calamities had befallen him,--the sails had been torn off his mill
and dashed into a hundred fragments upon the ground. And such a
mishap to a seventy feet tower mill means--as windmillers well know-
-not only a stoppage of trade, but an expense of two hundred pounds
for the new sails.

Many a sack of grist, which should have come to him had gone down to
the watermill in the valley before the new sails were at work; and
the huge debt incurred to pay for them was not fairly wiped out yet.
That catastrophe had kept the windmiller a poor man for five years,
and it gave him a nervous dread of storms.

And talking of storms, here was another unreasonable thing. The
morning sky had been (like the miller's wedded life) without a
cloud. The day had been sultry, for the time of year unseasonably
so. And, just when the miller most grudged an idle day, when times
were hard, when he was in debt,--for some small matters, as well as
the sail business,--and when, for the first time in his life, he
felt almost afraid of his own hearthstone, and would fain have been
busy at his trade, not a breath of wind had there been to turn the
sails of the mill. Not a waft to cool his perplexed forehead, not
breeze enough to stir the short grass that glared for miles over
country flat enough to mock him with the fullest possible view of
the cloudless sky. Then towards evening, a few gray flecks had
stolen up from the horizon like thieves in the dusk, and a mighty
host of clouds had followed them; and when the wind did come, it
came in no moderate measure, but brought this awful storm upon its
wings, which now raged as if all the powers of mischief had got
loose, and were bent on turning every thing topsy-turvy indoors and
out.