Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains on a little of the River. Lakelands proper is a village of two dozen houses on a forlorn, narrow-gauge railroad line. You wonder whether the railroad lost itself in the pine woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness, or whether Lakelands got lost and itself along the railroad to wait for the cars to carry it home.  
You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes, and the lands about are too poor to be worth mentioning.
 
Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy old run by Josiah Rankin for the accommodation of visitors who desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House is mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern improvements, and it is altogether as comfortably neglected and pleasingly disarranged as your own home. But you are furnished with clean rooms and good and abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods must do the rest. Nature has provided a mineral spring, grape-vine swings, and croquet—even the wickets are wooden. You have Art to thank only for the fiddle-and-guitar music twice a week at the in the pavilion.
 
The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are busy people, who may be likened to clocks that need a fortnight's to insure a year's running of their wheels. You will find students there from the lower towns, now and then an artist, or a absorbed in the ancient of the hills. A few quiet families spend the summers there; and often one or two tired members of that patient sisterhood known to Lakelands as "schoolmarms."
 
A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been described to its guests as "an object of interest" in the catalogue, had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that was no longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was "the only church in the United States, sah, with an overshot-wheel; and the only mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ." The guests of the Eagle House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the preacher liken the purified to bolted flour ground to usefulness between the millstones of experience and suffering.
 
Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honoured and beloved guest. In Lakelands he was called "Father Abram," because his hair was so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry, and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even new guests after three or four days' acquaintance gave him this familiar title.
 
Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring town in the Northwest where he owned mills, not little mills with pews and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an ant-heap. And now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a church, for their stories run together.
 
In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the . There was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill. His hand was heavy, but his was light, and the mountaineers brought their grain to him across many weary miles of rocky roads.
 
The delight of the miller's life was his little daughter, Aglaia. That was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but the mountaineers love and stately names. The mother had encountered it somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her babyhood Aglaia herself the name, as far as common use went, and persisted in calling herself "Dums." The miller and his wife often tried to from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little garden behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a delight and interest. It may have been that she perceived in "Dums" a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite flowers.
 
When Aglaia was four years old she and her father used to go through a little performance in the mill every afternoon, that never failed to come off, the weather permitting. When supper was ready her mother would brush her hair and put on a clean and send her across to the mill to bring her father home. When the miller saw her coming in the mill door he would come forward, all white with the flour dust, and wave his hand and sing an old miller's song that was familiar in those parts and ran something like this:
 
 
"The wheel goes round,
  The grist is ground,
      The dusty miller's merry.
  He sings all day,
  His work is play,
      While thinking of his dearie."
 
 
Then Aglaia would run to him laughing, and call:
 
"Da-da, come take Dums home;" and the miller would swing her to his shoulder and march over to supper, singing the miller's song. Every evening this would take place.
 
One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared. When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see that she did not stray too far away, and she was already gone.
 
Of course every effort was made to find her. The neighbours gathered and searched the woods and the mountains for miles around. They dragged every foot of the mill race and the for a long distance below the dam. Never a trace of her did they find. A night or two before there had been a family of wanderers camped in a near by. It was that they might have stolen the child; but when their was overtaken and searched she could not be found.
 
The miller remained at the mill for nearly two years; and then his hope of finding her died out. He and his wife moved to the Northwest. In a few years he was the owner of a modern mill in one of the important milling cities in that region. Mrs. Strong never recovered from the shock caused by the loss of Aglaia, and two years after they moved away the miller was left to bear his sorrow alone.
 
When Abram Strong became prosperous he paid a visit to Lakelands and the old mill. The scene was a sad one for him, but he was a strong man, and always appeared cheery and . It was then that he was inspired to convert the old mill into a church. Lakelands was too poor to build one; and the still poorer mountaineers could not assist. There was no place of worship nearer than twenty miles.
 
The miller altered the appearance of the mill as little as possible. The big overshot-wheel was left in its place. The young people who came to the church used to cut their initials in its soft and slowly decaying wood. The dam was partly destroyed, and the clear mountain stream unchecked down its rocky bed. Inside the mill the changes were greater. The and millstones and belts and pulleys were, of course, all removed. There were two rows of benches with between, and a little raised platform and pulpit at one end. On three sides overhead was a gallery containing seats, and reached by a stairway inside. There was also an organ—a real pipe organ—in the gallery, that was the pride of the congregation of the Old Mill Church. Miss Phœbe Summers was the organist. The Lakelands boys proudly took turns at pumping it for her at each Sunday's service. The . Mr. Banbridge was the preacher, and rode down from Squirrel Gap on his old white horse without ever missing a service. And Abram Strong paid for everything. He paid the preacher five hundred dollars a year; and Miss Phœbe two hundred dollars.
 
Thus, in memory of Aglaia, the old mill was converted into a for the community in which she had once lived. It seemed that the brief life of the child had brought about more good than the three score years and ten of many. But Abram Strong set up yet another monument to her memory.
 
Out from his mills in the Northwest came the "Aglaia" flour, made from the hardest and finest wheat that could be raised. The country soon found out that the "Aglaia" flour had two prices. One was the highest market price, and the other was—nothing.
 
Wherever there happened a that left people destitute—a fire, a flood, a , a strike, or a famine, there would go hurrying a generous of the "Aglaia" at its "nothing" price. It was given away cautiously and , but it was freely given, and not a penny could the hungry ones pay for it. There got to be a saying that whenever there was a fire in the poor districts of a city the fire chief's buggy reached the scene first, next the "Aglaia" flour wagon, and then the fire engines.
 
So this was Abram Strong's other monument to Aglaia. Perhaps to a poet the theme may seem too for beauty; but to some the fancy will seem sweet and fine that the pure, white, flour, flying on its mission of love and charity, might be likened to the spirit of the lost child whose memory it signalized.
 
There came a year that brought hard times to the Cumberlands. Grain crops everywhere were light, and there were no local crops at all. Mountain floods had done much damage to property. Even game in the woods was so scarce that the hunters brought hardly enough home to keep their folk alive. Especially about Lakelands was the rigour felt.
 
As soon as Abram Strong heard of this his messages flew; and the little narrow-gauge cars began to unload "Aglaia" flour there. The miller's orders were to store the flour in the gallery of the Old Mill Church; and that every one who attended the church was to carry home a sack of it.
 
Two weeks after that Abram Strong came for his yearly visit to the Eagle House, and became "Father Abram" again.
 
That season the Eagle House had fewer guests than usual. Among them was Rose Chester. Miss Chester came to Lakelands from Atlanta, where she worked in a department store. This was the first vacation outing of her life. The wife of the store manager had once spent a summer at the Eagle House. She had taken a fancy to Rose, and had persuaded her to go there for her three weeks' holiday. The manager's wife gave her a letter to Mrs. Rankin, who gladly received her in her own charge and care.
 
Miss Chester was not very strong. She was about twenty, and pale and delicate from an indoor life. But one week of Lakelands gave her a brightness and spirit that changed her wonderfully. The time was early September when the Cumberlands are at their greatest beauty. The mountain was growing brilliant with autumnal colours; one breathed aerial , the nights were deliciously cool, causing one to snuggle under the warm blankets of the Eagle House.
 
Father Abram and Miss Chester became great friends. The old miller learned her story from Mrs. Rankin, and his interest went out quickly to the slender lonely girl who was making her own way in the world.
 
The mountain country was new to Miss Chester. She had lived many years in the warm, flat town of Atlanta; and the and variety of the Cumberlands delighted her. She was to enjoy every moment of her stay. Her little of had been estimated so carefully in connection with her expenses that she knew almost to a penny what her very small surplus would be when she returned to work.
 
Miss Chester was fortunate in gaining Father Abram for a friend and companion. He knew every road and peak and slope of the mountains near Lakelands. Through him she became acquainted with the solemn delight of the shadowy, aisles of the pine forests, the dignity of the bare crags, the crystal, mornings, the dreamy, golden afternoons full of mysterious sadness. So her health improved, and her spirits grew light. She had a laugh as and in its feminine way as the famous laugh of Father Abram. Both of them were natural ; and both knew how to present a and cheerful face to the world.
 
One day Miss Chester learned from one of the guests the history of Father Abram's lost child. Quickly she hurried away and found the miller seated on his favourite rustic bench near the chalybeate spring. He was surprised when his littl............