light to filter into the gloom. Outside was the dim skeleton of the great wheel.
"Step in here," she said breathlessly; "if the water is turned on, you will have to walk for your life."
She bolted the door upon him, and was on the upper floor an instant after, closing down the trapdoor.
"Open!" cried a voice from the outside, while a saber hilt smote three blows against the timber.
Dorothy instantly pulled back the bolt, and threw open the two leaves of the door. It needed no introducer to identify for her the scowling man in steel breastplate who stood before her.
"Who are you?" was his demand.
"Dorothy Mitford, sir, daughter of the miller."
"Why is the mill silent when I ordered it to grind?"
"It had been stopped but a short ten minutes since, sir. It was grinding all morning."
"Why was it stopped ten minutes since?"
"It is the dinner hour, sir."
"As I came up I saw you fly back and forth between the cottage and the mill. What were you doing?"
Fear had given place to anger at this rude questioning, so abrupt and discourteous, and this before all these men standing behind him, among whom, with heightened color, she recognized Standfast Standish.
"Sir," she said, "I must be fed as well as your army."
A grim smile flickered for an instant round those masterful lips, then disappeared as quickly as it came. He made no comment upon her pertness, but turned to one of his men and said:
"Go into the cottage, and see if two have dined there. Have you seen any strangers about?" asked Cromwell as before.
"In the morning there was a dozen, searching the mill. The only one among them that I knew was my father."
"You saw no one else?"
"I have not been out of the mill, sir, except to prepare food. I have been grinding all morning, and no one has entered these doors, except myself."
"What is that ladder doing standing against the hopper?"
"I have been filling the hopper with corn."
At this juncture the man returned from the cottage.
"There is one empty trencher, sir, from which one person has fed."
Cromwell strode into the mill, and up the steps of the ladder, thrusting his sword half a dozen times down through the grain. Lucky for Lord Dorincourt that he was elsewhere. Satisfying himself that nothing but wheat was within the bin, the general descended, cast a suspicious glance at the girl, and said:
"We have traced him here. I am certain he is within these walls."
"I am certain he is not, sir," replied Dorothy, with all the assurance of exact truth. "My father knows every cranny of this mill, and he searched thoroughly."
"Humph," growled Cromwell, "begin the grinding again, and if he is among the machinery, let him take peril of it. Your reason for the stopping of the mill seems scant enough."
The girl walked promptly and proudly to the lever, drew it toward her, and instantly the low rumble of machinery began. She paid no further attention to her visitors, but went calmly to the scupper out of which poured the warm meal, and fingered its flow critically.
Cromwell's eyes never left her, and again the slight smile chased the darkness from his countenance as he saw the testing of the meal, an action well known to him, for he was a miller himself, but was now about to be discomfited, for he lived in a flat country where the waterwheels are small, and it never occurred to him that a waterwheel might act as prison for a man.
The general set his men at the second search of the mill, and this time the scrutiny was thorough enough to satisfy any one. He himself went outside, and mounted his horse, awaiting stolidly the result of the investigation. Relieved from the eye of the master, Standfast Standish chose the lower portion of the mill as his ground for search, that perhaps he might exchange a word with Dorothy. She received his greetings coldly enough, and seemed still offended at the treatment the general had accorded her. Standfast himself, although he feared and admired his chief, was indignant that her word should not have been instantly taken, and he said this emphatically to Dorothy, which won him a kindlier look than he had yet obtained from her; then, seeking further ground of advantage, he said with enthusiasm:
"I know a place none of them have searched—the waterwheel. I'll go down the trapdoor and look to that myself."
The indifference fell away from the girl like a cloak flung off.
"You will not," she said.
"Why not? He might be there."
"He could not be there unless I led him to the wheel. There would be only one chance in a thousand for him to happen on the trapdoor."
"But," objected the stubborn youth, "a trapdoor is exactly what an escaped prisoner would look for."
"Even if he found it," she urged, "he would descend into darkness, and be little likely to find the door to the wheel."
"Still, it is possible," he persisted, "and there is no harm in looking."
"There is the harm that I forbid you."
"Why?"
"Are you General Cromwell, that you should question me thus?" she asked with rising anger, her eyes ablaze.
The young fellow gazed at her in astonishment, which gradually changed to an expression somewhat approaching distrust.
"General Cromwell," he said slowly, "seems to be much more far-seeing than I am. I am determined to search the wheel."
"Very well," she answered decisively, "do so, and take the penalty."
"What is the penalty?"
"That you never speak to me again as long as you live. I will not have my word doubted by two men in the same day, though one is the highest and the other the lowest in the army."
With that she turned from him, and once more placed her trembling hand in the flow of meal. Out of the corner of her eye, however, she saw that her lover made no move to put his resolve into execution.
The men came down from the upper part of the mill, and reported the fruitlessness of their quest. A bugle call rang out, and those who surrounded the mill came hurrying to the road.
"Tell the girl to come here," said Cromwell. When she stood before him he went on:
"Are you alone in this mill?"
"No, sir, my mother is with me, although absent at this moment."
"Have you a brother?"
"Two of them, sir."
"Where are they?"
"In General Cromwell's army."
The general looked around him.
"Is any man here a miller?" he asked. There was no response, until young Standish stepped forth.
"I am a miller," he said, a deep frown on his brow. The girl opened her mouth to contradict him, but closed it without speaking.
"You will remain here," said Cromwell; "the mill must run night and day until every sack of corn within it is ground. The women will look after it in the daytime, and you at night."
Cromwell wheeled his horse toward the south, his men falling in, two and two, behind him. The girl without a word re-entered the mill, Standish following. She went to the window, looking again through the pane that again needed dusting, watching the cavalcade now trotting smartly down the valley.
"Well, Dorothy," said the young man, "how much longer are you going to keep Lord Dorincourt in the wheel?"
"Until Cromwell and his men are entirely out of sight," she replied firmly, without turning round.
"Who led him to the wheel?"
"I did, the moment I heard the clatter of the horse. You said yesterday it was a pity Englishmen should kill Englishmen, therefore I attempted to save one man."
"Oh, his life has never been in danger; we do not kill our prisoners."
"Very well, stop the mill, and take him out. He is unarmed, and wounded, so his capture will be safe enough. Take him with you to the camp."
"Dorothy, you heard me say I was a miller."
"Yes, and I knew it was not true."
"I am willing to learn from you, Dorothy, but that is not the point. I am here by the general's orders as miller, not as soldier."
"What difference does that make?"
"The difference that if you are interested in Lord Dorincourt's life, or, rather, his liberty, I do not violate my oath as a soldier by leading him to safety across the moor."
The girl whirled round.
"Will you do that?" she cried.
"Yes, if you bid me."
"He is a poor, forlorn creature," she said, "even if he is a lord. Stop the mill, Standish, and I will release him."
She raised the trapdoor, and descended, while he pushed in the lever and throttled the mill. It was indeed a forlorn object that appeared out of the darkness of the trapdoor, a man drenched and dripping, but laughing nevertheless, though somewhat ruefully.
"I declare, Dorothy," he cried, as he came blinking into the daylight, "I shall never forget you, and I swear that you will never forget so comical a wretch as I. All I need now is an oven. First I was powdered with flour, then plastered with water, and thus the dough about me calls but for the baking, and I am a walking loaf."
"This young man," said Dorothy, somewhat breathlessly, "will lead you across the moor in safety."
"Egad," cried Lord Dorincourt, glancing without enthusiasm at Standish, "his uniform whispers that he is more likely to take me into Cromwell's camp."
Standish's fist had clenched angrily as he noted the familiarity with which the young lord spoke to Dorothy, and his lips closed into a firm line.
"I will answer for him, my lord," she said, "because he who risks his liberty in your service is my promised husband."
The dripping lord made his most profound bow.
"Young man, I congratulate you. You adore the queen, even though you fight against the king."
But Standish heard him not: his face was aglow as he gazed at the blushing Dorothy.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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