This clipping proved to be a reprint or copy of Chapter V of ‘Fields and Mansions of Middlesex.’ （S. A. Drake, 1874.)
Referring our readers to the above book we will only quote:—
Except that the sides of the edifice are somewhat bulged out, which gives it a portly, aldermanic appearance, and that it shows a few fissures in its outward crust, the Powder House is good for another century if for a day. Nothing is wanting but its long arms, for the Old Mill to have stepped bodily out of a canvas of Rembrandt or a cartoon of Albert Durer. It carries us in imagination beyond seas to the banks of the Scheldt,—to the land of burgomasters, dikes and guilders.
It was left to us to find in another quarter the legend. In an ‘occasional’ paper styled the ‘Old Powder House,’ printed for a church fair in 1878, was A Legend of the Old Mill, by Mrs. L. B. Pillsbury,—in all thirty-two verses. That writer (unlike the former one) had the grace to append a footnote, thus:—
Suggested by the facts given in Drake's ‘Fields and Mansions of Middlesex.’
As the eviction of the Acadians from Grand Pre was in 1755, and the sale of the old mill to the province for a powder house in 1747, there is room for doubt of the legend. But the writer certainly followed Drake's prose in poetic form. Our space forbids its reproduction but we quote its finale:—
In tones of thunder, a voice from below—
‘Let go of that cord, I say, let go,
Or you are a dead man,’—too late! too late!
For e'en as the word of alarm was spoke,
The silent old mill with avenging stroke
Out of its lethargy suddenly woke,
And Dick Wynne, the debauchee, had met his fate.Mangled and bleeding, with tender care
They bore out the dying man into the air,
Back to the house where so late he had stood
So conscious of power and haughty of mien,
While in tears, o'er his suffering couch was seen
The sorrowful face of the fair Claudine,
True type of forgiving womanhood.
