Our log-cabin, stood only a stone’s cast from the gray old
weather-tinted grist-mill, whose voice was music for us by night and by
day, so that on Sundays, when the water was shut off from the great
tub-wheels in its basement, it was as if the world had gone deaf and
dumb. A soft sibilance ordinarily prevailed over the dull, hoarse murmur
of the machinery; but late at night, when the water gathered that
mysterious force which the darkness gives it, the voice of the mill had
something weird in it like a human moan.
It was in all ways a place which I did not care to explore alone. It was
very well, with a company of boys, to tumble and wrestle in the vast
bins full of golden wheat, or to climb the slippery stairs to the
cooling-floor in the loft, whither the little pockets of the elevators
carried the meal warm from the burrs, and the blades
[Illustration]
of the wheel up there, worn smooth by years of use, spread it out in an
ever-widening circle, and caressed it with a thousand repetitions of
their revolution. But the heavy rush of the water upon the wheels in the
dim, humid basement, the angry whirl of the burrs under the hoppers, the
high windows, powdered and darkened with the floating meal, the vague
corners festooned with flour-laden cobwebs, the jolting and shaking of
the bolting-cloths, had all a potentiality of terror in them that was
not a pleasure to the boy’s sensitive nerves. Ghosts, against all reason
and experience, were but too probably waiting their chance to waylay
unwary steps there whenever two feet ventured alone into the mill, and
Indians, of course, made it their ambush.
With the saw-mill it was another matter. That was always an affair of
the broad day. It began work and quitted work like a Christian, and did
not keep the grist-mill’s unnatural hours. Yet it had its fine moments,
when the upright-saw lunged through the heavy oak log and gave out the
sweet smell of the bruised woody fibres, or then when the circular-saw
wailed through the length of the lath we were making for the new house,
and freed itself with a sharp cry, and purred softly till the wood
touched it again, and it broke again into its long lament.
The warm sawdust in the pits below was almost as friendly to bare feet
as the warm meal; and it was splendid to rush down the ways on the cars
that brought up the logs or carried away the lumber. How we should have
lived through all these complicated mechanical perils I cannot very well
imagine now; but there is a special providence that watches over boys
and appoints the greater number of them to grow up in spite of their
environment.
Nothing was ever drowned in those swift and sullen races, except our
spool-pig, as they call the invalid titman of the herd in that region;
though once one of the grist-miller’s children came near giving a touch
of tragedy to their waters. He fell into the race just above the
saw-mill gate, and was eddying round into the rush upon its wheel, when
I caught him by his long yellow hair, and pulled him out. His mother
came rushing from her door at the outcry we had all set up, and
perceiving him safe, immediately fell upon him in merited chastisement.
No notice, then or thereafter, was taken of his preserver by either of
his parents; but I was not the less a hero in my own eyes.