The largest of them are four feet two inches diameter; and dangerous things they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or 'give' at the same moment the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a row of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had his joke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel.' He was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a bit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had been half an hour too soon for Hilary last Overboro' market. He said the vast water-wheel was of elm, but it would not last so long up so near the springs. Upon a river or brook the wheel might endure for thirty years, and grind corn for a generation. His millpond was close to the spring-head, and the spring-water ate into the wood and caused it to decay much quicker. The spokes used to be mortised in, now they used flanges, ironwork having almost destroyed the business of the ancient millwright. Of all manual workers, probably the old style of millwright employed the greatest variety of tools, and was the cleverest in handling them. There seemed no end to the number of his chisels and augers; some of the augers of immense size. In winter time the millwright made the millstones, for the best stones are not in one piece but composed of forty or fifty. The French burrs which Tibbald preferred come over in fragments, and these are carefully fitted together and stuck with plaster of Paris. Such work required great nicety: the old millwright was, in fact, a kind of artist in his handicraft. I could not help regretting, as Tibbald dilated on these things, that the village millwright no longer existed; the care, the skill, the forethought, the sense of just proportion he exhibited quite took him out of the ranks of the mere workman. He was a master of his craft, and the mind he put into it made him an artist. Tibbald went on that he did not care for the Derby or Welsh millstones. These were in one piece, but they were too hard for the delicate grinding necessary to make the fine flour needed for good bread. They answered best for barley meal. Now, the French burr was not only hard but mild, and seemed to feel the corn as it crushed it. A sack of wheat lost 4 lb. in grinding. I asked about the toll: he showed me the old measure, reckoned at the tenth of a sack; it was a square box. When the lord's tenants in the olden times were forced to have their corn ground at the lord's mill, the toll was liable to be abused in a cruel manner; hence the universal opinion that a miller must be a knave. Even in much more recent times, when the labourers took part of their wages in flour, there is said to have been a great deal of sleight-of-hand in using the toll-box, and the miller's thumb grew fat by continually dipping into other folk's sacks.