Below the Mill Dam
' Book — Book — Domesday Book ! ' They were
letting in the water for the evening stint at
Robert's Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived
the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine-hundred-
year-old song : ' Here Azor, a freeman, held one
rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam
geldavit. Here Reinbert has one villein and four
cottars with one plough — and wood for six hogs
and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten
shillings — unum molinum — one mill. Reinbert's
mill — Robert's Mill. Then and afterwards and
now — tunc et -post et modo — Robert's Mill. Book
— Book — Domesday Book ! '
' I confess,' said the Black Rat on the cross-
beam, luxuriously trimming his whiskers — ' I con-
fess I am not above appreciating my position and
all it means.' He was a genuine old English
black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly
diminishing before the incursions of the brown
variety.
' Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy,'
said the Grey Cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking.
' But I know what you mean,' she added. ' To
sit by right at the heart of things — eh ? '
369 2 B
