apidly. "I'll not give in," he said to
Sam Green, as they sat on the steps of the mill, while the grist they
had just put in was grinding. "Hold on to the last; that's what I say.
Farmer Grey wants to come it strong over me; but I'll not let him."

"All right, master; stick to that," said Sam Green.

"So I will. He shan't come it over me; that he shan't," growled the
miller.

"`When the wind blows
Then the mill goes;
When the wind drops,
Then the mill stops.'

"`I care for nobody--no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.'"

"That's it, master; that's what I call the right thing; just proper
pride," said Sam, the miller's man.

Poor Ben Page had a poor chance of being well brought up by such a man
as Mark Page, with such a friend as Sam Green. Mrs Page, too, his
mother, did not know how to teach him what was right, for she did not
care to do what was right herself. She just did what she liked best,
not what was right. She ought to have known, for she had her Bible, and
time to read it; but she did not read it, neither Sundays nor week-days.

If we read the Bible only on Sunday, we pass more than three hundred
days each year, on which days we do not learn what we ought to do in
this life, or how we are to go to heaven.

Mary read her Bible every day, and she used to tell Ben what she had
read, and to try very hard to get him to give up his bad ways. But
though he loved her, yet he went on just the same. Now and then he
would stay at home, and not go to the ale-house, or out with his gun at
night, and sit and talk to Mary, or hear her read; but next day it was
just as bad as ever. Off he would go, and, may be, come home drunk, or
with some hares or other game, which showed what he had been about. The
miller only said, "Ben, Ben, take care." And Ben laughed, and said,
"Don't fear; I'll not be found out." And he packed up the game, and
sent it off to London.

It seemed sure that Ben would come to a bad end, if he was to go on in
this way. Mark Page did not know what the Bible says: "Train up a child
in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from
it." (Proverbs chapter 22, verse 6). But Mark trained up his child in
the way he should not go; and what could he think but that, when he was
old, he would not depart from it? that is to say, from the way he should
not go. Ben Page's mother let him do just, what he liked; she beat him,
to be sure, when she was angry, but that w