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soever goes to complete a mill's machinery. I 

 did not stop to notice what was about me, but 

 sought an upper floor, where there was more 

 quiet and a pretty outlook. Here was the dust 

 of ages and of a long series of harvests, corn and 

 wheat and rye, laid on in filmy sheets over walls 

 and ceiling, and changing the slender threads of 

 the spider to fabrics so delicate that a breath en- 

 dangered them. Here was Thoreau's "dream- 

 drapery " in grand luxuriance, and but little more 

 tangible than the mists that rest upon Walden 

 pond. In this unused room were the ghosts of 

 unnumbered harvests, but not one of harvesters. 

 How, for the time, I wished that human ghosts 

 were something more than figments of the imag- 

 ination. It was a fitting place to chat with the 

 sickle-armed reapers of ninety years ago. As it 

 was, I had nothing to build upon, for there was 

 no old man of the neighborhood near to tell 

 me strange stories of the place when he was 

 young. Tragedy and comedy I felt lingered 

 about the place, but who was there now to drag 

 the mill's history from the clutches of oblivion ? 

 I asked about a dark red stain upon the floor, 

 hoping to have a hint of dark doings in years 

 gone by, but was assured it was "where my 

 terrier Gyp killed rats one Sunday." Hearing 

 this, I took to the woods, if a long row in my 

 boat beneath the pond's overhanging trees can 

 be so described. It was not so abrupt a change 



