Master Lake was very glad of his help. The quarterly payment had now been due for some weeks, but, in telling the schoolmaster, he only said, “I’d be as well pleased if they forgot un altogether, now. I don’t want him took away, no time. And now I’ve lost Abel, Jan’ll have the mill after me. He’s a good son is Jan.” And, as he echoed Jan’s praises, it never dawned on Master Swift that he was the cause of the allowance having stopped. Jan was jealous of his title as Master Lake’s son, but the schoolmaster dwelt much in his own mind on the fact that Jan was no real child of the district; partly in his ambition for him, and partly out of a dim hope that he would himself be some day allowed to adopt him. In stating that the windmiller had lost all his children by the fever, he had stated the bare fact in all good faith; and as neither he nor the Rector guessed the real drift of Mr. Ford’s letter, the mistake was never corrected. Jan was useful in the mill. He swept the round-house, coupled the sacks, received grist from the grist-bringers, and took payment for the grinding in money or in kind, according to custom. The old women who toddled in with their bags of gleaned corn looked very kindly on him, and would say, “Thee be a good bwoy, sartinly, Jan, and the Lard’ll reward thee.” If the windmiller came towards one of these dames, she would say, “Aal right, Master Lake, I be in no manners of hurry, Jan’ll do for me.” And, when Jan came, his business-like method justified her confidence. “Good day, mother,” he would say. “Will ye pay, or toll it?” “Bless ye, dear love, how should I pay?” the old woman would reply. “I’ll toll it, Jan, and thank ye kindly.” On which Jan would dip the wooden bowl or tolling-dish into the sack, and the corn it brought up was the established rate of payment for grinding the rest. But, though he constantly assured the schoolmaster that he meant to be a windmiller, Jan did not neglect his special gift. He got up with many a dawn to paint the sunrise. In still summer afternoons, when the mill-sails were idle, and Mrs. Lake was dozing from the heat, he betook himself to the water-meads to sketch. In the mill itself he made countless studies. Not only of the ever-changing heavens, and of the monotonous sweeps of the great plains, whose aspect is more changeable than one might think, but studies on the various floors of the mill, and in the roundhouse, where old meal-bins and swollen sacks looked picturesque in the dim light falling from above, in which also the circular stones, the shaft, and the very hoppers, became effective subjects for the Cumberland lead-pencils.