"Mother!" cried his wife, scornfully. "She've never been a mother,
maester; of this nor any other one. To see her handle it was enough
for me. The boy himself could see she never so much as looked back
at un. To bring an infant out a night like this, too, and leave it
with strangers. Mother, indeed, says he!"

"Take your time, missus, take your time!" murmured the miller in his
head. He did not speak aloud, he only puffed his pipe.

"Do you suppose the genle'm be the father, missus?" he suggested, as
he rose to go back to his work.

"Maybe," said his wife, briefly; "I can't speak one way or another
to the feelings of men-folk."

This blow was hit straight out, but the windmiller forbore reply.
He was not altogether ill-pleased by it, for the woman's unwonted
peevishness broke down in new tears over the child, whom she bore
away to bed, pouring forth over it half inarticulate indignation
against its unnatural parents.

"She've a soft heart, have the missus," said the windmiller,
thoughtfully, as he went to the outer door. "I'm in doubts if she
won't take to it more than her own yet. But she shall have her own
time."

The storm had passed. The wolds lay glistening and dreary under a
watery sky, but all was still. The windmiller looked upwards
mechanically. To be weatherwise was part of his trade. But his