and the clerk rose to announce it. "Let us sing to the praise
and glo--Please, sir, Mas' Cinderby's mill is blowed down!"

[Sidenote: ANOTHER MILLER]

Another word on Sussex millers. John Oliver, the Hervey of Highdown
Hill, had a companion in eccentricity in William Coombs of Newhaven,
who, although active as a miller to the end, was for many years a
stranger to the inside of his mill owing to a rash statement one night
that if what he asseverated was not true he would never enter his mill
again. It was not true and henceforward, until his death, he directed
his business from the top step--such is the Sussex tenacity of purpose.

Coombs was married at West Dean, but not fortunately. On the way to the
church a voice from heaven called to him, "Will-yam Coombs! Will-yam
Coombs! if so be that you marry Mary ---- you'll always be a miserable
man." Coombs, who had no false shame, often told the tale, adding, "And
I be a miserable man."

Coombs' inseparable companion was a horse which bore him and his
merchandise to market. In order to vary the monotony of the animal's own
God-given hue, he used to paint it different colours, one day yellow and
the next pink, one day green and the next blue, and so on. But this
cannot have perplexed the horse so much as his master's idea of mercy;
for when its back was over-loaded, not only with sacks of flour, but
also with Coombs, that humanitarian, experiencing a pang of sympathy,
and exclaiming "The marciful man is marciful to his beast," would lift
one of the sacks on to his own shoulders. His marcy, however, did not
extend to dismounting. Our Sussex droll, Andrew Boorde, when he invented
the wisdom of Gotham, invented also the charity of Coombs. But the story
is true.

Coombs must not be considered typical of Sussex. Nor can the tricyclist
of Chailey be called typical of Sussex--the weary man who was overtaken
by a correspondent of mine on the acclivity called the King's Head Hill,
toiling up its steepness on a very old-fashioned, solid-tyred tricycle.
He had the brake hard down, and when this was pointed out to him, he
replied shrewdly, "Eh master, but her might goo backards." Such
whimsical excess of caution, such thorough calculation of all the
chances, is not truly typical, nor is the miller's oddity truly typical;
and yet if one set forth to find humorous eccentricity, humorous
suspicion, and humorous cautiousness at their most flourishing, Sussex
is the county for the search