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Stuffed Bittern
A mill-race is a fast-moving current of water, either manmade or redirected, which is used to turn a mill wheel. Because of this, it can be quite dangerous, leading some of the characters in “Gabriel-Ernest” to presume that the missing children fell into the mill-race and drowned, rather than that they were eaten by Gabriel-Ernest.
Mill-Race Quotes in Gabriel-Ernest
The Gabriel-Ernest quotes below are all either spoken by Mill-Race or refer to Mill-Race. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Gabriel-Ernest
Quotes
And then, as Van Cheele ran his mind over the various depredations that had been committed during the last month or two, he came suddenly to a dead stop, alike in his walk and his speculations. The child missing from the mill two months ago – the accepted theory was that it had tumbled into the mill-race and been swept away; but the mother had always declared she had heard a shriek on the hill side of the house, in the opposite direction from the water. It was unthinkable, of course, but he wished that the boy had not made that uncanny remark about child-flesh eaten two months ago. Such dreadful things should not be said even in fun.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Mill-Race Term Timeline in Gabriel-Ernest
The timeline below shows where the term Mill-Race appears in Gabriel-Ernest. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Gabriel-Ernest
...the miller’s wife lost her baby two months ago—they assumed that it drowned in the mill-race—but the difference in age means that this boy could not be the same child.
(full context)
...side of the road. Because of this, others assume that the child fell into the mill-race alongside the road and Gabriel-Ernest jumped in to save it, drowning in the attempt, though...
(full context)
