r travelled unceasingly down
from the grinding-wheel to the bin below. There was a ladder from this
room to the one above where the machinery was. There was also a room
over this from which you could get outside and regulate the small
spiny-looking wheel at the top so as to gain all the force of the wind.
All these rooms were festooned with cobwebs quite white with flour.
The spiders were white, too, which made them look larger. Even the
mice caught in the traps were white with flour.

Now at eight o'clock every evening Tom sat down at the round wooden
table, and ate his bread and cheese by the light of a tallow candle
inserted in the neck of a bottle. And every night at this time there
crept out from a crevice near the cupboard a tiny brown mouse, covered
with flour-dust. This little mouse seemed eager and hungry, but it
never ventured near the traps where the alluring cheese smelt so
deliciously. It would wait for Tom to drop a crumb, and then would
dart after it and frisk away into its hole, to return and watch again
for another crumb. This happened night after night, till Tom began to
watch for the little creature with some eagerness. The sound of its
tiny scampering feet on the floor would call up a feeling of pleasure
like that which one feels when the knock of a dear friend is heard on
the door. But Tom was bitter for all this, and at times he had a
savage hope that the little mouse would after all be lured into one of
the traps. He did not want to feel tender or kindly any more to
anything. He wanted to feel cruel and heartless, because his
tenderness had cost him so much pain.

[Illustration: Little girls with flowers]

One autumn evening, when the air was still, and a sweet afterglow
rested on the sky like an echo of the sunset, Tom sat thinking in his
chair. It was then that he saw something which he never forgot. He
saw his small friend watching one of the traps in which another mouse
had just been caught. "Now it will shun me," thought Tom. "It has
seen what the traps are for." But the tiny brown creature did not run
away, as might have been expected, but crept up to the miller as
trustfully as ever; indeed, more so, for it came upon the table and
nibbled at a piece of bread close to Tom's hand. Then Tom arose, and
went towards the trap, and, instead of drowning the captive, opened the
door and set it at liberty. From that time he set no more traps. And
he fell to thinking with shame t