“Well, time went by; the mill run smoothly, and with it I managed to make enough to keep my family. One morning, however, on entering here I saw that the wheel, which I left running for the night, in order to grind out an extra amount of meal, had stopped, while the water was still pouring on it. On examination I found the dead body of a young man, a farmer, who lived on the slope of Deer mountain, hanging fastened to the lowest paddle of the wheel. All that could be learned of his untimely end was that he had left home for an evening’s trout-fishing the day before. He had undoubtedly fallen into the deep, swift stream above; had been drowned; swept through the race down on to the wheel; and, his clothes catching on the splintered paddle, he had hung there. “A short time after the last sad occurrence, a neighbor’s boy fell through the trap door and broke his neck. Superstitious people then began to whisper that a spell was on the place. They had had, as yet, no ocular demonstration of what they imagined and reported, but such was the influence that my mill was avoided at night, travelers beating a new path around it through the forest. Of course, this talk had no effect upon me, and in fact I rather liked it, for, as far as I was able to perceive, it kept a class of indigent mountaineers away from the mill, whom I had reason before to suspect of grinding their corn surreptitiously at night. “But in the spring of 1861 something really strange did occur. My youngest brother was one day with me at the mill. I had left him inside here while I had gone some distance back into the woods to get a second-growth hickory. Probably half an hour had passed and I was returning, when just before coming in sight of the mill I heard angry voices. One voice was that of my brother, the other I could not recognize; neither had I time to consider, for suddenly the report of a fire-arm sounded in that direction. I hallooed loudly at the moment I heard it, and at the same time came out of the wood. A comparatively clear space, with the exception of a few large trees, was between me and the mill. I saw no one near but my brother, and he was leaning partly out the front window there, where now grows the red maple. “‘Halloo! what have you shot?’ I shouted. “There was no answer. “The day was growing terribly dark. Black clouds, heavy with moisture, were filling and piling deep the entire face of the sky between these circling mountains. The lightning had not yet begun to play, but it would not have taken a prophet to tell of its speedy coming.