The Argosy — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

THE ARaesy, the Miller's Revenge. 137 these could be heard above the fierce rush of the mill-stream—these, but nothing more. Lebrun stood silent for a few moments ; then he shook his clenched fist at his victim, drove his hands deep down into his pockets, and went back indoors. ‘‘An hour later, Gaspard came up with the horse and cart from Rozel. ‘Good morning, my uncle. Have you succeeded in catching the thief?’ he said, as he entered the mill. ‘The miller nodded without speaking. Then taking his nephew by the sleeve, he drew him outside, and pointed to the still revolving wheel . and its ghastly bundle of poor, dead humanity. ‘ Behold, how Pierre Lebrun revenges himself on those who do him an injury!’ he said. ‘We must hide this thing; and thou, my nephew, must keep a still tongue in thy head.’ ‘“The two men looked steadily into each other’s eyes. This time it was Gaspard’s turn to nod his head, which he did in slow and signi- ficant assent to his uncle’s words. ‘The wheel was at once stopped, and the cords cut. The body was hid away under some empty sacks till evening, and buried after dark in a deep hole in the garden at the back of the mill. “That la Mére Babet would be missed from several of her usual haunts, and her absence commented on, can hardly be doubted ; but no active inquiry or search was ever made into her fate. Such a task was nobody’s business—at least, the business of no private person—and the case was one that was never brought under the cognizance of justice. The old woman had been a vagrant and a wanderer for years ; inter- course between people living at different parts of the island was by no means so common then as now ; it was quite possible that la mére might have died and been buried in some hittle hamlet, and her friends, four or five miles away, be utterly unaware of the fact. So, as month after month went past, and the old woman was missed from her customary rounds, people could only shrug their shoulders, and suppose they should never see her again in this world, and hope that her wandering feet had found rest at last. “At the mill of La Roquette matters went on, to all outward seeming, exactly as they had done for the last dozen years. The mill-wheel went round, and the miller and his nephew did their work after the same thorough fashion for which they had been so long noted ; with the same disinclination for useless speech, and the same hard, grasping way in money matters. To their customers, there was no change visible in the old man or the young one; but, by-and-by, as autumn waned into the long mirk nights of winter, Gaspard began to note a change in his uncle, which troubled his sluggish mind more than anything had troubled it for years. It was a change that deepened with the deepening year, but that grew no lighter as the days crept out again ; seeming, indeed, to lie a more unnatural burden on the souls of both the men when M GOHRMGIOO <S GO)