The mill for which the town had been named was a small New England sawmill, its great heavy wheel constructed on the spot by men who celebrated the first log cut there with a toast to King George, far away in England. The site was a good one for the purpose: the wooded hills all around provided the lumber, and the river that powered the wheel flowed briskly toward a fall a mile downstream and was not prone to flooding. The sawmill’s owner prospered, and soon other sawmills were built nearby. When the sawmills had sawn enough of the trees, farms were established in the clearings with a small town amidst them, its straggling street of houses and shops built of boards locally cut.

The proudest work of the sawmills was a small fortress erected at the crest of a low hill overlooking the road running north of the town. Built in haste, it was intended as a deterrent to any British army that might otherwise have considered passing that way. A different George—General Washington this time—was the toast of the fort’s proud and weary builders, and when they had finished the work, they laid down their tools, took up their muskets, and manned it. As the fort had no cannon, when a British army did try to pass a few months later, its defenders found it more convenient to confront their enemy on the road itself. Nevertheless, when after three day’s contention the British withdrew, the citizen-soldiers were proud enough of their redoubt to debate for some days whether the town should not be renamed “Fort Independence” in its honor. Eventually the idea was dropped, and the place remained simply, Milltown.

The question of a name-change was raised again early in the next century, when reference to mills began to seem an anachronism. Although the town had (modestly) prospered, it was now largely a farming village. The native forests had by then been cleared, and the crumbling remains of the last sawmill were swept away by the river when the water rose in the spring of 1799.

But the place was still a good one for a wheel, and the boats which loaded the farmers’ wheat and corn at the dock at the end of the town’s main street could as easily carry other cargo. In 1815, a new kind of mill was built in Milltown—one for spinning cotton thread. The farmers stayed on, of course, but with increasing irrelevance to the town’s economy and by 1825, Milltown was no longer a village.

In 1832 there were six mills in Milltown, all making cotton thread or cotton cloth. When a shift at Number Four Mill let out on a frosty day in January, a hundred young ladies streamed forth, heading to the row of boardinghouses nearby, where, if they had no family in town, they were required to live. The women were as young as fifteen years old, and few were more than thirty. Their ambition was to acquire in the mills a little money, clothes, and experience of the world before returning to the farms from which, overwhelmingly, they had come. Most would afterwards marry a young man from a neighboring farm who had probably spent a few years at sea for the same purpose.

Among the young ladies who had a shift at Number Four this day was a small, dark-haired girl whose pleasantly rounded form was at a variance with her thin, sharp-chinned face. Not many passers-by would have had a chance to see that face, for she wore a calash bonnet pulled well forward, but her tidy little figure, cloak pulled tight around it, as well as the bird-like grace with which she darted through the crowds in the street attracted a few admiring glances. The girl was evidently used to such attentions, and paid them no heed.

Though sawmills no longer lined the river’s edge, there was still a woodyard in Milltown, with a sawpit enclosed in a shed where some lumber for the town’s immediate needs was still produced. It was to this place the young lady was heading, and she walked quickly because the woodyard was more than a mile from Number Four mill and night was falling fast. Her name was Mary Hale, and she had no need of lumber. She was going to the woodyard because, when the men who worked there had gone for the day, it was a secluded place where people could meet and talk who did not necessarily wish to be seen together. The only thing overlooking the woodyard, in fact, was Battle Hill, where the Revolutionary War fort had once stood, but the fort, like the sawmills, had largely crumbled away, and few people bothered to climb the hill now.

One who did was Josiah Woodley. He climbed because he was proud his grandfather had fought at the fort, long ago, and also because it was a lonely spot, which suited his present mood.

Josiah was the youngest and least tried of the three ministers who saw to the spiritual needs of the congregation of the largest church in Milltown. There were those who questioned his fitness for the position. The Reverend Woodley’s previous experience consisted of a single year pastoring at a small country church. But the church deacons assured doubters that, though generally quiet, Josiah was well-spoken, well-educated, and doctrinally sound, and therefore certain to do well once he had acquired a more confident air. The deacons were quick to add that furthermore, as the Woodleys were mourning the death of a baby daughter the year before, to offer them a change of scene was an act of simple Christian charity.

What the deacons did not mention—though everybody knew it—was that though the mill girls were required by the terms of their employment contracts to attend church regularly, the denomination in which Josiah had been ordained was losing its younger members to the Methodists and Baptists at an alarming rate. In fact, in what the deacons felt was a most un-Christian spirit of rivalry, the Methodists and Baptists offered a livelier sort of Sunday service on purpose to attract them. The deacons had some hope a younger face—handsome, but not dangerously so—and new ideas in the pulpit might counteract to some extent the enticements of Young People’s Picnics, and competitive “Bible Bees.”

From the hill, Josiah saw Mary Hale as she slipped in at the woodyard gate, but he gave the event little thought. His mind was on his marriage, in which something had somehow gone terribly wrong, and he had no interest in what business a mill girl had going into a deserted woodyard at such an hour.

Josiah’s wife, Rachel, was at home, of course—the only fit place for a woman to be. Her company there was the “help,” a farmer’s daughter called Kitty, whose single qualification for a position as maid-of-all-work was that, since her father did not want her to go into the mill, she was willing to take the job. Rachel would rather have had no help at all. She was a competent cook and housekeeper, and there were—sadly—only herself and Josiah to look after. But it would have been unsuitable for her to have been alone all day and having Kitty in the house forestalled gossip. This evening, when Rachel had seen to it the preparation of supper was progressing smoothly, she sat in the gloomy front parlor, silently knitting a stocking while the last rays of day faded from the room.

Josiah had no idea how he and his wife had grown so apart from one another, but Rachel knew. She knew it was simply and completely that he had failed her, both as a husband and as a minister of God. Their baby girl, born in pain as babies are, lived only long enough to learn what it was to suffer, and her death had left Josiah as broken as Rachel, and at a loss for fit words to strengthen and reassure her. There were a great many comforts Rachel needed to hear—as that little Lucy was safe in the bosom of her God, where they would all one day be happily reunited; and perhaps—putting God aside for a moment—that time was a better medicine for a heart broken as hers was than any the doctor could bring in his bag. Josiah might have been stern and warned her God was assaying their faith, and it must not be found wanting, even in the face of so crushing a blow as they had suffered. All these were things which, though Rachel knew them already, she needed to be reminded of again and again.

But instead, when she cried, he had cried with her, as hurt and lost as she was, and scarcely able to murmur so much as, “Thy will be done, O Lord” by way of a prayer. Instead of reminding her of her duty, as the weaker vessel of Grace, to submit humbly to the inscrutable ordinances of heaven, he seemed to wonder at them himself.

Even when the room was completely dark, Rachel sat on in the parlor, needles clicking softly, lips moving faintly as she counted her stitches, struggling against acknowledging a secret wish that instead of her husband, someone very like Josiah, only strong and confident in himself and with strong and confident comforts to offer her, would come in at the door wanting supper.

Someone like the Reverend Dr. Conrad, perhaps.

Dr. Conrad, the oldest of the three ministers of the Milltown church, was reading to his wife. He had intended to go out for a walk, but when Mrs. Conrad, seeing him putting on his coat, expressed a wish that he read her letters for her instead, he had immediately put aside all other considerations and done so. He was devoted to his wife, who was an invalid.

Sophronia Conrad’s health had been ruined in the bearing and rearing of six children, two of whom died before they learned to walk. The four remaining children grew up with the idea their frail mother might at any time be taken from them, but Sophronia, though a humble and patient sufferer, was a determined woman. She had lived in spite of all, and three of her children were now well started in life. Even her last son was nearly grown and, to her joy, spoke of entering at the seminary where his father had once studied. Sophronia was devout and never questioned God’s will, but had she done so, Rachel was certain Dr. Conrad would have, lovingly but firmly, applied the necessary correction.

An hour passed, and whomever Mary Hale had gone to the woodyard to meet had failed her. It was dark when she left there, walking back toward the mills and her boarding house, where she was sure of a scolding for staying out late. Though she had been in Milltown for nearly six months, she had no friends yet upon whom she could depend to cover for her. She showed less haste going back than she had in coming, and pushed back her bonnet as if to tell the world she did not care who saw her now.

Josiah, meanwhile, had also started home. The church where he preached lay on his way, and he stopped by his study there to add a few lines that had come to him for the sermon on which he had been working in the afternoon. As he came down the church steps, Mary Hale passed by. He did not connect her with the dark figure at the woodyard, but he knew who she was, and started at recognizing her. When he saw she knew him as well, he flushed and turned away, and rather than falling in with her, started off in another direction.

Avoiding Mary made him late for supper, but Rachel did not ask for any explanation. The two of them spoke pleasantly to each other over the meal, and Josiah was particularly pleased at one point to make his wife laugh. Except for the hurt look in Rachel’s eyes, grown habitual over the preceding months, anyone might have imagined all was well between them.

Sophronia Conrad kept early hours, and by the time the letters were read and talked over, it was time for her supper to be brought on a tray so she could be put to bed. It was also too late for Dr. Conrad to go out, as he acknowledged to himself after a discreet check of his watch. Instead, he sat reading until the clock struck ten, and then, after writing a few brief notes and tucking them into his coat pocket, he went to his own room, which was far enough from his wife’s that he need not fear to disturb her.

By eleven o’clock, the town was quiet. All the farmers and most of the town’s citizens were asleep. The few workers at Number Four in the late hours were not girls, but men, whose job it was to see that the machinery was serviced and ready to go again in the morning. Number Four mill was still powered by a vertical shaft rather than, as in the most up-to-date mills, having belt-driven machinery, and as the gears could not be precisely made, they wore quickly and needed almost daily maintenance. The mill girls themselves were clever at repairing their spinning machines on the fly—they were paid by the number of spindles of thread they produced, and a broken spinner brought them nothing at all—but the mechanics saw to it as many as possible were serviceable when the first shift arrived in the early morning.

Mary Hale, in the bed she shared at her boardinghouse, lay awake, staring blindly into the dark, surrounded by the deep and peaceful breathing of girls who worked hard and slept well.

The Woodleys lay as far apart as their narrow bed permitted, with Rachel turned on her side, her back to her husband. Josiah made tentative overtures to his wife, shyly suggesting if she were cold, she could lie nearer him and be warmed, but Rachel responded that she didn’t feel cold, and suggested an extra blanket for him if he did. Then she waited for him to say—half-hoped he would say—that the situation was one in which, as duly married persons, he had a right and she had a Duty.

When he did not, however, she decided that it was better so. She wanted no more little Lucys to break her heart again. Both Woodleys then lay still, pretending to be asleep, until they were asleep in fact.