father," some one had said of him. And from the day when he had picked
his first blackberries for old Mr. Jonathan and tied his earnings in a
stocking foot as the beginning of a fund for schooling, the story of his
life had been one of struggle and of endurance. Transition had been the
part of the generation before him. In him the democratic impulse was
no longer fitful and uncertain, but had expanded into a stable and
indestructible purpose.

Before starting the wheel, which he did by thrusting his arm through the
window and lifting the gate on the mill-race, Abel took up a broom, made
of sedges bound crudely together, and swept the smooth bare floor, which
was polished like that of a ballroom by the sacks of meal that had been
dragged back and forth over the boards. From the rafters above, long
pale cobwebs were blown gently in the draught between the door and
window, and when the mill had started, the whole building reverberated
to the slow revolutions of the wheel outside.

The miller had poured Solomon Hatch's grist into the hopper, and was
about to turn the wooden crank at the side, when a shadow fell over the
threshold, and Archie Revercomb appeared, with a gun on his shoulder and
several fox-hounds at his heels.

"You'll have to get Abner to help you dress that mill-rock, Abel," he
said, "I'm off for the morning. That's a good pup of yours, but he's old
enough to begin learning."

With the inherited idleness of the Revercombs, he combined the
headstrong impulses and dogged obstinacy of his mother's stock, yet
because of his personal charm, these faults were not only tolerated but
even admired by his family.