George did not blush,--he never blushed,--but he looked "voolish"
enough to warrant the suspicion that his errand was a tender one,
and he had no other reason to give for his spruce appearance

It was, perhaps, in his confusion that he managed to convey a
mistaken notion of the place to which he was going to Mrs. Lake.
She was under the impression that he went to the neighboring town,
whereas he went to one in an exactly opposite direction, and some
miles farther away.

He went to the bank, too, which seems an unlikely place for tender
tryst; but George's proceedings were apt to be less direct than the
simplicity of his looks and speech would have led a stranger to
suppose. When he reached home, the windmiller and his family were
going to bed, for the night was still, and the mill idle. George
betook himself at once to where his truckle-bed stood in the round-
house, and proceeded to light his mill-candlestick, which was stuck
into the wall.

From the chink into which it was stuck he then counted seven bricks
downwards, and the seventh yielded to a slight effort and came out.
It was the door, so to speak, of a hole in the wall of the mill,
from which he drew a morocco-bound pocket-book. After an uneasy
glance over his shoulder, to make sure that the long dark shadow
which stretched from his own heels, and shifted with the draught in
which the candle flared, was not the windmiller creeping up behind
him, he took a letter out of the book and held it to the light as if
to read it. But he never turned the page, and at last replaced it
with a sigh. Then he put the pocket-book back into the hole, and