Here the baker is evidently going to take a loaf out of the oven, for his companion holds a dish for the purpose of receiving it. [Illustration: _No. 86. A Baker of the Fifteenth Century._] [Illustration: _No. 87. A Mediæval Baker._] In nothing was fraud and adulteration practised to so great an extent as in the important article of bread, and the two occupations especially employed in making it were objects of very great dislike and of scornful satire. The miller was proverbially a thief. Every reader of Chaucer will remember his character so admirably drawn in that of the miller of Trumpington, who, though he was as proud and gay "as eny pecok," was nevertheless eminently dishonest. _A theef he was for soth of corn and mele, And that a sleigh_ (sly), _and usyng_ (practised) _for to stele_. Chaucer's Reeves Tale. This practice included a large college then existing in Cambridge, but now forgotten, the Soler Hall, which suffered greatly by his depredations. _And on a day it happed in a stounde, Syk lay the mauncyple on a maledye, Men wenden wisly that he schulde dye; For which this meller stal bothe mele and corn A thousend part more than byforn. For ther biforn he stal but curteysly; But now he is a theef outrageously. For which the wardeyn chidde and made fare, But therof sette the meller not a tare; He crakked boost, and swor it was nat so._ Two of the scholars of this college resolved to go with the corn to the mill, and by their watchfulness prevent his depredations. Those who are acquainted with the story know how the scholars succeeded, or rather how they failed; how the miller stole half a bushel of their flour and caused his wife to make a cake of it; and how the victims had their revenge and recovered the cake.