The path rounded to the left a bit, along the brook, and now he could see that the building was a mill, for it had a millrace and the frame of a tall wheel standing where the water would flow. But no water flowed in the race today, and as he came close enough to see through the large barn-size door, he discovered why. It wasn’t just closed up for the winter. It had never been used as a mill. The gears were in place, but the great round millstone wasn’t there. Just a foundation of rammed cobbles, level and ready and waiting.

Waiting a long time. This construction was at least five years old, from the vines and the mosses on the building. It had been a lot of work to build this millhouse, and yet it was being used as a common haybarn.

Just inside the large door, a wagon was rocking back and forth as two boys grappled together atop a half-load of hay. It was a friendly bout; the boys were obviously brothers, the one about twelve years old, the other perhaps nine, and the only reason the young one wasn’t thrown off the wagon and out the door was because the older boy couldn’t keep himself from laughing. They didn’t notice Taleswapper, of course.

They also didn’t notice the man standing at the edge of the loft, pitchfork in hand, looking down at them. Taleswapper thought at first that the man was watching in pride, like a father. Then he came close enough to see how he held the fork. Like a javelin, ready to cast. For a single moment, Taleswapper saw in his mind’s eye just what would happen—the fork thrown, burying itself in the flesh of one of the boys, surely killing him, if not immediately, then soon enough, with gangrene or belly bleeding. It was murder that Taleswapper saw.

“No!” he shouted. He ran through the doorway, fetching up alongside the wagon, looking up at the man in the loft.

The man plunged the pitchfork into the hay beside him and heaved the hay over the edge onto the wagon, half-burying the two boys. “I brought you here to work, you two bearcubs, not to tie each other in knots.” The man was smiling, teasing. He winked at Taleswapper. Just as if there hadn’t been death in his eyes a moment before.

“Howdy, young feller,” said the man.

“Not so young,” said Taleswapper. He doffed his hat, letting his bare pate give away his age.

The boys dug themselves out of the hay. “What were you shouting at, Mister?” asked the younger one.

“I was afraid someone might come to harm,” said Taleswapper.