Page:Traffics and Discoveries.djvu/381



' Book — Book — Domesday Book ! ' They were letting in the water for the evening stint at Robert's Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine-hundred- year-old song : ' Here Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam geldavit. Here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough — and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings — unum molinum — one mill. Reinbert's mill — Robert's Mill. Then and afterwards and now — tunc et -post et modo — Robert's Mill. Book — Book — Domesday Book ! ' ' I confess,' said the Black Rat on the cross- beam, luxuriously trimming his whiskers — ' I con- fess I am not above appreciating my position and all it means.' He was a genuine old English black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety. ' Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy,' said the Grey Cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking. ' But I know what you mean,' she added. ' To sit by right at the heart of things — eh ? ' 369 2 B