The Feltram windmill is a working landmark and concealed meeting place whose importance lies in the secret dealings conducted inside it. Though Maud first sees it from a distance as part of the grounds, the mill becomes a point of danger when she learns that Dudley has remained nearby and has been meeting her uncle there in secret.

Setting and Function

The windmill stands within sight of Chestnut Hollow and Windmill Wood, among the grounds that Maud and Mary Quince cross to keep a private appointment with Meg Hawkes. On their way, Maud looks toward the old structure and is relieved to see its sails turning in a slight breeze. The mill is therefore not an abandoned relic: it is visibly operating, even as its hidden use makes it ominous.

A Hidden Meeting Place

Meg reveals that Dudley never went beyond Todcaster and had stayed in Feltram. According to information passed to her by Tom Brice, Dudley and Maud’s uncle met in the mill, talking and smoking together in secret. They were there from about eleven at night until nearly one on a Tuesday, entering and leaving like thieves because they feared Maud might see them.

Brice’s overheard account makes the mill a place of concealed pressure as well as concealment. Dudley was crying and looked grim; he said that the matter was not in his line and that he could not do it. Maud’s uncle answered that nobody liked such things, but that Dudley could not avoid them, invoking an old man with a pitchfork behind him. Dudley then lamented that he wished he were aboard the Seamew and felt useless with the matter hanging over him. The exchange suggests coercion and a frightening plan, but does not explain exactly what the plan is.

Maud’s Discovery

Meg believes that the secret conversations concern Maud, though she cannot say how she knows. She warns that she and Maud are in danger; Maud, pale with shock, asks whether her uncle knows Dudley is there and presses Meg to explain what Brice heard. The windmill thus converts the landscape into evidence: its familiar presence in the grounds conceals an alliance that Maud had not known existed.

Soon afterward, Maud uses Madame’s offer to take charge of her shopping commissions and money to get away from the house. She and Mary Quince leave by a side entrance beyond her uncle’s windows’ view and cross toward Chestnut Hollow. Seeing the distant mill actually turning reassures her, while Mary keeps watch on the path toward Windmill Wood and Maud goes to meet Meg. The contrast between the visible, turning sails and the clandestine nighttime meetings gives the windmill its narrative force: it is both an ordinary working structure and the concealed center of a threat whose full terms remain unknown.