A DOG OF FLANDERS. 13

placed on a little moss-grown slope :
it was a landmark to all the level
country round. It had once been
painted scarlet, sails and all, but

that had been in its infancy, half a
: century or more earlier, when it had
ground wheat for the soldiers of Na-
poleon; and it was now a ruddy
brown, tanned by wind and weather.
It went queerly, by fits and starts, as
though rheumatic and stiff in the
joints from age, but it served the
whole neighborhood, which would
have thought it almost as impious to
carry grain elsewhere as to attend any
other religious service than the mass
that was performed at the altar of the
little old gray church, with its conical
steeple, which stood opposite to it, and