9.
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Summer and winter came and went, and were followed by a gloomy and dismal spring. The late-lying snow was dissolved by heavy rains so that the mill stream was swollen beyond precedent, and rolled thundering through the gorge with the force of a full-grown cataract. But the mill was idle, and the wheel stood still. None came for flour now, nor to bring grist; for many a week all work had been foregone.
Yet the house was not deserted. An elderly woman, with a forbidding face that had once been handsome, moved to and fro behind the windows; and a man, bent and feeble, with strangely-grizzled hair, sat motionless for hours at a time in his study-chair. Sometimes, in his loneliness, he would set his teeth edge to edge, and clench his thin hands desperately, and utter an inarticul
