Victoria: A Love Story

The Miller's son walked in thought. He was a big lad of fourteen, tanned by sun and wind and full of all manner of ideas.

When he grew up he would go to work in a match factory. It was so jolly and dangerous; he might get his fingers covered with sulphur so that nobody would dare shake hands with him. He would be thought a lot of by his chums on account of his lurid trade.

He looked about in the wood for his birds. For he knew them all, knew where their nests were, understood their cries and had different calls to answer them. More than once he had given them dough balls made of flour from his father's mill.

All these trees along the path were good friends of his. In spring he had drawn their sap and in winter had been a little father to them, freeing them of snow and helping them to hold up their boughs. And even up in the abandoned granite quarry there wasn't a stone that was a stranger to him, he had cut letters and signs on them and set them up, arranged them like a congregation around their parson. All kinds of strange things happened in that old granite quarry.

He turned off and came down to the mill-dam. The mill was at work; an immense and ponderous noise surrounded him. He was in the habit of wandering about here, talking to himself aloud. Every bead of foam seemed to have a little life to talk about, and over by the sluice the water fell straight down and looked like a shining sheet of stuff hung out to dry. In the pool below the fall there were fish; he had stood there with his rod many a time.

When he grew up he would be a diver. That was it. Then he would step down into the sea from the deck of a ship and enter strange realms and countries where great and wonderful forests stood swaying and a castle of coral lay at the bottom. And the Princess beckoned to him from a window and said "Come in!"

Then he heard his name called; his father stood behind him and shouted "Johannes!"

"There's a message for you from the Castle. You're to row the children over to the island!"

He went off in a hurry. A new favour and a great one had been vouchsafed to the Miller's son.