The Miserable Mill

Lemony Snicket

The Miserable Mill

The fourth book in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series, 1999

To Beatrice-

My love flew like a butterfly

Until death swooped down like a bat

As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said:

"That's the end of that."

CHAPTER One

Sometime during your life-in fact, very soon-you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book's first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains. For instance, a book that began with the sentence "Once upon a time there was a family of cu

But this book begins with the sentence "The Baudelaire orphans looked out the grimy window of the train and gazed at the gloomy blackness of the Finite Forest, wondering if their lives would ever get any better," and you should be able to tell that the story that follows will be very different from the story of Gary or Emily or the family of cu

The Baudelaire orphans looked out the grimy window of the train and gazed at the gloomy blackness of the Finite Forest, wondering if their lives would ever get any better. An a

"What a lovely forest!" Mr. Poe remarked, and coughed into a white handkerchief. Mr. Poe was a banker who had been in charge of managing the Baudelaire affairs since the fire, and I must tell you that he was not doing a very good job' His two main duties were finding the orphans a good home and protecting the enormous fortune that the children's parents had left behind, and so far each home had been a catastrophe, a word which here means "an utter disaster involving tragedy, deception, and Count Olaf." Count Olaf was a terrible man who wanted the Baudelaire fortune for himself, and tried every disgusting scheme he could think of to steal it. Time after time he had come very close to succeeding, and time after time the Baudelaire orphans had revealed his plan, and time after time he had escaped-and all Mr. Poe had ever done was cough. Now he was accompanying the children to Paltryville, and it pains me to tell you that once again Count Olaf would appear with yet another disgusting scheme, and that Mr. Poe would once again fail to do anything even remotely helpful. "What a lovely forest!" Mr. Poe said again, when he was done coughing. "I think you children will have a good home here. I hope you do, anyway, because I've just received a promotion at Mulctuary Money Management. I'm now the Vice President in Charge of Coins, and from now on I will be busier than ever. If anything goes wrong with you here, I will have to send you to boarding school until I have time to find you another home, so please be on your best behavior."

"Of course, Mr. Poe," Violet said, not adding that she and her siblings had always been on their best behavior but that it hadn't done them any good.

"What is our new caretaker's name?" Klaus asked. "You haven't told us."

Mr. Poe took a piece of paper out of his pocket and squinted at it. "His name is Mr. Wuz- Mr. Qui- I can't pronounce it. It's very long and complicated."

"Can I see?" Klaus asked. "Maybe I can figure out how to pronounce it."

"No, no," Mr. Poe said, putting the paper away. "If it's too complicated for an adult, it's much too complicated for a child."

"Ghand!" Su

"He'll tell you what to call him," Mr. Poe continued, as if Su

"Aren't you coming with us?" Violet asked. "No," Mr. Poe said, and coughed again into his handkerchief. "The train only stops at Paltry-ville once a day, so if I got off the train I would have to stay overnight and I'd miss another day at the bank. I'm just dropping you off here and heading right back into the city."

The Baudelaire orphans looked worriedly out the window. They weren't very happy about just being dropped off in a strange place, as if they were a pizza being delivered instead of three children all alone in the world.

"What if Count Olaf shows up?" Klaus asked quietly. "He swore he'd find us again."