It must not be imagined that the mill-wheel ground anything. No; it
went round merely for the sake of its music. For all St. Piran's
business was the study of objects that presented themselves to his
notice, or, as he called it, the "Rapture av Contemplation"; and as
for his livelihood, he earned it in the simplest way. The waters of
the Lough below possessed a peculiar virtue. You had only to sink a
log or stick therein, and in fifty years' time that log or stick would
be turned to stone. St. Piran was as quick as you are to divine the
possibilities of easy competence offered by this spot. He took time by
the forelock, and in half a century was fairly started in business.
Henceforward he passed all his days among the rocks above the fall,
whistling to himself while he whittled bits of cork and wood into
quaint shapes, attached them to string, weighted them with pebbles,
and lowered them over the fall into the Lough--whence, after
fifty years he would draw them forth, and sell them to the simple
surrounding peasantry at two hundred and fifty _per centum per annum_
on the initial cost.
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