314 'GOD'S PEACE'
much more out of my journeys. Then it came about that I built the mill here. For after all a mill is also a ship, it needs both sail and wind to bring meal to the sack, and besides it brings it so much more surely. The other millers in the neigh- bourhood crossed themselves for fear of the new miller, who steered his mill like a ship, even in the strongest wind. Gradually the mill had brought enough for my daughter's and my needs. I was old, and my sight was ruined by the strong wind and the flying corn-dust, and then one gets so tired of a mill because of its eternal noise and its con- tinual turning round in the same place. I was tired, and longed to let the mill rest, and get peace round me, which after all is a very natural thing. You are only a young man, but from what Greta tells me, you must already have felt something of the same.
But it is more unnatural in Greta. She seems like a child of the calm up here, and young as she is, she seems to want nothing else. For if you think it is I who keep her here shut up like a bird in a cage, you are very much mistaken. I have often proposed to her that she should see some- thing of the world. I have even suggested that we should move to the capital for a year or two, but she will not leave this place. Here, she says she has got everything that makes her happy, for everything out in the world she seems only to have a curious fear and distaste. As one might imagine, this has not come as she grew older and through
