THE MAID OF THE MILL
would tell what things were possible and what were not, and prove what he said very nicely. Joan wasn't clever, but he knew that it does no good to call a thing impossible. He knew, in fact, that nothing is more possible than the most impossible things."
The man coughed and cleared his throat and waited a moment as if to see whether he were intruding. No one spoke, so he went on.
"One day Darby rushed into Joan's study and told him of a haunted mill he'd discovered. It was one of the old mills where the farmers used to bring their sacks before the big concerns in the West swallowed all the little trades. It was dusty and cobwebbed and broken down and unused and haunted. And there was a farmhouse directly across the road and a house on either side of it not a hundred feet away.
"'Was it always haunted?' asked Joan. 'No,' said Darby, 'only once a year.' On Christmas eve every year for nineteen years there had appeared, late at night, a little light in one of the windows; and that side of the house had an odd look, some-
194
