The Laughing Mill and Other Stories

lack and white masses of his hair. He had the air of trying to rouse himself from a mood of pai

ur sympath

ack. "I really don't remember-but I believe I'

face. "You have chosen an ill place to sleep in," he remarked a

d judging by the aspect of the place, I shouldn'

her now; but as many as do s

le of doing harm, and therefore permitted to wander about as he liked. In the moral atmosphere of these ruins he was sensible of somewhat congenial to his own forlornness, and hence haunted them rather than any more cheerful spot. Certainly, this was an appropriate haunt

ivination, he appeared to suspe

"I am not mad, I have passed beyond insanity. Let me sit down here and talk to you. Nay-do

than I was seized with an odd fantasy that he had actually vanished into thin air, and that were I to look round, I should not find him. His voice only was left, and even

med the voice; "what drea

he wheel was in my thoughts at all! Yet it was true that I had given rein to all sorts of fanciful speculations concerning it, and was now, moreover, quite in the mood to give them utteran

out the world, had left it here amidst the sedge and spray of the waterfall. Henceforth, therefore, there shall be no more u

ou have

t forth once again upon the dusty road, and turn it as you go, lest our sluggish hearts forget to beat, and we cease to draw the very breath of life, and our souls, torpid and uninspi

turns ever between a fool above and a corpse beneath; and the l

about it now. See how Nature seeks to make the awful symbol of destiny into a plaything for her own beautiful idleness! How fearlessly the light and

he things we call inanimate? You have shuddered when handling the rack and the Iron Virgin of the Inquisition, and felt faint at the sight of the guillotine and t

there?" I asked, humouri

ignant intelligence derived from them; an intelligence both devilish in itself and able to endow you with its ow

luence unless aware befo

yonder wheel," was the reply, "a

awakening them to unnatural activity. That the wheel had a conscious personality, instinct with evil, seemed no longer open to doubt. Now the plash and gurgle of the water changed to the stealthy drip of

urmured the voice aga

ein, and few indulgences, I believe, are more perilous. With my change of mood came a change of tone; I cast aside the hysteric st

t it this afternoon. An amusing story-all about the Laughing Mill, and the fellow who was drowned, and the nymph of the pea

turned the other. "But I want your

think I'm more likely to succeed as a listener than as a narrator; however, if it must be so, I'll give it the best ending I can. And

t had been delivered with impassioned eloquence. Through the sad colourless medium I seemed to behold the direct movement of events, and almost to take part in them. Moreover, as the narrator proceeded, the notion more than once possessed me that his words reached my ears from some inward source-that I was merely thinking the things I seemed to hear. His tone was so attuned to the desola