'It's all unmaking though, isn't it?' said Arthur Stuart. 'Spilling shot, dropping trousers, making them folks feel guilty for not taking you in.'

'So I should've let them drive us away without breakfast?'

'I've skipped breakfasts before.'

'Well, aren't you the prissy one,' said Alvin. 'Why are you suddenly so critical of the way I do things?'

'You're the one made me dig out a canoe with my own hands,' said Arthur Stuart. 'To teach me making. So I keep looking to see how much making you do. And all I see is how you unmake things.'

Alvin took that a little hard. Didn't get mad, but he was kind of thoughtful and didn't speak much the rest of the way to the miller's house.

So nearly a week later, there's Alvin working in a mill for the first time since he left his father's place in Vigor Church and set out to be a prentice smith in Hatrack River. At first he was happy, running his hands over the machinery, analysing how the gears all meshed. Arthur Stuart, watching him, could see how each bit of machinery he touched ran a little smoother - a little less friction, a little tighter fit - so more and more of the power from the water flowing over the wheel made it to the rolling millstone. It ground faster and smoother, less inclined to bind and jerk. Rack Miller, for that was his name, also noticed, but since he hadn't been watching Alvin work, he assumed that he'd done something with tools and lubricants. `A good can of oil and a keen eye do wonders for machinery,' said Rack, and Alvin had to agree.

But after those first few days, Alvin's happiness faded, for he began to see what Arthur Stuart had noticed from the beginning: Rack was one of the reasons why millers had a bad name. It was pretty subtle. Folks would bring in a sack of corn to be ground into meal, and Rack would cast it in handfuls on to the millstone, then brush the corn flour into a tray and back into the same sack they brought it in. That's how all millers did it. No one bothered with weighing before and after, because everyone knew there was always some corn flour lost on the millstone.