to abide by a narrow rule the less it applied. The kernel of his
domestic theory was, "Never yield, and you never will have to," and
to this he was proud of having stuck against all temptations from a
real, though hard, affection for his own; and now, after working so
smoothly for eight years, had it come to this?

The miller scratched his bead, and looked at his wife, almost with
amazement. She moaned, though he bade her be silent; she wept, in
spite of words which had hitherto been an effectual styptic to her
tears; and she met the commonplaces of his common sense with such
wild, miserable laughter, that he shuddered as he heard her.

Weakness in human beings is like the strength of beasts, a power of
which fortunately they are not always conscious. Unless positively
brutal, you cannot well beat a sickly woman for wailing and weeping;
and if she will not cease for any lesser consideration, there seems
nothing for an unbending husband to do but to leave her to herself.

This the miller had to do, anyhow. For he could only spare a
moment's attention to her now and then, since the mill required all
his care.

In a coat and hat of painted canvas, he had been in and out ever
since the storm began; now directing the two men who were working
within, now struggling along the stage that ran outside the
windmill, at no small risk of being fairly blown away.

He had reefed the sails twice already in the teeth of the blinding
rain. But he did well to be careful. For it was in such a storm as
this, five years ago "come Michaelmas," that the worst of windmill