THE OLD SUGAR MILL. 113 



When I tired of chasing the graclde, or 

 the shrike had driven him away (I do not 

 remember now how the matter ended), I 

 started again toward the old sugar mill. 

 Presently a lone cabin came into sight. 

 The grass-grown road led straight to it, and 

 stopped at the gate. Two women and a 

 brood of children stood in the door, and in an- 

 swer to my inquiry one of the women (the 

 children had already scampered out of sight) 

 invited me to enter the yard. " Go round 

 the house," she said, "and you will find a 

 road that runs right down to the mill." 



The mill, as it stands, is not much to 

 look at : some fragments of wall built of 

 coquina stone, with two or three arched win- 

 dows and an arched door, the whole sur- 

 rounded by a modern plantation of orange- 

 trees, now almost as much a ruin as the mill 

 itself. But the mill was built more than a 

 hundred years ago, and serves well enough 

 the principal use of abandoned and decay- 

 ing things, to touch the imagination. 

 For myself, I am bound to say, it was a 

 precious two hours that I passed beside it, 

 seated on a crumbling stone in the shade of 

 a dying orange-tree. 



