THE OLD SUGAR MILL. a3 
When I tired of chasing the grackle, 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 sof 
a dying orange-tree. 
