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The rusted wind-mill on the skeleton-like tower of the artesian well was motionless; the great barn empty; the windows of the ranch house, cook house, and dairy boarded up. Nailed upon a tree near the broken gateway was a board, white painted, with stencilled letters, bearing the inscription: "Warning.
Stanhope owned nothing beyond the high-road. "Do you see that little hill over there?" said Oscar, pointing in that direction. "There's a wind-mill up there; see how finely the big wings go turning round in the wind, like huge banners waving for a festival, and inviting people from all sides to come and rejoice together.
"You seem to have looked at them very closely, Frau Margret." "From the wind-mill at the gate," replied the other. "The envoy stopped on the bridge directly under us. A handsome man on a stately horse. His trumpeter too was mounted, and the velvet cloth on his trumpet bristled with beautiful embroidery in gold thread and jewels. They earnestly entreated admittance, but the gate remained closed."
Two hundred and fifty years ago the sound of hammer and saw here awoke the echoes of the forest. Workmen who had learned their craft in old French towns, when Colbert, the great statesman and financier, was developing the architecture and industries, revenues and resources of the kingdom, here reared a wind-mill, the first industrial building in Montreal.
"We don't want to take a large party, and I confess the water transport has bothered me very much. The wind-mill, I am afraid, we must leave to some other time, but the other part of your scheme is worth placing before practical men, and I will give you a letter to a friend of mine who had a boat built on the Thames."
I gazed with delight on the wind-mill, and thought it lucky that it should be in motion at the moment I passed by: and entering the dear green lane which led directly to the village, the sound of the well-known rookery gave that sentimental tinge to the varying sensations of my active soul, which only served to heighten the lustre of the luxuriant scenery.
We may admire the valiant knight who displays a noble chivalry in fighting wind-mills, but we do not call on a wind-mill warrior when we have some plain, real work to accomplish. All progress, large or small, is the resultant of many forces. We cannot single out any one of these as of dominant value, and ignore or despise the others.
I saw nothing but a little village surrounded by a wooden palisade. On one side stood some hay-stacks half covered with snow; on the other a wind-mill, leaning to one side; the wings of the mill, made of the heavy bark of the linden tree, hung idle. "Where is the fortress?" I asked, astonished. "There it is," said the coachman, pointing to the village which we had just entered.
Besides well-remembered features, there were details which had been forgotten and which now set free currents of reminiscence such as the battered figurehead of an old schooner raised on high over a front door and a wind-mill as antique of pattern as those to which Don Quixote gave battle.
His long arms swung round his head like the sails of a wind-mill, and men fell back from him as if they had been made of wood. As LeNoir sprang, Yankee shot fiercely at him, but the Frenchman, too quick for him, ducked and leaped upon Black Hugh, who was still swaying against the wall, bore him down and jumped with his heavy "corked" boots on his breast and face.
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