"As well as you expected?" "Better." "Satisfied with your experiment?" "Perfectly. Couldn't get me back to the rumbling old mill again, if you were to make me a present of it." "What of the mill?" I asked. "How does the new owner come on?" "About as I thought it would be." "Not doing very well?" "How could it be expected when he didn't know enough of the milling business to grind a bushel of wheat right? He lost half of the custom I transferred to him in less than three months. Then he broke his main shaft, and it took over three weeks to get in a new one. Half of his remaining customers discovered by this time, that they could get far better meal from their grain at Harwood's mill near Lynwood, and so did not care to trouble him any more. The upshot of the whole matter is, he broke down next, and had to sell the mill at a heavy loss." "Who has it now?" "Judge Hammond is the purchaser." "He is going to rent it, I suppose?" "No; I believe he means to turn it into some kind of a factory--and, I rather think, will connect therewith a distillery. This is a fine grain-growing country, as you know. If he does set up a distillery he'll make a fine thing of it. Grain has been too low in this section for some years; this all the farmers have felt, and they are very much pleased at the idea. It will help them wonderfully. I always thought my mill a great thing for the farmers; but what I did for them was a mere song compared to the advantage of an extensive distillery." "Judge Hammond is one of your richest men?" "Yes--the richest in the county. And what is more, he's a shrewd, far-seeing man, and knows how to multiply his riches." "How is his son Willy coming on?" "Oh! first-rate." The landlord's eyes fell under the searching look I bent upon him. "How old is he now?" "Just twenty." "A critical age," I remarked. "So people say; but I didn't find it so," answered Slade, a little distantly. "The impulses within and the temptations without, are the measure of its dangers. At his age, you were, no doubt, daily employed at hard work." "I was, and no mistake." "Thousands and hundreds of thousands are indebted to useful work, occupying many hours through each day, and leaving them with wearied bodies at night, for their safe passage from yielding youth to firm, resisting manhood. It might not be with you as it is now, had leisure and freedom to go in and out when you pleased been offered at the age of nineteen." "I can't tell as to that," said the landlord, shrugging his shoulders. "But I don't see that Willy Hammond is in any especial danger. He is a young man with many admirable qualities--is social-liberal--generous almost to a fault--but has good common sense, and wit enough, I take it, to keep out of harm's way."