The Argosy — page 150: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

1 36 The Miller's Revenge. res Ameer, ‘“‘A minute later, and the water began to flow. Lebrun was opening the sluice. At first a thin, tnckling stream, but fast increasing in rush and volume, till the whole force of the water at the miller's command was brought to bear on the wheel and its burden. First the wheel creaked, then it shivered—as though shnnking from the ternble duty laid upon it—and then, as the water struck it more and more fiercely, it began slowly to revolve, and Mére Babet began to revolve with it. - Tied firmly to one of the spokes, with her head pointing to the centre, and her feet touching the tire, as the wheel moved she moved with it, nsing slowly, till her feet were in the air and her head downward; then coming slowly down on the other side. Never resting for a moment, never hurrying its pace, the wheel went round and round—a dnpping monster that knew no weariness. But it was a monster that required constant feeding while it worked, and Pierre Lebrun was busy inside attending to its wants. “¢Work and play at the same time!’ he muttered. ‘It is not often that the two come together for a poor wretch like me. Qh! but itis sweet to be revenged !’ ‘He went out every few minutes to glance at his prisoner, and nodded his head, and rubbed his hands gleefully, to find how satisfactorily every- thing was progressing. The great wheel dripped and sparkled in the rays of the early sun, as the rushing stream smote it fiercely from above. La Mére Babet, rising and falling slowly, now lost in the depths of the trough, and anon coming up, up, up, only to swoop slowly down next moment, looked, except for her ghastly face, with its crown of white hair, and her wide-stanng eyes, like a mere bundle of saturated clothes. Twice she had given utterance to a shriek, loud, agonized, far-reaching, that might well have frighted the sea-birds in their rocky haunts, and had caused even the miller’s nut-brown cheek to pale for a moment. But that was half-an-hour ago, and many things might happen in that time. There was something dreadful about the woman’s continued silence. Lebrun’s visits to the little grassy hillock beside the trough became more frequent, and the scowl deepened on his face, as Mére Babet, with the devilish obstinacy of her sex, refused to speak, or even so much as to look at him. If she would only have . shut those dreadful staring eyes fora moment! But even that seemed too much to expect. At length the death-lhke solitude became unbear- able. ‘Hallo! hallo! ma mére,’ he cned. ‘Are you asleep or awake? Has the water cooled your brain yet? Promise never to rob me again, and I’ll set you free. Vile hag! why don't you speak? Speak! I say, or I'll keep you turning there till the day of judgment!’ ‘But la Mére Babet vouchsifed no answer. Not even by the flicker of an eyelid did she acknowledge that she heard what was said to her. The shnill scream of some wheeling sea-bird, the faint crowing of a cock on some distant farm, the heavy pulsing of the tide upon the shore, all comicaooks GO)