round at the bottom of the mill, and has a roof running all round
too. The projection is, in fact, an additional passage, encircling
the bottom story of the windmill. It is the round-house. If you
take a pill-box to represent the basement floor of a tower-mill, and
then put another pill-box two or three sizes larger over it, you
have got the circular passage between the two boxes, and have added
a round-house to the mill. The round-house is commonly used as a
kind of store-room.

Abel Lake's windmill had no separate dwelling-house. His
grandfather had built the windmill, and even his father had left it
to the son to add a dwelling-house, when he should perhaps have
extended his resources by a bit of farming or some other business,
such as windmillers often add to their trade proper. But that
calamity of the broken sails had left Abel Lake no power for further
outlay for many years, and he had to be content to live in the mill.

The dwelling-room was the inner part of the basement floor. Near
the door which led from this into the round-house was the ladder
leading to the next story, and close by that the opening through
which the sacks of grain were drawn up above. The story above the
basement held the millstones and the "smutting" machine, for
cleaning dirty wheat. The next above that held the dressing
machine, in which the bran was separated from the flour. In the
next above that were the corn-bins. To the next above that the
grain was drawn up from the basement in the first instance. The top
story of all held the machinery connected with the turning of the
sails. Ladders led from story to story, and each room had two
windows on opposite sides of the mill.