Page:An Old English Home and Its Dependencies.djvu/189



CHAPTER VIII. VERY manor had its mill, and consequently there is hardly a village without one. The lord of the manor had certain rights over the mill and over his tenants, who were required to go to his mill and to no other. The mill is usually a very picturesque adjunct to the scenery. It is frequently an old building; it has ancient trees standing round it; there is the mill-pool, the sluice, the wheel, and the foaming waters discharged over it.

The miller himself is a genial figure, dusted with flour, his face lighted up with the consciousness that though all the rest of the parish may starve, that will not he. 175