The man of business wrote to say that the gentleman who had visited
the mill on a certain night had, at that date, lost a pocket-book,
which he thought might have been picked up at the mill. It
contained papers only valuable to the owner, and also a five-pound
note, which was liberally offered to the windmiller if he could find
the book, and forward it at once.

Master Lake began to have a kind of reckless, gambling sort of
feeling about luck. Here would be an easily earned five pounds, if
he could but have the luck to find the missing property! That ten
shillings a week had come pretty easily to him. When all is said,
there ARE people into whose mouths the larks fall ready cooked!

The windmiller looked inside the mill and outside the mill, and
wandered a long way along the chalky road with his eyes downwards,
but he was no nearer to the five-pound note for his pains. Then he
went to his wife, but she had seen nothing of the pocket-book; on
which her husband somewhat unreasonably observed that, "A might a
been zartin THEE couldn't help un!"

He next betook himself to George, who was slowly, and it is to be
hoped surely, sweeping out the round-house.

"Gearge, my boy," said the windmiller, in not too anxious tones,
"have 'ee seen a pocket-book lying about anywheres?"

George leaned upon his broom with one hand, and with the other
scratched his white head.

"What be a pocket-book, then, Master Lake?" said he, grinning, as if