He would absent himself for weeks, taking all
the money with him, and locking up the family
stores, so that the wife and children were nearly
famished to death during his stay; a contingency
that gave increased zest to his pleasures; and
then he would come back empty-handed, miser as
he was having spent all his money, frequently
amounting to important sums, on the most
abandoned women of the neighbouring towns;
by some of whom—notably one woman named
Hopfgärtner—he had large families publicly
acknowledged and sumptuously supported. To
the twelve children borne him by poor Barbara
he had never been friend or father. Of those
twelve only five now remained alive, and more
than one person said that the Black Miller had
murdered the others; while some said
shudderingly, having devoted himself to the Devil,
he had killed them according to the terms of
his bond, and to save his own soul for yet a few
years longer. He made his sons his day-labourers,
but gave them only blows and curses for their
wages; his daughters were his house servants—
house servants in rags, shoeless and half-starved,
beaten and ill-treated like their mother; to none
of them was he even human, but more like a
fierce wild beast.

The family consisted of two girls and two
boys, the eldest of whom, Conrad, was eight-
and-twenty, the youngest, Kunigunde, eighteen;
a stable-lad of thirteen, who lived in the mill,
but at a remote part of the house where he
could hear very little; and Wagner, a day-
labourer, who, with his wife, inhabited a small
cottage, or lean-to, by the side. It was a lonely
God-forgotten place altogether, that old Black
Mill of Sittenthal; far removed from any other
habitation, and still farther isolated by the evil
reputation which it had gained both in the past
and present. For common report said that it
was haunted by ghosts and evil spirits, and still
the belated traveller, passing near, might hear
shrieks and groans and cries and the sobs of
frightened women, and the shrill screams of young
children borne on the dead night air in a very
tumult of crime and despair commingled. Therefore,
though the wife was known to be a good
and pious woman, and the sons fine, industrious,
honest lads, who remained in their present
torture only because of their mother and that they
might stand between her and their father's
violence, yet the prejudices of the neighbours were
too strong to be overcome, and weeks would
pass without a soul of honest fame daring to
venture within the shadow of that gloomy and
accursed place.

On the 9th of August, 1817, the Black
Miller suddenly disappeared. No one knew
what had become of him, or whither he had
gone; but his life was so evil and his habits so
lawless that no one was astonished at anything
he might do: and what if the devil, his father,
had carried him off bodily at last? It was what
the world of Sittenthal looked for, and it seemed
as if they were not to be disappointed. The
mill family kept quite quiet for some time, but
on the 11th of October poor half-witted Barbara
went to lodge her statement with the magistrate,
two months after her husband's disappearance.
She said how the miller had gone, taking
with him all his ready money and bank bills,
leaving them nothing to eat, and no money to
buy food; leaving them, in fact, in such a position
that without some assistance they must
have starved, for they were unable to touch his
rents, or sell his stores without legal authorisation.
The magistrate heard the mill-wife's story,
rubbed his chin, looked at her hard, and thought;
then decided to give her letters of administration,
and power to act until such time as the Black
Miller chose to reappear. Barbara paid the
gentleman heavily, and smiled as she returned
to her home. Then she and her sons entered
into the peaceful occupation of the Black Mill,
its lands, and revenues, waiting for the time until
the miller would return.

For more than a year they led the most
contented and undisturbed life possible. From a
very sink of enmity, strife, and discord, the old
doomed house became a comparative heaven of
ease, silence, and love. As Barbara and the sons
had always been respected, the people were not
sorry to be able to show them many kindly attentions,
and thus to prove to them that their
former repugnance had been to the father only,
and in nowise connected with themselves. This
one brief year was the most prosperous and
contented, outwardly, that the family at the Black
Mill had ever known.

It was the general opinion that the miller had
been carried off bodily by the devil; indeed,
many of the villagers swore that they had seen
his tortured ghost, and heard his awful cries,
as his former flatterer and friend had now
become his unsparing torturer and master;
but there were others, a few of trifle less
besotted cast, who looked graver than even
this belief would have made them, and who
spoke on the subject below their breath, and
mysteriously. Soon a low heavy murmur went
round; a terrified whisper, that grew and
gathered as it grew; a horrible suspicion; an
awful word; for pale lips muttered MURDER—
the murder of a father and a husband, wife and
children all consenting. But all agreed that
Wagner and his witch-wife knew more of the
business than any one else, and that the
inquiry and suspicion would begin with them.

This Wagner, who lived in the little cottage
or house beside the mill, was a discharged
soldier; a man of bad parentage and worse life.
His wife was no better than himself, and had,
moreover, the reputation of being a dangerous
witch, whose very look could blight, and whose
spoken charm or curse could kill; a woman so
foul in person and so tainted in name, that not
even the most disreputable would associate with
her. But they were both much patronised at
the Black Mill; almost fearfully so; for what
but fear, and the possession of some dread
power, could induce such women as Barbara
and her daughters to hold constant friendly
intercourse with anything so vile as Anna Wagner?
and what but the knowledge of some awful