Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/47

Rh but millers who live by grinding others' corn."

This statement the ladies of the family insisted was absurd. To be sure the Taylors still owned the mill and ground other persons' corn as well as their own, but the revenue obtained from the little old mill was as a drop in a bucket compared to the money made by the hub factory, across the little river from the mill, drowning with its raucous buzz saws the soft purring noise made by the ancient machinery which was still run by the splashing mill-wheel, just as it had been in George Washington's time.

While not as old an industry as the mill, the hub factory was not a recent Taylor venture. It had been in existence for almost a hundred years. An astute Taylor had not been content with merely grinding the corn belonging to other persons but had decided that the great force that lay in the little river could furnish power to turn lathes as well as millstones and the swift current could also bring the necessary logs to the factory. The machinery at the mill had not changed with time and the meal was the same as it had been in George Washington's day, coarsely ground with the taste of the corn intact. The mill had been handed down from father to son and each generation had taken