the miller, smiling and all gray-white with dusty meal, "and she's not so young as she were by a couple of centuries or so, but she's quite safe though she do rock and rattle a bit. But Lor' bless you, I likes to hear her talk; it's company like, for it's lonely work up here by oneself all day at times." It was not only that the ancient mill moved and shook so, but the floor was uneven as well, nor was there overmuch elbow-room to allow a margin for unsteadiness, and it would have been awkward to have been caught by any of the whirring wheels; moreover the noise was confusing and the light seemed dim for the moment after the bright sunshine without. But we soon got used to the new condition of things and our novel and unstable surroundings.

"I wonder she has never been blown right over in a storm during all those years," I said, "for she is only supported on a single post, though certainly it is a big one." In truth the mill shook so much in the comparatively steady breeze that it seemed to us a heavy storm would easily have laid her low. Mills, like ships, are always "she's," I have observed, though how a man-of-war can be a "she has always puzzled me. "Well, she may be only supported on one post, but that is of solid heart of oak, as whole and strong to-day as when first put up; not worm-eaten a bit. There's an old saying you may have heard, there's nothing like leather'; it ought to be, I thinks, by rights, 'there's nothing like oak.' She do rock though when it blows hard, but I'm used to it; it's her nature, and she'll last

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my life. Oh yes, she's very old-fashioned and slow, but for all that she can grind corn better nor your modern mills, in spite of what people talk. We grinds the wheat and makes honest meal; the modern mills with their rollers make simply flour, which is not half as wholesome or nourishing. Wheat-meal and flour are not the same, though they both make bread: wheat - meal possesses nourishing qualities that ordinary flour does not.' So one drives about country and learns!

The miller looked an oldish man, but his face and beard (I think he had a beard, but my memory may be at fault) were white from dusty meal, and may have made him appear older than he really was. Anyhow, we ventured to ask him if he thought times had altered for the better or for the worse since he was young. Like the rest of the world, merry miller though he was, he complained of the severe competition that had cut down profits to a minimum, whilst the work was harder. In "the good old days" of milling, when he began the trade, the price for grinding corn used to be is. a strike or 8s. a quarter for wheat, and 8d. a strike or 5s. 4d. a quarter for barley; now the charge is 5s. 4d. a quarter for wheat, and 2s. 6d. a quarter for barley. "Moreover, nowadays, though we gets less money for the work, we have to fetch the corn and take the meal back again; whereas in past times the corn was carted to the mill, and taken away when ground." So that, we were given to understand, besides the lowering of prices there was the cost of cartage to and fro to be taken into con

sideration. It is the same familiar story of a harder struggle to earn a living, entailing besides a lessened leisure. Some one has to suffer for the benefit of cheap production, and the small man suffers most.

Bidding good-bye to our worthy miller, who, in spite of altered times, had a contented look that a millionaire well might envy, we remounted the dogcart and soon reached the sleepy, little, and erst market town of Falkingham-a town unknown to Bradshaw, because it has been left out in the cold by the railway, but none the less picturesque on that account! Here the road widened out into a large triangle, the base being at the end farthest away from us; this formed the old market-place, a pleasant open space surrounded by quaint and ancient houses and shops. One of these houses especially interested us, a substantial stone building with mullioned windows, set slightly back from the roadway and approached between two massive pillars surmounted by round stone balls. It was not perhaps actually picturesque, but it had such a charming air of quiet dignity, and looked so historical in a mild manner, as to make the modern villa seem a trumpery affair. It was a house that struck you as having been built originally for the owner to live in and to enjoy, in contradistinction to which the "desirable residence" of to-day always seems to me to be built to sell. The stones of this old house were delightfully toned into a series of delicate grays, enlivened here and there by splashes of gold and silver lichen. What a difference there is between the wealth of colourful hues of a time-tinted

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country building and the begrimed appearance of a smoke-stained London dwelling. Age adds beauty to the one; it adds but a depressing gloom to the other.

Right in front of us, at the top of the marketplace, stood a fine example of an old coaching inna long red-brick structure whose ruddy front showed in pleasant contrast with the gray stone buildings around of earlier date: a plain but comfortablelooking hostelry, its many windows gleaming cheerfully in the sunshine, and having in the centre under the eaves of its roof a reminder of the past in the shape of a sun-dial with a legend upon it; but what that legend was we could not make out, for time and weather had rendered it indistinct. our mind's eye we pictured to ourselves the outside. travellers by the arriving coaches consulting it, and then pulling their cumbersome "verge" watches out of their fobs to see if they were correct. Sun-dials, besides being picturesque, were of real utility in the days when watches and clocks could not always be relied upon to tell the right time.

In

Of old, Falkingham was on the high turnpike road from London to Lincoln, therefore the traffic passing through the little town in the coaching age must have been considerable, and the place must have presented a very different aspect then from the one of slumberous tranquillity it now possesses. Our inn, "The Greyhound" to wit, I find duly recorded in my copy of Paterson as supplying post-horses. I well remember my grandfather expatiating upon the pleasures of a driving tour in his

young days when he left home with his travelling carriage packed, but without horses, as he posted. from town to town and place to place, without the shadow of anxiety about the "cattle," or having any need to consider whether this or that stage was too long. It was expensive travelling doubtless, but delightfully luxurious and free from care, except for the bogey of the highwayman; but every pleasure has its shadow! The Greyhound has manifestly been but little altered since the last coach pulled up there, beyond that the great arched entranceway in the centre has been glazed and converted into a hall, which may or may not be an improvement: personally, for tradition's sake, I look jealously upon any modifications in the economy of these ancient coaching houses; but one cannot keep the hand of Time back just for the sake of tradition or the picturesque.

Having refreshed ourselves very satisfactorily here, our roast beef being washed down with a foaming tankard of genuine home-brewed ale, we set out to have a quiet look at the clean past-time town, which, as a matter of fact, we could take in at a glance, for it was all gathered round its large old market-square, though market-triangle would be a more correct term. Falkingham seems never to have known the hand of the modern builder, and has therefore happily preserved its charming oldworld look, thanks doubtless in a great measure, if not wholly, to the fact of the railway having left it stranded high and dry out of the traveller's beat.

Our stroll round the square did not take long :