"Yes, but it is only the vibration caused by the water rushing through the open sluices on either side; they are open as wide as they will go, and have just been large enough to do their work well and keep the flood down. I fully expected to find it foaming over the top. What are you looking at?" "Don't take any notice, father. I'm going to look away. Just turn your eyes quietly up to the old stone bench on the top there by the lookout." There was a pause of a moment or two, during which the mill-owner stooped to pick up a piece of sodden, dead wood, to throw it outward into the current tearing through one of the open sluices. Then turning right away, he said, quietly-- "Yes, there's someone's face looking over from the back. Who can it be?" "Can't you see, father?" "No; unless it's James." "It is, father; I saw his face just now quite clear. What does he want there? Does he want to speak to you about coming back?" "Hardly so soon as this, my boy," said Will's father, rather sadly. "Brought here by curiosity, I suppose, like our other friends--a good sign, Will. He takes an interest in the old mill, after all." CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE ALARM. A fortnight had glided by. The dam was kept more than full by hours of stormy weather high up in the hills many miles away; but the stream had resumed its gentle course, the trout were back in their old haunts, Manners had finished one of his landscapes and begun another, and one soft, sweet, very early autumn evening three busy pairs of hands where at work at the round table plainly visible in the light cast by Mrs Drinkwater's shaded lamp. "No," said Will, who was holding something in a pair of pliers in his left hand, and winding a thread of silk brought up from the mill round it with his right, "he hasn't been near us yet. Josh and I keep running against him in the woods, or up one of the river paths; but, as soon as he sees us, he turns his back and goes in among the trees." "Shies at us," interpolated Josh. "Yes," said Will, softly, as he wound away, his face screwed up and looking intent to a degree. "Shies! I say, Mr Manners, you, living here, see him every day, of course?" "No, I don't," said the artist. "He has his breakfast before I'm down, and goes off and doesn't come back till after dark. The missus, poor soul, told me yesterday--crying away like your old mill-wheel--that he takes a bit of bread and cheese with him and goes off to sit and mope somewhere in the woods. He never hardly speaks to her. She said, poor thing, that she'd give anything to see him back at his regular work." "Ha!" cried Will, holding up the something proudly upon which he had been at work. "Now, I call that something like a coachman." "Not a bit," said Josh. "How can a little hook, a thread of gut, a few small feathers, and some dubbing, be like a coachman?"