University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
THE OLD MILL.

It fortunately happened that a tolerably wet season
followed this first experiment of the mill. But
with all the advantages of frequent rains, the mortifying
truth became every day more apparent, that my
grand uncle's scheme of accommodating the neighbourhood
with a convenient recourse for grinding
their corn, was destined to be baulked, in the larger
share of its usefulness, by that physical phenomenon
which was disclosed to him on the first day of his
operations; to wit, that his capacious reservoir was
emptied in a much more rapid ratio than it was
filled. It was like a profligate spendthrift whose
prodigality exceeded his income. The consequence
was that the mill was obliged to submit to the destiny
of working from one to two hours in the morning,
and then to stop for the rest of the day, except
in the very wet weather of the spring, (and then
there was no great supply of corn,) in order, by the
most careful husbandry, to wring from the reluctant
little water-course a sufficient fund for the next day's
employment.

This was a serious loss to the country around;

for my grand uncle had talked so much about his
project, and extolled his benefaction so largely, that
the people had laid out their accounts to take all their
grist to his mill. They came there, all through the
summer, in crowds; and nothing was more common
than to see a dozen ruminative old horses, with as
many little bare-legged negroes astride upon them,
with the large canvass mill-bags spread out for saddles,
all collected of a morning round the mill door,
each waiting for his turn to get his sack filled.
Sometimes these monkeys were fast asleep for hours
on their steeds; and sometimes they made great
confusion about the premises with their wild shouts,
and screams, and rough-and-tumble fights in which
they were often engaged. But it invariably fell out
that at least half were disappointed of their errands,
and were obliged to attend the next day. In the
dry spells the mill stopped altogether. These things
gave great dissatisfaction to the neighbourhood, and
many good customers abandoned the mill entirely.
I am told, also, that the old gentleman was singularly
unfortunate in his choice of a miller. He had
a great giant of a fellow in that station, who was remarkable
for a hard-favoured, knotty, red head, and
a particularly quarrelsome temper. So that it often
happened, when the neighbours expostulated in
rather too severe terms against the difficulty of getting
their corn ground, this functionary, who was a
little of the mould of the ancient miller in the mother
country, made but few words of it, and gave the remonstrants
a sound threshing, by way of bringing
them to reason. Then again, the dam formed a
large pestilent lake, and, by its frequent exposure of
the bottom to the sun, engendered foul vapours that
made the country, in the autumn, very unhealthy.

These circumstances, in process of time, worked
sadly to the disparagement of my grand uncle's profits,
and set the people to talking in harsh terms
against his whole undertaking. They said the worst
thing they could of it, “That it was a blasted thun-dergust
mill, and not worth a man's while to be
fooling about it with his corn, as long as he could
get it ground any where else, if it was ten miles
off!”

In process of time the miller was turned away:
and then the machinery got out of order, and my
grand uncle would not repair; and so that mill came
to a dead halt. Following the course of nature, too,
the dam began to manifest symptoms of a premature
old age. First, the upper beams decayed by the action
of the sun upon them; after these, the lower
parts of the structure broke loose. But what with
drift wood, and leaves, and rubbish, the mound, which
constituted the breastwork, remained sufficiently
firm to support the pond for some years. It was a
famous place for black snakes and sun fish in summer,
and wild ducks in winter. All this time the
stream found a vent through an opening that had
been worn in the breastwork; and, consequently,
the race had become entirely dry, and grown over
with grass.

Year after year the surface of the pond grew gradually

less. It retreated slowly from its former edge,
and became narrower. At length, at the breaking
up of one unusually boisterous, wet and surly winter,
there came on, in the month of March, a week of
heavy and incessant rain. This celebrated week
closed with one of the most furious tempests ever remembered
in that part of the country. The heavens
poured down their wrath upon the incontinent mill-dam;
the winds rushed, with a confounding energy,
over this desolate tract, driving the waters before
them in torrents; and away went the rickety old
breastwork, with all the imprisoned pool behind it.

The next morning the tempest subsided. The
sun smiled again over the chilly scene; and there
was the fuming and affrighted little Apple-pie, in all
its former insignificance. Not a trace of the breastwork
was left; and there was to be seen the foul
and slimy bed of the mill pond, exposed in shocking
nakedness to the eye. Long green tresses of weed,
covered with the velvet of many years' accumulation
beneath the surface of the water, lay strewed about,
wherever any stubborn shurb occurred to arrest their
passage; huge trunks of trees, moss-grown and rotten,
were imbedded upon the muddy surface; briers,
leaves, and other vegetable wrecks were banked up
on each other in various forms, mingled, here and
there, with the battered and shapeless carcasses of
the smaller vermin that frequented the pond. The
wind swept with a brisk and whistling speed over
this damp bottom, and visited, with a wintry rigour,
the shivering spectators whom curiosity had

attracted to witness the ravages of the night; but, in
the midst of all, the feeble and narrow Apple-pie
shot hastily along, with a turbid stream, pursuing his
course through, under, and around the collected impediments
in his path, as near as possible in the very
same channel which, ten or fifteen years before, he
had been wont to inhabit; as if unconscious that this
disturbance in the face of nature could be attributed,
in the slightest degree, to such an inefficient and trifling
imp as himself: by no means an unimpressive
type of the confusion and riot which the most sordid
and paltry passions may produce in the moral world,
when suffered to gather up and gangrene in the system.

As I have introduced this narrative to make my
reader acquainted with the merits of the controversy
relative to the boundary line, it is necessary that I
should inform him, that when my grand uncle first entered
upon this project of the mill, he immediately
opened a negotiation with Mr. Gilbert Tracy, his
neighbour,—who was at that time the proprietor of the
Brakes,—for the purchase of so much of the land, or
rather of the marsh, which lay eastward of the Apple-pie
Branch, as was sufficient for the projected mill-dam.
I have already told my readers that the Branch
itself was the dividing line between the two estates;
and, consequently, my grand uncle was already in
possession of all westward of that line. In his communications
with Mr. Gilbert Tracy on this subject,
he unfolded his whole scheme, and, without the
least difficulty, obtained the purchase he desired.

There were several letters passed between them,
which stated the purpose contemplated; and the
deed that was executed on the occasion also recites,
that “Edward Hazard, Esquire, of Swallow Barn,
conceiving it to be a matter of great importance to
the good people residing on, frequenting and using
the lands in the vicinage of the stream of water,
commonly known and called by the name of the
Apple-pie Branch, that a convenient and serviceable
mill, adapted to the grinding of wheat, rye, and
Indian corn, should be constructed on the said Apple-pie,
&c.:” And also, “that the said Edward Hazard,
Esquire, having carefully considered the capacity,
fall, force of water, head and permanency of the said
Apple-pie Branch for the maintenance and supply
of a mill as aforesaid; and being convinced and certified
of the full and perfect fitness of the same, for
the purposes aforesaid;” the said Gilbert Tracy
transferred, &c., a full title “to so much of the said
land as it may be found useful and necessary to occupy
in the accomplishment of the said design, &c.;
the said Edward Hazard paying therefor at the
rate of one pound, current money of Virginia, for
each and every acre thereof.”

By this conveyance, the western limit of the
Brakes was removed from the channel of the Branch
to the water edge of the mill-pond, as soon as the
same should be created.

My grand uncle, after the failure of his scheme,
could never bear to talk about it. It fretted him exceedingly;

and he was sure to get into a passion
whenever it was mentioned. He swore at it, and
said a great many harsh things; for, I am told, he
was naturally a passionate man, and was not very
patient under contradiction. He would not even go
near the place, but generally took some pains, in his
rides, to avoid it. When they told him that the storm
had carried away the dam, he broke out with one
of his usual odd kind of oaths, and said, “he was
glad of it; it was a hyperbolical, preposterous abortion;—he
must have been under the influence of the
moon when he conceived it, and of Satan when he
brought it forth; and he rejoiced that the winds of
heaven had obliterated every monument of his folly.”
Besides this, he said many other things of it equally
severe.

The date of this freak of the old gentleman was
somewhere about the middle of the last century.
The ruin of the mill is still to be seen. Its roof has
entirely disappeared; a part of the walls are yet
standing, and the shaft of the great wheel, with one
or two of the pinions attached, still lies across its appropriate
bed. The spot is embowered with ancient
beech trees, and forms a pleasant and serene picture
of woodland quiet. The track of the race is to be
traced by some obscure vestiges, and two mounds
remain, showing the abutments of the dam. A range
of light willows grows upon what I presume was
once the edge of the mill-pond; but the intervening
marsh presents now, as of old, its complicated

thickets of water plants, amongst which the magnolia,
at its accustomed season, exhibits its beautiful
flower, and throws abroad its rich perfume.

Before the period of the Revolutionary war, Gilbert
Tracy paid the debt of nature. The present proprietor,
his eldest son, inherited his estate. Old Edward
Hazard figured in that momentous struggle,
and lived long enough after its close to share, with
many gallant spirits of the time, the glories of its triumph.
Isaac, the son of his old friend, preserved a
neutral position in the contest; and, being at heart
a thorough-going loyalist, the intercourse between
him and the family at Swallow Barn grew rare and
unsocial. The political principles of the two families
were widely at variance; and, in those times,
such differences had their influence upon the private
associations of life. Still it is believed, and I suppose
with some foundation for the opinion, that the good
offices of my grand uncle, secretly exerted, and without
even the knowledge of Mr. Tracy, had the effect
to preserve the Brakes from confiscation,—the common
misfortune of the disaffected in the war: An
affectionate remembrance of his old friend Gilbert,
and the youth of the successor to the estate at that
time, being imagined to have actuated Edward Hazard
in this manifestation of kindness.

My grand uncle, very soon after the peace, was
gathered to his fathers, and has left behind him a
name, of which, as I have before remarked, the family
are proud. Amongst the monuments which
still exist to recal him to memory, I confess the old

mill, to me, is not the least endearing. Its history
has a whimsical bearing upon his character, illustrating
his ardent, uncalculating zeal; his sanguine temperament;
his public spirit; his odd perceptions;
and that dash of comic, headstrong humorousness
that, I think, has reappeared, after the shifting of
one generation, in Ned.

I, accordingly, frequently go with Ned to this spot;
and, as we stretch ourselves out upon the grass, in
the silent shade of the beech trees, or wander around
the old ruin, the spot becomes peopled to our imaginations
with the ancient retainers of Swallow Barn;
the fiery-headed miller; the elvish little negroes who
have probably all sunk, hoary-headed, to the grave,
leaving their effigies behind, as perfect as in the days
when they themselves rode to mill; and last of all,
our venerable ancestor.

Out of these materials, we fabricate some amusing
and touching stories.