Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 37

41
Mill 0' iht Will
The Plain and the Stars.
The jNIill where Will lived -witli his adopted parents stood in a falling
A-alley between pinewoods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill
soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber,
and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey village lay
like a seam or a rag of vapour on a wooded hillside ; and when the wind
was favoiu-able, the sound of the church bells would drop down, thin and
silvery, to "Will. Below, the valley grew ever steej^er and steeper, and
at the same time widened out on either hand ; and from an eminence
beside the mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond
it over a wide plain, where the river turned and shone, and moved on
from city to city on its voyage towards the sea. It chanced that over
this valley there lay a pass into a neighbouring kingdom ; so that, quiet
and rural as it was, the road that ran along beside the river was a high
thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful societies. All through
the summer, travelling-carriages came crawling up, or went plunging
briskly downwards past the mill ; and as it happened that the other side
was very much easier of ascent, the path was not much frequented,
except by people going in one direction ; and of all the carriages that
Will saw go by, five-s^-xths were plunging briskly downwards and only
one- sixth crawling up. Much more was this the case with foot-pas-
sengers. All the light-footed tourists, all the pedlars laden with strange
wares, were tending downward like the river that accompanied their
path. ISTor was this all ; for when Will was yet a chUd a disastrous war
arose over a gi-eat part of the world. The newspapers were full of defeats
and victories, the earth rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for daj^s to-
gether and for miles around the coU of battle ten-ified good people from
their labours in the field. Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time
in the valley ; but at last one of the commanders pushed an army over
the pass by forced marches, and for three days horse and foot, cannon
and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill.
All day the child stood and watched them on their passage — the rhyth-
mical stride, the pale, unshaven faces tanned about the eyes, the dis-
coloured regimentals and the tattered flags, filled him with a sense of
weariness, pity, and wonder ; and all night long, after he was in bed ,
he could hear the cannon pounding and the feet trampling, and the great
armament sweeping onward and downward past the mill. No one in
the valley ever heard the fate of the expedition, for th.ey lay out of the