Page:Christmas Fireside Stories.djvu/166

154 Legen ds of the Mill. goblin. Soon, however, human forms became visible. One of these went out on the timber raft lying in the mill-pond, and with an immense pitchfork guided the logs into the channel towards the mill, setting the whole raft rocking with a wave-like motion ; another rushed hurriedly about with an axe in his hand, shaping and squaring the huge logs, while the loose chips and bits of bark rushed into the roaring eddies below. From inside the mill there came a whizzing, whirring, and clashing sound, and now and then a bright saw-blade flashed in the air, as if in combat with the spirits of the night, to cut the stumps and uneven ends off the logs. Some cold gusts of a northerly wind coming down the course of the river made me feel that I was wet and tired, and I decided therefore on going into the saw-mill to get a little rest by the fire. I called to the boy, who was still standing on the bank, to take the fish-basket, which I had left behind, and follow me over the barrier ; the slippery logs of which this was composed were rocking up and down, and were engulfed in the water at every step I took. By the hearth in the mill sat an old grey-bearded peasant, with a red cap down over his ears, whose presence I did not at first discern, as the shadow of the hearth hid him from me. When he heard that I wished to rest and warm myself, he at once prepared a seat for me on a block by the fire. " Thafs a splendid fish," said the old man as he took the last trout I had caught in his hand ; " and it's one of the golden ones too ! It weighs almost two pounds. You have caught it in the mill-pond here, I suppose ? " On my assenting to this, the old man, who appeared to be an ardent fisherman, told me of the large trout he caught in the neighbourhood thirty years ago, when he came here from Gud brandsdale, and made the most heartrending complaints of the decrease of fish and increase of saw-dust, just as Sir Humphry Davy måkes in his Salmonia. "The fish are becoming more and more scarce," he said in a voice that penetrated clearly to me through the noise in the mill ; " such a trout as that, small as it is, is a rare thing to catch now, but the saw-dust increases year by year. You cannot wonder that