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1. Now, unhappy as the miller had been during all this time, he would have been far more so had he known what had been going on at the farm. The farmer´s wife was a very careful and clever house-wife, as all farmers´ wives should be, and she noticed that on several occasions the quantity of flour which cameback from the mill seemed less than it used to be.
2. At last she mentioned her suspicions to her husband, but he laughed at them.
“No, no, ” he said; “the miller is an honest man. I know him, and I knew his father before him. There is nothing wrong with the flour.
“Well, ” she replied, “if he is honest, so much the better; but there can be no harm in weighing the grain we send him, and weighing the flour when it comes back.”
3. The farmer laughed still, but he made no objection to this being done. When the flour came back from the mill, it was weighed, and to the good woman´s great surprise it came out rather more than it should have been instead of less. The farmer laughed more than ever, rubbed his hands in glee, and said, “I told you so.” But his wife still shook her head, as if not quite convinced
, and said, “Wait till next time.”
4. The miller, in the meantime, was happy in the belief that the farmer had noticed nothing unusual in the quantity of flour, so next time he took out no grain at all for himnone. When the flour was taken home, theweight showed that something must be wrong, and both the farmer and his wife were puzzled to know what it could be.
5. That evening, as they sat by the fire in their ol-fashioned, comfortable kitchen, the farmer said to his wife, “ I have been thinking about the weight of this flour, wife.There must be something wrong with the miller´s weights.We do not want him to cheat himnone as he is doing. I must go over to the mill tomorrow and see him about it.”
“That is just what I should like you to do, ” said his wife. “I am sure the flour was short of weight more than once, and we both know that it has been over weight twice. I cannot understand it, and it worries me.”
6. Next morning the farmer rode over to the mill, and a great dread of evil
fell upon the miller when he saw him coming. At last his sin had found him out, and his attempt to put things right again had come too late.When the farmer dismounted
, the miller was hardly able to reply to his hearty greeting.
7. “I suppose you cannot guess what I have come over to see you about, ” said the farmer.
The miller made no reply, but his guilty conscience left him little room for doubt on that point.
“Did you weigh our last grinding？” asked the farmer.
“Yes, ” answered the miller, in a low tone.
“Well, did you not know that it was over weight？ You surely do not think that I want you to grind my corn for nothing!”
The miller´s face grew scarlet, and the farmer began to see from his manner that he was in trouble. “Come, ” he said kindly, “I Was your father´s friend; tell me all about it.”
8. Then the miller went on to tell, in a broken voice, how he had been tempted to dishonesty, how miserable it had made him, and how he had tried to do what was right. “I would give all I have, ” he said, “to feel mynone an honest man again. These bags here contain all that I have taken from you, and I shall never be happy till it is restored to you.”
9. “My dear young friend, ” said the farmer, draw- ing his sleeve across his eyes, “I do not care about the grain; but since it is mine, you will feel happier if I take it. You have learned a hard lesson, which you will never forget. ‘The way of transgressors
is hard, ´ you know. But now that is over and done with. I shall never fear to trust you after this. And no one need ever know of this business except the good wife, and she is one that can keep a secret.”
10. So the grain was made into flour and sent bac to the real owner, and the miller began to hold up his head like an honest man once more. He was no longer interested in the prison when he passed it; he could read his newspaper without skipping any part of it, or blushing
as he read; and at church on Sundays the eighth commandment seemed no more dreadful than the others.
WORD SPELLING
WORD EXERCISE
1. Make sentences containing object´, ob´ject, objection, objector .
2. Write the latter part of section 5, putting it in the third per-son “His wife said that that was just what she wanted, ” etc.
3. Make abstract nouns from restore, tempt, transgress, honest, hearty.