It was an old mill, Dimitru’s mill on the Bistritza River. It had been run by the family of Dimitru long before any other mills had ever been put on either side of the river, all through the Moldavia country. The dykes and the water wheels were of old oak, cut from trees in the forest when the country paid yearly tribute to Turkey and was ruled by the Fanariots of Stamboul. Within the mill were fifty pairs of millstones which, grinding wheat and corn, had themselves been ground so thin that they had no weight to mill any more the hard grain growing in that part of Roumania. These old millstones were the pride of the family, for not another mill in the country could show so many.…
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