The Laughing Mill and Other Stories

p directly opposite the Devil's Ribs, and at least a mile and a half from the village? It's well enough in summer of course, but

position, which lay athwart the shore like a vast wall, separating us from the little fishing hamlet on the other side. "Ye see the lighthouse on tip-end of Gloam's Point, don't ye? Well, sir, old as that lighthouse looks to you now, I, that am a deal older than you are, can remember when 'twa'nt there. And that brings me round to what I was going to say. Along in those times, sir, when there wa'nt no regular lighthouse, but no bit les

. I suppose the bones of many a good m

mostly keep back the floating bits-spars, bodies, and such like-from getting to the beach. Whatever strikes there, sinks there, speaking in a gen

ship might go down there, and nothing ever be f

l in her lap, and after a few moments she got up and entered the house, leaving Mr. Poyntz and me to ourselves. I fa

ke to hear of wrecks,"

e surf-whitened reef; "and perhaps 'tis natural she should not

tell what possessed me to put so inconsequent a question. Partly to justify

a bit of a yarn I'd like to spin ye-you being beknown amongst the great gentlefolks down to New York and elsewhere-about a wreck that once was on the Devil's Ribs. Maybe some of those you do business for can throw light upon it like; for what the ship was that was wrecked, or whence she sailed, was never known; for only that necklace

r's suspense. It was five minutes before his pipe was cleaned out, refilled, and lighted to his satisfaction, and then, having spread out his great arms along the back of

t?" I asked at leng

d just parted his last cable, as I might say, and I had just come in from a voyage to the Pacific Coast for hides, and was living in this house alone by myself. I'd come home, sir, to find the girl as had given me her word

ntz had wedded only at the age of a grandfather, she could hardly be his own offspring by marriage. Were the doubts which her aspect had already su

he folks called him; him that yonder point's named after, and that lived at the Laughing Mill, over there, back of the wood. But now I come for to think on it," bro

hear about anything that has a picturesque nicknam

now, as touching Scholar Gloam, he died nigh a score of years ago; leastways he knocked off living in the body. For there be those," lowering his voice and wrinkling his brows, "there be those-superst

mean, sir. He was a comely favoured man of the pale sort, and grave and silent, though always the gentleman in his manners, as by blood and breeding. For the Gloams was the great family here fifty years ago, and was landlords of most of the farms roundabout; but they steered a bad course, as I might say, and di

augh at, Mr. Poyntz?

d scream more than a laugh, and like nothing human, praise goodness, that ever I heard! There was ugly yarns about that mill, d'ye see; folks said as how it had kill

at was killed?

I know is, little enough that child looked like him as passed for its father; and now comes the ugliest part of it. A year after the child's birth the miller was found dead one morning underneath his own mill-wheel. Seems he'd fallen in the mill-race by some mishap, and so had the life crushed out of him. But bad things was said ... and the widow and child they went back to the Hall, and lived there many years, till the Squire died. The child got all his growth and training there, and folks used to say he'd have been more like the Squire if

hing for him to do, Mr. Poyn

'd heard of his father's doings, be it with the handsome housekeeper or anything else; and little he dreamed-ye can make affidavit-that her son had any claim to call himself his brother, though 'twas told him once afterwards, as we'll come to presently. Nay, but my thought of him is, he was a simple, honest g

vid a swearing that a bit of rust on the axle was the cause of it all; for, mind ye, there was no steering round that black fact of the old miller's having met his death on the wheel; and, too, though they was never done hunting for that bit of a rust spot, they never found it, or if ever they thought they had, lo! there'd be the laug

of who Scholar Gloam was, I'll go on with the yar