The Stone Mill
A mountain stone mill turns by night and yields white grain that feeds the poor; in famine the village alone is spared. A rich man hauls it home to sell flour; the mill cracks and yields ink, then, returned, turns faint and gives no more.
In a mountain crook stood a stone mill, left by some unknown age, that turned of itself each night with a creaking sound. At dawn, between the stones lay a pile of white grain as if freshly threshed; the poor came to take it and cooked it into cakes, sweeter and finer than usual. In a year of great famine, the neighboring villages starved, but this village alone was spared by the mill, and people called it a gift of the mill-god.
A rich man coveted its profit and secretly hauled the mill to his house, meaning to grind and sell daily for money. That night the mill split in two, and what it produced was black as ink, unfit to eat. The rich man feared and returned it to its place. The mill closed up as before, yet from then its nightly turning grew fainter, and after a year it gave no more grain.
A village elder said: "The divine thing will not be owned by the greedy; its leaving is not anger but shame to keep such company."
The Chronicler of the Strange says: The stone mill has no sense, yet it could tell greed from honest need; when the rich man seized it, the flour turned to ink — not that the mill had a spirit, but heaven abhors his greed. The gift of the divine thing was meant to relieve the poor, not to enrich the rich. Today those who hold great wealth seize the poor's mouthful to fatten themselves; set beside this stone mill, can they not be warned? The mill lost its flour but kept its stone; man who loses his kindness loses his kind as well. Who sees this may learn where enough begins.