The Vicar of Bullhampton

ing that the mill, in spite of its dilapidations,-perhaps by reason of them,-was as pretty as anything in Bullhampton. In the first place it was permeated and surrounded by co

back into its mother's idle bosom. Mill and house were thatched, and were very low. There were garrets in the roof, but they were so shaped that they could hardly be said to have walls to them at all, so nearly were they contained by the sloping roof. In front of the building there ran a road,-which after all was no more than a private lane. It crossed the smaller stream and the mill-run by two wooden bridges; but the river itself had been too large for the bridge-maker's efforts, and here there was a ford, with stepping-stones for foot passengers. The banks on every side were lined with leaning

you idle just at this mo

nt," said th

ck," said the miller; "I b

It's hot walking, I can tell you, Mr. Brattle. If it goes on like

Fenwick, Sam

this morning

now, if you'r

offence if more were said to him about his son. The clergyman did not sit down, but stood close over

pause. The miller puffed his pipe, but said not a word. "I do

. The lad'd have been well enough if

you mean, M

he good o' speaking else? If nobody hadn't a meddled with the lad, he

that with you now. There would be no use in it. I've co

like e

truth at once. He was about

o take him afore

any sacrifice rather. I had him yesterday night b

ou, Muster Fenwick, without any letting

? What does matter is this;-that they who were with him

all. It's time I was in the mill, I believe. There's no one much to help me now, barring the hired

e of oak throughout, but with a well-worn cushion on the seat of it, in which it was the miller's custom to sit when the work of the day was done. In this chair no one else would ever sit, unless Sam would do so occasionally, in bravado, and as a protest against his father's authority. When he did so his mother would be wretched, and his sister lately had begged him to desist from the sacrilege. Close to this was a little round deal table, on which would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, his wife would sit and darn her husband's stockings. She also had her own peculiar chair in this corner, but she had never accustomed herself to the luxury of arms to lean on, and had no cushion for her own comfort. There were various dressers, tables, and sideboards round the room, and a multiplicity of dishes, plates, and bowls, all standing in their proper places. But though the apartment was called a kitchen,-and, in truth, the cookery for the family was done here,-there was behind it, opening out to the rear, another kitchen in which there was a great boiler, and a huge oven never now used. The necessary but unsightly doings of kitchen life were here carried on, out of view. He, indeed, would have been fastidious who would have hesitated, on any score of cleanliness or niceness, to sit and eat at the long board on which the miller's dinner was daily served, o

sehold so many joys and so much sorrow. And behind, looking to the back on to the little plot of vegetables which was called the garden,-a plot in which it seemed that cabbages and gooseberry bushes were made to alternate,-there was a large store-room, and the chamber in which Fanny slept,-now alone, but whic

-armed country lass, who was maid-of-all-work at Brattle Mill. When it has also been told that below the cabbage-plot t

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