Chapter Eight.Uncle Richard frowned and looked very serious, but he uttered a low chuckle as he led the way into a snug little room, half-library, half-museum. A long, heavy chest stood on one side, formed of plain, dark-coloured wood; but upon its being opened, Tom saw that it was all beautifully polished ornamental wood inside, and full of drawers, trays, and fittings for bright saws, hammers, chisels, and squares.“My old tool-chest, Tom. I used to have that at Sattegur in my bungalow, and do most of my carpentering myself, for the natives there are not much of hands when you want anything strong. When you want a tool—bradawl, gimlet, pincers, anything—here they all are.” He opened and shut drawers rapidly as he spoke. “Nails, screws, tacks, you’ll know where to find them, only put things back when done with. What did I come for? Oh, a rule. Here we are.” He took a new-looking boxwood rule from its place, closed the lid, and then led the way out into the garden, up a flight of steps formed of rough pieces of tree, and leading in a winding way through a shrubbery to a doorway in a wall. Passing through this, they were in a narrow lane, and close to the yard which enclosed the great brick tower of the mill.“Nice and handy for conveying the flour-sacks to and fro, Tom, eh?” said Uncle Richard, smiling. “Now then, let’s have another inspection of the new old property.”He took out a bunch of old keys, unlocked the gate, and entered; and then they crossed the yard, which was littered with old wood, and with here and there a worn-out millstone leaning against the walls, two extra large ones bound with rusty iron standing up like ornaments on either side of the mill-tower door, one above whitened with ancient flour, having evidently been used for loading carts drawn up close beneath.“Splendid place, eh, Tom?” said Uncle Richard, as he unlocked the door, which uttered a low groan as its unoiled hinges were used, and a peculiar odour of old mildewed flour came from within. “We shall have a place now in case of invasion or civil war, ready for retreat and defence. We can barricade the lower doors, and hurl down the upper and nether millstones on the enemies’ heads, set the mill going, and mow them down with the sails, and melt lead ready to pour down in ladlefuls to make them run from the scalding silver soup. A grand tower for practising all those old barbaric delights.”“Yes, sir,” said Tom uneasily, for his uncle looked at him penetratingly, as if expecting an answer.“Is he serious, or only joking me?” thought Tom the next moment. “He must be a little wrong. Got windmills in his head, like Don Quixote.”“Yah! yah! Who shot the moon?” came in a coarse yell from outside the gate.Tom started, flushed, and turned round angrily, with his fists involuntarily clenching.“Yah! yah! old wind-grinders!” cried the voice again, followed by several heavy bangs on the gate, evidently delivered with a stick.“The impudent scoundrel!” cried Uncle Richard. “Go and tell that fellow that—”But he got no further, for, taking all this as an insult meant for his uncle, Tom had darted off for the gate, which he threw open, and found himself face to face with a big, shambling, hobbledehoy sort of fellow of about eighteen or nineteen, who stepped back for a yard or two, swinging a heavy stick to and fro, while a mangy-looking cur, with one eye and a very thin tail like a greyhound’s, kept close at his heels.“What is it?” said Tom hotly. “Did you knock at the gate like that?”“What’s it got to do with you?” said the lad, insolently. “Get in, or I’ll set the dog at yer.”Tom glanced at the dog and then at its master, and felt as he often had when his cousin Sam had been more than usually vicious.“I’ll jolly soon let yer know if yer give me any o’ your mouth. Here, Badger, smell him, boy—ciss—smell him!”The cur showed his teeth, and uttered a low snarling growl, as its master advanced urging him on; while Tom drew one leg a little back ready to deliver a kick, but otherwise stood his ground, feeling the while that everything was not going to be peaceful even in that lovely village.But before hostilities could begin, and just as the dog and his master were within a yard, the gate was suddenly snatched open, and Uncle Richard appeared, when the lout turned sharply and ran off along the lane, followed by his dog, the fellow shouting “Yah! yah! yah!” his companion’s snapping bark sounding like an imitation.“Come in, Tom,” said Uncle Richard. “I don’t want you to get into rows with Master Pete Warboys. Insolent young rascal!”Tom looked at his uncle inquiringly.“That’s the pest of the village, Tom. Nice young scoundrel. An idle dog, who has had a dozen places and will not stay in them, though he has no Cousin Sam to quarrel with.”Tom winced, for the words were a decided hit at him.“So he has settled down into a regular nuisance, who does a bit of poaching, steals fruit, breaks windows, and generally annoys every one in the place. If he were not such an ugly, shambling cub some recruiting sergeant might pick him up. As it is, we have to put up with him and his ways.”“Yah!” came from a distance; and Tom’s nerves tingled, for he did not like to hear the insult directed at his uncle, however strange he might be.“There, let’s go on with our inspection, my boy,” and the gate was closed again, and they walked together up the slope into the mill.There was not much to see on the ground-floor, save the whitened brick walls, a huge pillar or post in the middle, and a ladder-like flight of steps on one side, up which Uncle Richard led the way; and as Tom emerged from a trap-door, he found himself in a circular chamber, a little less than the one below, with three windows at the sides, the doorway he had seen from without, and three pairs of millstones placed horizontally, and connected by shafts with the mechanism above the cobwebby and flour-whitened ceiling. There was a flight of steps, too, here, and Tom now noticed that there was a trap-door overhead, formed with two flaps and a hole in the middle, while a similar one was at his feet.“For sending the sacks up and down,” said Uncle Richard. “The floors are thoroughly solid, and made of good stuff. Excellent,” he continued. “Let’s go up to the top.”He led the way up the second flight of steps into the next chamber, which was wonderfully like the floor below, minus the millstones; but the roof, instead of being a flat ceiling of boards and beams, was a complication of rafters, ties, posts, and cog-wheels, while at one side was the large pivot passing out through well-greased and blackened bearings, which bore the five sails of the mill, balanced to a great extent by the projecting fan, which, acted upon by the wind, caused the whole of the wooden cap which formed the top to revolve.“There’s the way out to repair the sails, or oil the great fan,” said Uncle Richard, pointing to a little sloping doorway in the curved cap roof. “Think the place will do? It’s a good fifteen feet from the floor to the curve.”“Do, sir?”“Do,uncle, please. Yes, do! The whole top revolves easily enough, and will do so more easily when there are no sails or fan.”“Do you mean for defence, uncle?” stammered Tom.“Defence?—nonsense. Attack, boy. The roof will only want modifying, and a long narrow shutter fitting, one that we can open or close easily from within. The place when cleaned, scraped, painted, and coloured will be all that one could wish, and is strong enough to bear anything. We can mount a monster here.”Tom looked more puzzled than ever. Monster?“In the floor below make our laboratory, and keep chemicals and plates.”“Yes, uncle,” said Tom; for he could understand that.“And on the ground-floor do our grinding and fining.”“But the millstones are on the floor above,” said Tom.“Yes, I know, my boy, for the present; but I’ll soon have them lowered down. There, the place will do splendidly, and Mrs Fidler will be at peace.”Tom did not see how Mrs Fidler could be at peace if the corn was ground on the basement-floor of the mill, but he said nothing.“Now we’ll go down,” said Uncle Richard. “I’m more than satisfied. I’ll have two or three stout fellows to lower down the stones; the rest we will do ourselves.”He led the way down, locked up the mill again and the outer gate, and then entered the garden and crossed it to the coach-house, where the packages brought down were waiting.“Go to the tool-chest and fetch an iron chisel and the biggest hammer,” said Uncle Richard. “No, it’s screwed down. Bring the two largest screw-drivers.”Tom hurried away, and soon returned, to find that his uncle had opened one of the packages he had brought down, and was untying some brown paper, which proved to contain brass tubes and fittings, with slides and rack-work.“Know what these are?” said Uncle Richard.“They look like part of a photographic camera,” said Tom.“A good shot, my lad, but not right. Now for the big chest. I hope they are not broken. Try and get out some of the screws.”These were gradually drawn from the very stout chest, the lid lifted, a quantity of thickly-packed straw removed, and a round package of brown paper was revealed.“Out with it, Tom,” said his uncle. “No, don’t trust to the string.”Tom bent down to lift out the package, but failed, and his uncle laughed.“Let’s both try,” he said, and getting their fingers down, they lifted out something exceedingly heavy, and bore it to a stout bench. “Now for the other,” said Uncle Richard; and after removing more straw, a second package was seen precisely like the first, which on being taken out and opened, proved to be a great solid disc of ground-glass made fairly smooth but quite opaque.“Bravo! quite sound,” cried Uncle Richard. “Now the other.”This proved also to have borne the journey well, and Tom looked from the two great discs to his uncle.“Well,” said the latter; “do you see what these are for?”“To grind flour much finer?”“To grind grandmothers, boy! Nonsense! Not to grind, but to be ground. Out of those Tom, you and I have to make a speculum of tremendous power.”“A looking-glass, sir?” said Tom, feeling rather depressed at his uncle’s notion. For what could a sensible man want with looking-glasses made round, and weighing about a hundredweight each?“Yes, a looking-glass, boy, for the sun and moon, and Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the rest to see their faces in, or for us to see them. I can’t afford to give five or six hundred pounds for a telescope, so you and I will make a monster.”“Telescope!” cried Tom, as scales seemed to fall from before his eyes. “Oh, I see!”“Well, didn’t you see before?”“No, uncle, I couldn’t make it out. Then that’s what you want the windmill for, to put the telescope in, with the top to turn round any way?”“To be sure; it will make a splendid observatory, will it not?”“Glorious, uncle!” cried the boy, whose appearance underwent a complete change, and instead of looking heavy and dull, his eyes sparkled with animation as he exclaimed eagerly, “How big will the telescope be?”“A little wider than the speculum—about eighteen inches across.”“And how long?”“Fifteen feet, boy.”“Yes,” cried Tom, excitedly. “And when are you going to begin, uncle?”“Now, my boy. At once.”
Uncle Richard frowned and looked very serious, but he uttered a low chuckle as he led the way into a snug little room, half-library, half-museum. A long, heavy chest stood on one side, formed of plain, dark-coloured wood; but upon its being opened, Tom saw that it was all beautifully polished ornamental wood inside, and full of drawers, trays, and fittings for bright saws, hammers, chisels, and squares.
“My old tool-chest, Tom. I used to have that at Sattegur in my bungalow, and do most of my carpentering myself, for the natives there are not much of hands when you want anything strong. When you want a tool—bradawl, gimlet, pincers, anything—here they all are.” He opened and shut drawers rapidly as he spoke. “Nails, screws, tacks, you’ll know where to find them, only put things back when done with. What did I come for? Oh, a rule. Here we are.” He took a new-looking boxwood rule from its place, closed the lid, and then led the way out into the garden, up a flight of steps formed of rough pieces of tree, and leading in a winding way through a shrubbery to a doorway in a wall. Passing through this, they were in a narrow lane, and close to the yard which enclosed the great brick tower of the mill.
“Nice and handy for conveying the flour-sacks to and fro, Tom, eh?” said Uncle Richard, smiling. “Now then, let’s have another inspection of the new old property.”
He took out a bunch of old keys, unlocked the gate, and entered; and then they crossed the yard, which was littered with old wood, and with here and there a worn-out millstone leaning against the walls, two extra large ones bound with rusty iron standing up like ornaments on either side of the mill-tower door, one above whitened with ancient flour, having evidently been used for loading carts drawn up close beneath.
“Splendid place, eh, Tom?” said Uncle Richard, as he unlocked the door, which uttered a low groan as its unoiled hinges were used, and a peculiar odour of old mildewed flour came from within. “We shall have a place now in case of invasion or civil war, ready for retreat and defence. We can barricade the lower doors, and hurl down the upper and nether millstones on the enemies’ heads, set the mill going, and mow them down with the sails, and melt lead ready to pour down in ladlefuls to make them run from the scalding silver soup. A grand tower for practising all those old barbaric delights.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom uneasily, for his uncle looked at him penetratingly, as if expecting an answer.
“Is he serious, or only joking me?” thought Tom the next moment. “He must be a little wrong. Got windmills in his head, like Don Quixote.”
“Yah! yah! Who shot the moon?” came in a coarse yell from outside the gate.
Tom started, flushed, and turned round angrily, with his fists involuntarily clenching.
“Yah! yah! old wind-grinders!” cried the voice again, followed by several heavy bangs on the gate, evidently delivered with a stick.
“The impudent scoundrel!” cried Uncle Richard. “Go and tell that fellow that—”
But he got no further, for, taking all this as an insult meant for his uncle, Tom had darted off for the gate, which he threw open, and found himself face to face with a big, shambling, hobbledehoy sort of fellow of about eighteen or nineteen, who stepped back for a yard or two, swinging a heavy stick to and fro, while a mangy-looking cur, with one eye and a very thin tail like a greyhound’s, kept close at his heels.
“What is it?” said Tom hotly. “Did you knock at the gate like that?”
“What’s it got to do with you?” said the lad, insolently. “Get in, or I’ll set the dog at yer.”
Tom glanced at the dog and then at its master, and felt as he often had when his cousin Sam had been more than usually vicious.
“I’ll jolly soon let yer know if yer give me any o’ your mouth. Here, Badger, smell him, boy—ciss—smell him!”
The cur showed his teeth, and uttered a low snarling growl, as its master advanced urging him on; while Tom drew one leg a little back ready to deliver a kick, but otherwise stood his ground, feeling the while that everything was not going to be peaceful even in that lovely village.
But before hostilities could begin, and just as the dog and his master were within a yard, the gate was suddenly snatched open, and Uncle Richard appeared, when the lout turned sharply and ran off along the lane, followed by his dog, the fellow shouting “Yah! yah! yah!” his companion’s snapping bark sounding like an imitation.
“Come in, Tom,” said Uncle Richard. “I don’t want you to get into rows with Master Pete Warboys. Insolent young rascal!”
Tom looked at his uncle inquiringly.
“That’s the pest of the village, Tom. Nice young scoundrel. An idle dog, who has had a dozen places and will not stay in them, though he has no Cousin Sam to quarrel with.”
Tom winced, for the words were a decided hit at him.
“So he has settled down into a regular nuisance, who does a bit of poaching, steals fruit, breaks windows, and generally annoys every one in the place. If he were not such an ugly, shambling cub some recruiting sergeant might pick him up. As it is, we have to put up with him and his ways.”
“Yah!” came from a distance; and Tom’s nerves tingled, for he did not like to hear the insult directed at his uncle, however strange he might be.
“There, let’s go on with our inspection, my boy,” and the gate was closed again, and they walked together up the slope into the mill.
There was not much to see on the ground-floor, save the whitened brick walls, a huge pillar or post in the middle, and a ladder-like flight of steps on one side, up which Uncle Richard led the way; and as Tom emerged from a trap-door, he found himself in a circular chamber, a little less than the one below, with three windows at the sides, the doorway he had seen from without, and three pairs of millstones placed horizontally, and connected by shafts with the mechanism above the cobwebby and flour-whitened ceiling. There was a flight of steps, too, here, and Tom now noticed that there was a trap-door overhead, formed with two flaps and a hole in the middle, while a similar one was at his feet.
“For sending the sacks up and down,” said Uncle Richard. “The floors are thoroughly solid, and made of good stuff. Excellent,” he continued. “Let’s go up to the top.”
He led the way up the second flight of steps into the next chamber, which was wonderfully like the floor below, minus the millstones; but the roof, instead of being a flat ceiling of boards and beams, was a complication of rafters, ties, posts, and cog-wheels, while at one side was the large pivot passing out through well-greased and blackened bearings, which bore the five sails of the mill, balanced to a great extent by the projecting fan, which, acted upon by the wind, caused the whole of the wooden cap which formed the top to revolve.
“There’s the way out to repair the sails, or oil the great fan,” said Uncle Richard, pointing to a little sloping doorway in the curved cap roof. “Think the place will do? It’s a good fifteen feet from the floor to the curve.”
“Do, sir?”
“Do,uncle, please. Yes, do! The whole top revolves easily enough, and will do so more easily when there are no sails or fan.”
“Do you mean for defence, uncle?” stammered Tom.
“Defence?—nonsense. Attack, boy. The roof will only want modifying, and a long narrow shutter fitting, one that we can open or close easily from within. The place when cleaned, scraped, painted, and coloured will be all that one could wish, and is strong enough to bear anything. We can mount a monster here.”
Tom looked more puzzled than ever. Monster?
“In the floor below make our laboratory, and keep chemicals and plates.”
“Yes, uncle,” said Tom; for he could understand that.
“And on the ground-floor do our grinding and fining.”
“But the millstones are on the floor above,” said Tom.
“Yes, I know, my boy, for the present; but I’ll soon have them lowered down. There, the place will do splendidly, and Mrs Fidler will be at peace.”
Tom did not see how Mrs Fidler could be at peace if the corn was ground on the basement-floor of the mill, but he said nothing.
“Now we’ll go down,” said Uncle Richard. “I’m more than satisfied. I’ll have two or three stout fellows to lower down the stones; the rest we will do ourselves.”
He led the way down, locked up the mill again and the outer gate, and then entered the garden and crossed it to the coach-house, where the packages brought down were waiting.
“Go to the tool-chest and fetch an iron chisel and the biggest hammer,” said Uncle Richard. “No, it’s screwed down. Bring the two largest screw-drivers.”
Tom hurried away, and soon returned, to find that his uncle had opened one of the packages he had brought down, and was untying some brown paper, which proved to contain brass tubes and fittings, with slides and rack-work.
“Know what these are?” said Uncle Richard.
“They look like part of a photographic camera,” said Tom.
“A good shot, my lad, but not right. Now for the big chest. I hope they are not broken. Try and get out some of the screws.”
These were gradually drawn from the very stout chest, the lid lifted, a quantity of thickly-packed straw removed, and a round package of brown paper was revealed.
“Out with it, Tom,” said his uncle. “No, don’t trust to the string.”
Tom bent down to lift out the package, but failed, and his uncle laughed.
“Let’s both try,” he said, and getting their fingers down, they lifted out something exceedingly heavy, and bore it to a stout bench. “Now for the other,” said Uncle Richard; and after removing more straw, a second package was seen precisely like the first, which on being taken out and opened, proved to be a great solid disc of ground-glass made fairly smooth but quite opaque.
“Bravo! quite sound,” cried Uncle Richard. “Now the other.”
This proved also to have borne the journey well, and Tom looked from the two great discs to his uncle.
“Well,” said the latter; “do you see what these are for?”
“To grind flour much finer?”
“To grind grandmothers, boy! Nonsense! Not to grind, but to be ground. Out of those Tom, you and I have to make a speculum of tremendous power.”
“A looking-glass, sir?” said Tom, feeling rather depressed at his uncle’s notion. For what could a sensible man want with looking-glasses made round, and weighing about a hundredweight each?
“Yes, a looking-glass, boy, for the sun and moon, and Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the rest to see their faces in, or for us to see them. I can’t afford to give five or six hundred pounds for a telescope, so you and I will make a monster.”
“Telescope!” cried Tom, as scales seemed to fall from before his eyes. “Oh, I see!”
“Well, didn’t you see before?”
“No, uncle, I couldn’t make it out. Then that’s what you want the windmill for, to put the telescope in, with the top to turn round any way?”
“To be sure; it will make a splendid observatory, will it not?”
“Glorious, uncle!” cried the boy, whose appearance underwent a complete change, and instead of looking heavy and dull, his eyes sparkled with animation as he exclaimed eagerly, “How big will the telescope be?”
“A little wider than the speculum—about eighteen inches across.”
“And how long?”
“Fifteen feet, boy.”
“Yes,” cried Tom, excitedly. “And when are you going to begin, uncle?”
“Now, my boy. At once.”
Chapter Nine.“Uncle James was always calling me a fool,” said Tom the next morning; “and I must be, or I shouldn’t have thought poor Uncle Richard half crazy. What a lot of stuff I did get into my head.”He was dressing with his window wide open; the sun was shining warmly, though it was only about six o’clock, and a delicious scent floated in from the garden and the pine-woods beyond.“Grinding corn and turning miller!” he said, and he burst into a merry fit of laughter, and then stopped short with a hair-brush in his hand, staring at his face in the glass, for he hardly knew it; he looked so different to the sad, depressed lad whose countenance had gazed wearily at him from the mirror when he rose of a morning in London.“It must be the fresh country air,” he said to himself; but all the same he felt that it must be something more, and he hastened to finish dressing and go down, so as to have a good look round before breakfast punctually at eight.“Seems like coming out for a holiday, or being at home again,” he thought, as he went down-stairs softly, wondering whether he could easily get out, but to find that the front door was wide open, and hear the servants busy in the kitchen; while, as he stepped out on to the lawn, he suddenly heard the musical sound of a scythe being sharpened, and the next minute he was alongside of David, who had just begun to sweep the keen implement round and lay the daisies low.“Mornin’, sir, mornin’. Going to be reg’lar hot day.—Eh? Want to get up into the pine-woods. Best go straight to the bottom of the garden, and out into the field, and then strike up to your left.”Tom hurried through the bright grounds, followed the directions, and in a few minutes he was climbing a slope of rough common-land, here velvety short turf full of wild thyme, which exhaled its pungent odour as his feet crushed its dewy flowers, there tufted with an exceedingly fine-growing, soft kind of furze, beyond which were clumps of the greater, with its orange and yellow blooms, and rough patches of pale-bloomed ling and brilliant yellow broom.Beyond this wide strip the closely-growing fir-trees began, forming a dense, dark-green wood.It was for this that he was aiming; but as he reached the edge, he turned to stand in the bright sunshine looking down at the village.There was the square-towered, ivy-covered church, with its clock-face glistening, and the hands pointing to twenty minutes past six. Beyond it, what seemed to be an extensive garden beside the churchyard, and the ivy-covered gables of a house that he immediately concluded was the Vicarage. Other attractive cottage-like houses were dotted about. Then he caught sight of the green, with its smaller places. Another more pretentious place or two, and as his eyes swept round, he reached, close at hand, his uncle’s home—his home now, with the windmill towering above it just on the top of the ridge.“What nonsense!” he said half aloud; and then he burst into a merry laugh, which ceased as he heard what sounded like a mocking echo, and a long-tailed black and white bird flew out of a fir-tree, with the sun glistening upon its burnished green and purple tail feathers. “Why it’s a magpie!” he cried, and another flew out to follow the first.As he stood watching them, his eyes rested upon a flashing of water here and there, showing where a stream ran winding through the shallow valley; while a couple of miles beyond it he could trace the railway now by a heavy goods train panting slowly along, with the engine funnel leaving a long train of white flocculent steam behind.“Oh, it’s lovely,” he said softly. “Who could help being happy down here!”There was rather a swelling in his throat, for he felt the change for a few moments. But the next minute the exploring desire was strong upon him, and he plunged in amongst the bronze, pillar-like stems of the fir-trees, and began wandering on and on in a kind of twilight, flecked and cut by vivid rays of sunshine, which came through the dense, dark-green canopy overhead. The place was full of attractions to such a newly-released prisoner, and his eyes were everywhere, now finding something to interest him in the thick soft carpet of pine-needles over which his feet glided. Then he caught sight of a squirrel which ran up a fir-tree, and stopped high up to watch the intruder. Then he came to an open place where trees had been felled; the stumps and chips dotted the ground, and bluebells had sprung up abundantly, along with patches of briar and heath revelling in the sunshine.Here the sandy ground was showing soft and yellow in places, where it had been lately turned over, and in a minute or two he knew what by, for a rabbit sprang up from close to his feet, ran some fifty yards, and disappeared in a burrow; while from the trees beyond came a series of harsh cries, and he caught sight of half-a-dozen jays jerking themselves along, following one another in their soft flight, and showing the pure white patch just above their tails.“There must be snakes and hedgehogs, and all kinds of wild things here,” thought Tom, with all a boy’s eagerness for country sights and sounds; “and look at that!”He obeyed his own command, stopping short to watch, as he heard first a peculiar squealing sound, and directly after saw another rabbit come loping into sight, running in and out among the pine stumps, and keeping up the pitiful squealing sound as it ran.“Must have been that,” he thought; and he was about to run after it, when he suddenly saw something small and elongated appear among the bluebells. For a moment it appeared to be a large snake making its way unnaturally in an undulating, vertical way, instead of horizontally; but he directly after made out that it was a weasel in pursuit of the rabbit, going steadily along, evidently hunting by scent, and the next minute it had disappeared.“I must not go much further,” thought Tom after a while. “I ought to be back punctually to breakfast, and get my boots cleaned first.”He looked down at them, to see that the dew and sand had taken off all the polish, and stepping out now, he hurried for a mound, intending to make it the extent of his journey, and walk back from there to the village.The mound was pine-crowned, and he had nearly reached the top, noting that the sand was liberally burrowed by rabbits, when all at once one of the little white-tailed creatures darted over the top into sight and rushed towards him; there was another rush, a big dog came into sight, overtook the rabbit before it could take refuge in a hole; there was a craunch, a squeal, and the dog was trotting back with the little animal drooping down on each side from its steel-trap jaws, quite dead.“Poor rabbit,” muttered Tom. “Why, it’s that boy’s dog.”He increased his pace, following the dog up the sandy mound; while the animal paid no heed to him, but went steadily on, with its thin, greyhound-like, bony tail hanging in a curve, till reaching the highest part of the eminence, the forepart with the rabbit disappeared, and then the tail curved up for a moment in the air and was gone.Tom Blount felt interested, and hurried up now over the sand and fir-needles, till his head was above the top of the slope; and the next minute he was looking down at the back of the dog’s master, as he was calmly stuffing the body of the defunct rabbit inside the lining of his coat, a slit in which served for a pocket. The dog was looking on, and just in front lay another rabbit, while a couple of yards away there was a hole scratched beneath the root of a tree, and the clean yellow sand scattered all about over the fir-needles.The next moment Tom’s sharp eyes detected that a couple of holes near at hand were covered with pieces of net, one of which suddenly began to move, and the dog drew its master’s attention by giving a short low bark.The warning had its effect, for the lad rose from his knees, stepped to the hole, and picked up something which Tom saw at once to be a long, reddish, writhing ferret. This snaky animal the lad thrust into his breast, stuffed the little piece of net into his pocket, picked up three more scraps from the mouths of other holes, and finally took the rabbit from the ground to pack inside his jacket lining, when the dog caught sight of Tom, and gave a sharp, angry bark.The boy looked round, saw that he was observed, and started to run. But realising the next moment who it was, he hesitated, stopped, and hurriedly getting the second rabbit out of sight, put on a defiant air.Tom smiled to himself.“Poaching, or he wouldn’t have begun to run.—I say,” he said aloud, “whose wood is this?”“What’s that got to do with you?” cried the lad insolently. “’Tain’t yours. And just you lookye here, if I ketches you sneaking arter and watching me again, I’ll give you something as’ll make that other side o’ your face look swelled.”Tom involuntarily raised his hand to a tender spot on his right cheek, left from his encounter with his cousin, and the lad grinned.“No, not that side, t’other,” said the fellow. “Now then, just you hook it. You ’ain’t no business here.”“As much business as you have,” said Tom stoutly, for the lad’s manner made his blood begin to flow more freely.“No, you ’ain’t; you’re only a stranger, and just come.”“Anybody must have a right to come through here so long as he isn’t poaching.”The lad gave a sharp look round, and then turned menacingly to Tom, with his fist doubled, and thrust his face forward.“Just you say as I’ve been poaching agen, and I’ll let you know.”His manner was so menacing that the dog read war, and set up a few hairs on the back of his neck, and uttered a low snarl.“Yes, and I’ll set the dog at yer too. Who’s been poaching? Just you say that again.”“You look as if you had,” said Tom stoutly, but with a very uncomfortable feeling running through him, for the dog’s teeth were white and long, and looked just the kind to get a good hold of a running person’s leg.“Oh, I do, do I?” said the lad. “I’ll soon let you know about that. Just you tell tales about me, and I’ll half smash yer. I don’t know as I won’t now.”His manner was more menacing than ever, and Tom was beginning to feel that he would be compelled to place himself upon his defence, and signalise his coming to Furzebrough with another encounter, when, faintly-heard, came the striking of a church clock, borne on the soft morning breeze, arousing Tom to the fact that he must be a good way on towards an hour’s walk back to his uncle’s, and bringing up memories of his punctuality.“Mustn’t be late the first morning,” he thought, just as the young rabbit poacher gave him a thrust back with his shoulder, and turning sharply he darted among the trees, and began to run toward his new home.“Yah! coward!” was yelled after him, and a lump of sandy iron-stone struck him full in the back, making him wince; but he did not stop, only dodged in and out among the pine-trees, taking what he believed to be the right direction for the village. Then he ran faster, for he heard his assailant’s voice urging on the dog.“Ciss! Fetch him, Bob!” and glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the mongrel-looking brute was in full pursuit, snarling and uttering a low bark from time to time.Tom’s first and natural instinct was to run faster, in the hope that the dog would soon weary of the pursuit, and faster he did run, suffering from an unpleasant feeling of fear, for it is by no means pleasant to have a powerful, keen-toothed dog at your heels, one that has proved its ability to bite, and evidently intending to repeat the performance.Tom ran, and the dog ran, and the latter soon proved that four legs are better for getting over the ground than two; for the next minute he was close up, snapping at the boy’s legs, leaping at his hands, and sending him into a profuse perspiration.“Ciss! fetch him down, boy!” came from a distance, and the dog responded by a bark and a snap at Tom’s leg, which nearly took effect as he ran with all his might, and made him so desperate that he suddenly stopped short as the dog made a fresh snap, struck against him, and then from the effort rolled over and over on the ground.Before it could gather itself up for a fresh attack Tom, in his desperation, stooped down and picked up the nearest thing to him—to wit, a good-sized fir-cone, which he hurled at the dog with all his might. It was very light, and did not hit its mark, but the young poacher’s dog was a bad character, and must have known it. Certainly it had had stones thrown at it before that morning, and evidently under the impression that it was about to have its one eye knocked out or its head split, it uttered a piercing whining cry, tucked its thin tail between its legs, and began to run back toward its master as fast as it could go, chased by another fir-cone, which struck the ground close by it, and elicited another yelp.Tom laughed, and at the same time felt annoyed with himself.“Why didn’t I do it at first?” he said; “and that isn’t the worst of it—that fellow will think I ran away because I was afraid of him.”This last thought formed the subject upon which Tom dwelt all the way back, and he was still busy over an argument with himself as to whether he had been afraid of the young poacher or no, when, after missing the way two or three times among the firs, he caught sight of the church clock pointing to a quarter to eight.“Just time to get in,” he said, as he increased his pace; and then—“Yes, I suppose it was afraid of him, for he is a good deal bigger and stronger than I am.”“Hullo, Tom! been for a walk?” saluted him, as he was hurrying at last along the lane which divided his uncle’s grounds from the new purchase.Tom looked up quickly, and found that Uncle Richard was looking over the wall of the mill-yard.“That’s right,” continued his uncle. “What do you think of the place?”“Glorious!” said Tom.“Hungry?”“Terribly, uncle.”“That’s right. Come along, Mrs Fidler’s waiting for us by now.”
“Uncle James was always calling me a fool,” said Tom the next morning; “and I must be, or I shouldn’t have thought poor Uncle Richard half crazy. What a lot of stuff I did get into my head.”
He was dressing with his window wide open; the sun was shining warmly, though it was only about six o’clock, and a delicious scent floated in from the garden and the pine-woods beyond.
“Grinding corn and turning miller!” he said, and he burst into a merry fit of laughter, and then stopped short with a hair-brush in his hand, staring at his face in the glass, for he hardly knew it; he looked so different to the sad, depressed lad whose countenance had gazed wearily at him from the mirror when he rose of a morning in London.
“It must be the fresh country air,” he said to himself; but all the same he felt that it must be something more, and he hastened to finish dressing and go down, so as to have a good look round before breakfast punctually at eight.
“Seems like coming out for a holiday, or being at home again,” he thought, as he went down-stairs softly, wondering whether he could easily get out, but to find that the front door was wide open, and hear the servants busy in the kitchen; while, as he stepped out on to the lawn, he suddenly heard the musical sound of a scythe being sharpened, and the next minute he was alongside of David, who had just begun to sweep the keen implement round and lay the daisies low.
“Mornin’, sir, mornin’. Going to be reg’lar hot day.—Eh? Want to get up into the pine-woods. Best go straight to the bottom of the garden, and out into the field, and then strike up to your left.”
Tom hurried through the bright grounds, followed the directions, and in a few minutes he was climbing a slope of rough common-land, here velvety short turf full of wild thyme, which exhaled its pungent odour as his feet crushed its dewy flowers, there tufted with an exceedingly fine-growing, soft kind of furze, beyond which were clumps of the greater, with its orange and yellow blooms, and rough patches of pale-bloomed ling and brilliant yellow broom.
Beyond this wide strip the closely-growing fir-trees began, forming a dense, dark-green wood.
It was for this that he was aiming; but as he reached the edge, he turned to stand in the bright sunshine looking down at the village.
There was the square-towered, ivy-covered church, with its clock-face glistening, and the hands pointing to twenty minutes past six. Beyond it, what seemed to be an extensive garden beside the churchyard, and the ivy-covered gables of a house that he immediately concluded was the Vicarage. Other attractive cottage-like houses were dotted about. Then he caught sight of the green, with its smaller places. Another more pretentious place or two, and as his eyes swept round, he reached, close at hand, his uncle’s home—his home now, with the windmill towering above it just on the top of the ridge.
“What nonsense!” he said half aloud; and then he burst into a merry laugh, which ceased as he heard what sounded like a mocking echo, and a long-tailed black and white bird flew out of a fir-tree, with the sun glistening upon its burnished green and purple tail feathers. “Why it’s a magpie!” he cried, and another flew out to follow the first.
As he stood watching them, his eyes rested upon a flashing of water here and there, showing where a stream ran winding through the shallow valley; while a couple of miles beyond it he could trace the railway now by a heavy goods train panting slowly along, with the engine funnel leaving a long train of white flocculent steam behind.
“Oh, it’s lovely,” he said softly. “Who could help being happy down here!”
There was rather a swelling in his throat, for he felt the change for a few moments. But the next minute the exploring desire was strong upon him, and he plunged in amongst the bronze, pillar-like stems of the fir-trees, and began wandering on and on in a kind of twilight, flecked and cut by vivid rays of sunshine, which came through the dense, dark-green canopy overhead. The place was full of attractions to such a newly-released prisoner, and his eyes were everywhere, now finding something to interest him in the thick soft carpet of pine-needles over which his feet glided. Then he caught sight of a squirrel which ran up a fir-tree, and stopped high up to watch the intruder. Then he came to an open place where trees had been felled; the stumps and chips dotted the ground, and bluebells had sprung up abundantly, along with patches of briar and heath revelling in the sunshine.
Here the sandy ground was showing soft and yellow in places, where it had been lately turned over, and in a minute or two he knew what by, for a rabbit sprang up from close to his feet, ran some fifty yards, and disappeared in a burrow; while from the trees beyond came a series of harsh cries, and he caught sight of half-a-dozen jays jerking themselves along, following one another in their soft flight, and showing the pure white patch just above their tails.
“There must be snakes and hedgehogs, and all kinds of wild things here,” thought Tom, with all a boy’s eagerness for country sights and sounds; “and look at that!”
He obeyed his own command, stopping short to watch, as he heard first a peculiar squealing sound, and directly after saw another rabbit come loping into sight, running in and out among the pine stumps, and keeping up the pitiful squealing sound as it ran.
“Must have been that,” he thought; and he was about to run after it, when he suddenly saw something small and elongated appear among the bluebells. For a moment it appeared to be a large snake making its way unnaturally in an undulating, vertical way, instead of horizontally; but he directly after made out that it was a weasel in pursuit of the rabbit, going steadily along, evidently hunting by scent, and the next minute it had disappeared.
“I must not go much further,” thought Tom after a while. “I ought to be back punctually to breakfast, and get my boots cleaned first.”
He looked down at them, to see that the dew and sand had taken off all the polish, and stepping out now, he hurried for a mound, intending to make it the extent of his journey, and walk back from there to the village.
The mound was pine-crowned, and he had nearly reached the top, noting that the sand was liberally burrowed by rabbits, when all at once one of the little white-tailed creatures darted over the top into sight and rushed towards him; there was another rush, a big dog came into sight, overtook the rabbit before it could take refuge in a hole; there was a craunch, a squeal, and the dog was trotting back with the little animal drooping down on each side from its steel-trap jaws, quite dead.
“Poor rabbit,” muttered Tom. “Why, it’s that boy’s dog.”
He increased his pace, following the dog up the sandy mound; while the animal paid no heed to him, but went steadily on, with its thin, greyhound-like, bony tail hanging in a curve, till reaching the highest part of the eminence, the forepart with the rabbit disappeared, and then the tail curved up for a moment in the air and was gone.
Tom Blount felt interested, and hurried up now over the sand and fir-needles, till his head was above the top of the slope; and the next minute he was looking down at the back of the dog’s master, as he was calmly stuffing the body of the defunct rabbit inside the lining of his coat, a slit in which served for a pocket. The dog was looking on, and just in front lay another rabbit, while a couple of yards away there was a hole scratched beneath the root of a tree, and the clean yellow sand scattered all about over the fir-needles.
The next moment Tom’s sharp eyes detected that a couple of holes near at hand were covered with pieces of net, one of which suddenly began to move, and the dog drew its master’s attention by giving a short low bark.
The warning had its effect, for the lad rose from his knees, stepped to the hole, and picked up something which Tom saw at once to be a long, reddish, writhing ferret. This snaky animal the lad thrust into his breast, stuffed the little piece of net into his pocket, picked up three more scraps from the mouths of other holes, and finally took the rabbit from the ground to pack inside his jacket lining, when the dog caught sight of Tom, and gave a sharp, angry bark.
The boy looked round, saw that he was observed, and started to run. But realising the next moment who it was, he hesitated, stopped, and hurriedly getting the second rabbit out of sight, put on a defiant air.
Tom smiled to himself.
“Poaching, or he wouldn’t have begun to run.—I say,” he said aloud, “whose wood is this?”
“What’s that got to do with you?” cried the lad insolently. “’Tain’t yours. And just you lookye here, if I ketches you sneaking arter and watching me again, I’ll give you something as’ll make that other side o’ your face look swelled.”
Tom involuntarily raised his hand to a tender spot on his right cheek, left from his encounter with his cousin, and the lad grinned.
“No, not that side, t’other,” said the fellow. “Now then, just you hook it. You ’ain’t no business here.”
“As much business as you have,” said Tom stoutly, for the lad’s manner made his blood begin to flow more freely.
“No, you ’ain’t; you’re only a stranger, and just come.”
“Anybody must have a right to come through here so long as he isn’t poaching.”
The lad gave a sharp look round, and then turned menacingly to Tom, with his fist doubled, and thrust his face forward.
“Just you say as I’ve been poaching agen, and I’ll let you know.”
His manner was so menacing that the dog read war, and set up a few hairs on the back of his neck, and uttered a low snarl.
“Yes, and I’ll set the dog at yer too. Who’s been poaching? Just you say that again.”
“You look as if you had,” said Tom stoutly, but with a very uncomfortable feeling running through him, for the dog’s teeth were white and long, and looked just the kind to get a good hold of a running person’s leg.
“Oh, I do, do I?” said the lad. “I’ll soon let you know about that. Just you tell tales about me, and I’ll half smash yer. I don’t know as I won’t now.”
His manner was more menacing than ever, and Tom was beginning to feel that he would be compelled to place himself upon his defence, and signalise his coming to Furzebrough with another encounter, when, faintly-heard, came the striking of a church clock, borne on the soft morning breeze, arousing Tom to the fact that he must be a good way on towards an hour’s walk back to his uncle’s, and bringing up memories of his punctuality.
“Mustn’t be late the first morning,” he thought, just as the young rabbit poacher gave him a thrust back with his shoulder, and turning sharply he darted among the trees, and began to run toward his new home.
“Yah! coward!” was yelled after him, and a lump of sandy iron-stone struck him full in the back, making him wince; but he did not stop, only dodged in and out among the pine-trees, taking what he believed to be the right direction for the village. Then he ran faster, for he heard his assailant’s voice urging on the dog.
“Ciss! Fetch him, Bob!” and glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the mongrel-looking brute was in full pursuit, snarling and uttering a low bark from time to time.
Tom’s first and natural instinct was to run faster, in the hope that the dog would soon weary of the pursuit, and faster he did run, suffering from an unpleasant feeling of fear, for it is by no means pleasant to have a powerful, keen-toothed dog at your heels, one that has proved its ability to bite, and evidently intending to repeat the performance.
Tom ran, and the dog ran, and the latter soon proved that four legs are better for getting over the ground than two; for the next minute he was close up, snapping at the boy’s legs, leaping at his hands, and sending him into a profuse perspiration.
“Ciss! fetch him down, boy!” came from a distance, and the dog responded by a bark and a snap at Tom’s leg, which nearly took effect as he ran with all his might, and made him so desperate that he suddenly stopped short as the dog made a fresh snap, struck against him, and then from the effort rolled over and over on the ground.
Before it could gather itself up for a fresh attack Tom, in his desperation, stooped down and picked up the nearest thing to him—to wit, a good-sized fir-cone, which he hurled at the dog with all his might. It was very light, and did not hit its mark, but the young poacher’s dog was a bad character, and must have known it. Certainly it had had stones thrown at it before that morning, and evidently under the impression that it was about to have its one eye knocked out or its head split, it uttered a piercing whining cry, tucked its thin tail between its legs, and began to run back toward its master as fast as it could go, chased by another fir-cone, which struck the ground close by it, and elicited another yelp.
Tom laughed, and at the same time felt annoyed with himself.
“Why didn’t I do it at first?” he said; “and that isn’t the worst of it—that fellow will think I ran away because I was afraid of him.”
This last thought formed the subject upon which Tom dwelt all the way back, and he was still busy over an argument with himself as to whether he had been afraid of the young poacher or no, when, after missing the way two or three times among the firs, he caught sight of the church clock pointing to a quarter to eight.
“Just time to get in,” he said, as he increased his pace; and then—“Yes, I suppose it was afraid of him, for he is a good deal bigger and stronger than I am.”
“Hullo, Tom! been for a walk?” saluted him, as he was hurrying at last along the lane which divided his uncle’s grounds from the new purchase.
Tom looked up quickly, and found that Uncle Richard was looking over the wall of the mill-yard.
“That’s right,” continued his uncle. “What do you think of the place?”
“Glorious!” said Tom.
“Hungry?”
“Terribly, uncle.”
“That’s right. Come along, Mrs Fidler’s waiting for us by now.”
Chapter Ten.Directly after breakfast Tom followed his uncle to the coach-house, and from there up a ladder fastened to the side into the loft, where he looked around wonderingly, while his companion’s face relaxed into a grim smile.“It was originally intended for botanical productions, Tom,” he said; “for a sort ofhortus siccus, if you know what that means.”“Hortus—garden;siccus—I don’t know what that means, uncle, unless it’s dry.”“That’s right, boy. Glad you know some Latin beside the legal. Dry garden, as a botanist calls it, where he stores up his specimens. But only a few kinds were kept here: hay, clover, oats, and linseed, in the form of cake. Now, you see, I’ve turned it into use for another science.”“Astronomy, uncle?”“To be sure; but it’sverysmall and inconvenient. But wait till we get the windmill going.”“Is this your telescope?” cried Tom.“Yes, Tom; but it’s too small. You’ll have to work hard on my big one.”“Yes, uncle,” said Tom, with quiet confidence, as he eagerly examined the glass with its mounting, and the many other objects about the place, one of which was a kind of trough half full of what seemed to be beautifully clear water, covered with a sheet of plate-glass.“There, as soon as you’ve done we’ll go to the mill, for I don’t want to lose any time.”“I could stay here for hours, uncle,” said Tom. “I want to know what all these things are for, and how you use them; but I’m ready now.”“That’s right. The men are coming this morning to begin clearing away.”“So soon, uncle?”“Yes, so soon. Life’s short, Tom; and at my age one can’t afford to waste time. Come along.”Tom began thinking as he followed his uncle, for his words suggested a good deal, inasmuch as he had been exceedingly extravagant with the time at his disposal, and much given to wishing the tedious hours to go by.“Here they are,” said Uncle Richard; for there was the sound of a horse’s hoofs, and the crushing noise made by wheels in the lane.“But I thought you were going to make the place into an observatory yourself, uncle, with me to help you?”Uncle Richard smiled.“It would be wasting valuable time, Tom,” he said, “even if we could do it; but we could not. I’ve thought it over, and we shall have to content ourselves with making the glass.”On reaching the mill-yard it was to find half-a-dozen people there with ladders, scaffold-poles, ropes, blocks, and pulleys. There was a short consultation, and soon after the men began work, unbolting the woodwork of the sails, while others began to disconnect the millstones from the iron gearing.This business brought up all the idlers of the village, who hung about looking on—some in a friendly way, others with a sneering look upon their countenances, as they let drop remarks that contained anything but respect for the owner of the place. But though they were careful not to let them reach Uncle Richard’s ears, it seemed to Tom that more than once an extra unpleasant speech was made expressly for him to hear; and he coloured angrily as he felt that these people must know why the mill was being dismantled.The work went on day after day, and first one great arm of the mill was lowered in safety, the others following, to make quite a stack of wood in a corner of the yard, but so arranged that one side touched the brickwork, as there was no need to leave room now for the revolution of the sails.By this time the building had assumed the appearance of a tower, whose sides curved up to the wooden dome top, and the resemblance was completed as soon as the fan followed the sails.Meanwhile the iron gearing connected with the stones had been taken down inside; then the stones had followed, being lowered through the floors into the basement, and from thence carefully rolled, to be leaned up against the wall.“Hah!” said Uncle Richard, “at the end of a week,” as he went up to the top-floor of the mill with his nephew.“Is it only a week, uncle?” said Tom. “Why, it seems to me as if I had been here for a month.”“So long and tedious, boy?”“Oh no, uncle,” said Tom confusedly. “I meant I seem to have been here so long, and yet the time has gone like lightning.”“Then you can’t have been very miserable, my boy?”“Miserable!” cried Tom.That was all; and Uncle Richard turned the conversation by pointing to the roof.“There,” he said, “that used to swing round easily enough with the weight of those huge sails, which looked so little upon the mill, but so big when they are down. It ought to move easily now, boy.”Tom tried, and found that the whole of the wooden top glided round upon its pivot with the greatest ease.“Yes, that’s all very well,” said his uncle, “but it will have to be disconnected from the mill-post. I shall want that to bear the new glass.”“That?” said Tom, gazing at the huge beam which went down through the floor right to the basement of the mill.“Yes, boy; that will make a grandly steady stand when wedged tight. To a great extent this place is as good as if it had been built on purpose for an observatory. I shall be glad though when we get rid of the workmen, and all the litter and rubbish are cleared away.”That afternoon a couple of carpenters began work, devoting themselves at first to the wooden dome-like roof, which they were to furnish from top to bottom with a narrow shutter, so formed that it could be opened to turn right over on to the roof, leaving a long slip open to the sky.That night, after he had gone up to his bedroom, Tom threw open his window, to sit upon the ledge, reaching out so as to have a good look at the sky which spread above, one grand arch of darkest purple spangled with golden stars. To his right was the tower-like mill, and behind it almost the only constellation that he knew, to wit, Charles’s Wain, with every star distinct, even to the little one, which he had been told represented the boy driving the horses of the old northern waggon.“How thick the stars are to-night,” he thought, as he traced the light clusters of the Milky Way, noting how it divided in one place into two. Then he tried to make out the Little Bear and failed, wondered which was the Dog Star, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, and ended by giving his ear a vicious rub.“A fellow don’t seem to know anything,” he thought. “How stupid I must seem to Uncle Richard. But I mean to know before I’ve done. Hark!”He listened attentively, for in the distance a nightingale was singing, and the sweet notes were answered from somewhere beyond, and again and again at greater distances still, the notes, though faint, sounding deliciously pure and sweet.“Who would live in London?” he said to himself; and a curiously mingled feeling of pleasure and sadness came over him, as he dwelt upon his position now, and how happy life had suddenly become.“And I thought of running away,” he said softly, as he looked down now at the dimly-seen shrubs about the lawn. “Uncle Richard doesn’t seem to think I’m such a fool. Wonder whether I can learn all about the stars.”Just then he yawned, for it was past ten, and the house so quiet that he felt sure that his uncle had gone to bed.“Yes, I’ll learn all about them and surprise him,” he said. “There are plenty of books in the study. Then I shall not seem so stupid when we begin. What’s that?”He had put out his candle when he opened the casement to look at the stars, so that his room was all dark, and he was just about to close the window, and hurry off his clothes, when a faint clinking sound struck upon his ear.The noise came from the mill-yard to his right, where he could dimly make out the outlines of the building against the northern sky; and it sounded as if some of the ironwork which had been taken down—bolts, nuts, bands, and rails—and piled against the wall had slipped a little, so as to make a couple of the pieces clink.“That’s what it is,” thought Tom, and he reached out to draw in his casement window, when he heard the sound again, a little louder.“Cat walking over the iron,” thought Tom; but the noise came again, only a faint sound, but plain enough in the stillness of the night.All at once a thought came which sent the blood flushing up into the boy’s cheeks, and nailed him, as it were, to the window.“There’s some one in the yard stealing the old iron.”The lad’s heart began to beat heavily, and thoughts came fast. Who could it be? Some one who knew where it all was, and meant to sell it. Surely it couldn’t be David!Tom leaned out, gazing in the direction of the sounds, which still continued, and he made out now that it was just as if somebody was hurriedly pulling bolts and nuts out of a heap, and putting them in a bag or a sack.Hot with indignation, as soon as he had arrived at this point, against whoever it could be who was robbing his uncle, Tom half turned from the window to go and wake him.No, he would not do that. It must be some one in the village, and if he could find out who, that would be enough, and he could tell his uncle in the morning.Tom had only been a short time at Furzebrough, but it was long enough to make him know many of the people at sight, and, in spite of the darkness, he fancied that he would be able to recognise the marauder if he could get near enough.He did not stop to think. There was a heavy trellis-work covered with roses and creepers all over his side of the house, and the sill of his window was not much over ten feet from the flower-beds below.He had no cap up-stairs, and he was in his slippers, but this last was all the better, and with all a boy’s activity he climbed out of the window, got a good hold of the trellis, felt down with his feet for a place, and descended with the greatest ease, avoided the narrow flower border by a bit of a spring, and landed upon David’s carefully-kept grass.Here for a moment or two he paused.The gate would be locked at night, and it would be better to get out at the bottom of the garden.Satisfied with this, he set off at a trot, the velvety grass deadening his steps. Then, getting over the iron hurdle, he passed through a bit of shrubbery, found a thick stick, and got over the palings into the lane.Here he had to be more cautious, for he wanted to try and make out who was the thief without being seen, and perhaps getting a crack over the head, as he put it, with a piece of iron.The lane would not do, and besides, the gate would be locked, and the wall awkward to climb.Another idea suggested itself, and stopping at the end of the mill-yard, he passed into a field, and with his heart increasing its pulsations, partly from exertion, as much as from excitement, he hurried round on tiptoe to the back of the mill-yard, and cautiously raising himself up, peered over the top of the wall, and listened.To his disappointment, he found that though he could look over the top of the wall, it was only at the mill—all below in the yard was invisible, but the place was all very still now. Not a sound fell upon his ear for some minutes, and then a very faint one, which sounded like a load being lifted from the top of the wall, but right away down by where he had entered the field.Tom stole back, bending low the while, but saw nothing, nobody was carrying a burden, and he was getting to be in despair, when all at once there was the sound of a stifled sneeze, evidently from far along the lane.That was enough. Tom was back in the lane directly, keeping close to the hedge, and following, he believed, some one who was making his way from the village out toward the open country.At the end of a minute he was sure that some one was about thirty yards in front of him, and perfectly certain directly after that whoever it was had turned off to the right along a narrow path between two hedges which bounded the bottom of his uncle’s field.The path led round to the outskirts of the village, where there were some scattered cottages beyond the church, and feeling sure that the thief—if it was a thief—was making for there, Tom followed silently, guided twice over by a faint sniff, and pausing now and then to listen for some movement which he heard, the load the marauder carried brushing slightly against the hedge.Then all at once the sounds ceased, and though Tom went on and on, and stopped to listen again and again, he could hear nothing. He hurried on quickly now, but felt that nobody could be at hand, and hurried back, peering now in the darkness to try and make out where the object of his search had struck off from the narrow way.But in the obscurity he could make out nothing, for he was very ignorant about this track, never having been all along it before; and at last, thoroughly discouraged, he went back, growing more and more annoyed at his ill-success, and wishing he had made a rush and seized the thief at once.And now, feeling thoroughly tired, as well as damped in his ardour, Tom reached the paling, climbed over into the shrubbery, reached the lawn, over which he walked slowly toward the darkened house, where he paused, and reached over to grasp the stout trellis, and spare David’s flower-bed.It was very easy, almost as much so as climbing a ladder, and in a minute he had reached first one arm and then the other over the window-sill, and was about to climb in, when he almost let go and nearly dropped back into the garden.For there was a loud scratching noise, a line of light, and a wax-match flashed out, and then burned steadily, lighting up Uncle Richard’s stern face and the little bedroom, as he stood a couple of yards back from the window.“Now, sir, if you please,” came in severe tones. “What is the meaning of this?”
Directly after breakfast Tom followed his uncle to the coach-house, and from there up a ladder fastened to the side into the loft, where he looked around wonderingly, while his companion’s face relaxed into a grim smile.
“It was originally intended for botanical productions, Tom,” he said; “for a sort ofhortus siccus, if you know what that means.”
“Hortus—garden;siccus—I don’t know what that means, uncle, unless it’s dry.”
“That’s right, boy. Glad you know some Latin beside the legal. Dry garden, as a botanist calls it, where he stores up his specimens. But only a few kinds were kept here: hay, clover, oats, and linseed, in the form of cake. Now, you see, I’ve turned it into use for another science.”
“Astronomy, uncle?”
“To be sure; but it’sverysmall and inconvenient. But wait till we get the windmill going.”
“Is this your telescope?” cried Tom.
“Yes, Tom; but it’s too small. You’ll have to work hard on my big one.”
“Yes, uncle,” said Tom, with quiet confidence, as he eagerly examined the glass with its mounting, and the many other objects about the place, one of which was a kind of trough half full of what seemed to be beautifully clear water, covered with a sheet of plate-glass.
“There, as soon as you’ve done we’ll go to the mill, for I don’t want to lose any time.”
“I could stay here for hours, uncle,” said Tom. “I want to know what all these things are for, and how you use them; but I’m ready now.”
“That’s right. The men are coming this morning to begin clearing away.”
“So soon, uncle?”
“Yes, so soon. Life’s short, Tom; and at my age one can’t afford to waste time. Come along.”
Tom began thinking as he followed his uncle, for his words suggested a good deal, inasmuch as he had been exceedingly extravagant with the time at his disposal, and much given to wishing the tedious hours to go by.
“Here they are,” said Uncle Richard; for there was the sound of a horse’s hoofs, and the crushing noise made by wheels in the lane.
“But I thought you were going to make the place into an observatory yourself, uncle, with me to help you?”
Uncle Richard smiled.
“It would be wasting valuable time, Tom,” he said, “even if we could do it; but we could not. I’ve thought it over, and we shall have to content ourselves with making the glass.”
On reaching the mill-yard it was to find half-a-dozen people there with ladders, scaffold-poles, ropes, blocks, and pulleys. There was a short consultation, and soon after the men began work, unbolting the woodwork of the sails, while others began to disconnect the millstones from the iron gearing.
This business brought up all the idlers of the village, who hung about looking on—some in a friendly way, others with a sneering look upon their countenances, as they let drop remarks that contained anything but respect for the owner of the place. But though they were careful not to let them reach Uncle Richard’s ears, it seemed to Tom that more than once an extra unpleasant speech was made expressly for him to hear; and he coloured angrily as he felt that these people must know why the mill was being dismantled.
The work went on day after day, and first one great arm of the mill was lowered in safety, the others following, to make quite a stack of wood in a corner of the yard, but so arranged that one side touched the brickwork, as there was no need to leave room now for the revolution of the sails.
By this time the building had assumed the appearance of a tower, whose sides curved up to the wooden dome top, and the resemblance was completed as soon as the fan followed the sails.
Meanwhile the iron gearing connected with the stones had been taken down inside; then the stones had followed, being lowered through the floors into the basement, and from thence carefully rolled, to be leaned up against the wall.
“Hah!” said Uncle Richard, “at the end of a week,” as he went up to the top-floor of the mill with his nephew.
“Is it only a week, uncle?” said Tom. “Why, it seems to me as if I had been here for a month.”
“So long and tedious, boy?”
“Oh no, uncle,” said Tom confusedly. “I meant I seem to have been here so long, and yet the time has gone like lightning.”
“Then you can’t have been very miserable, my boy?”
“Miserable!” cried Tom.
That was all; and Uncle Richard turned the conversation by pointing to the roof.
“There,” he said, “that used to swing round easily enough with the weight of those huge sails, which looked so little upon the mill, but so big when they are down. It ought to move easily now, boy.”
Tom tried, and found that the whole of the wooden top glided round upon its pivot with the greatest ease.
“Yes, that’s all very well,” said his uncle, “but it will have to be disconnected from the mill-post. I shall want that to bear the new glass.”
“That?” said Tom, gazing at the huge beam which went down through the floor right to the basement of the mill.
“Yes, boy; that will make a grandly steady stand when wedged tight. To a great extent this place is as good as if it had been built on purpose for an observatory. I shall be glad though when we get rid of the workmen, and all the litter and rubbish are cleared away.”
That afternoon a couple of carpenters began work, devoting themselves at first to the wooden dome-like roof, which they were to furnish from top to bottom with a narrow shutter, so formed that it could be opened to turn right over on to the roof, leaving a long slip open to the sky.
That night, after he had gone up to his bedroom, Tom threw open his window, to sit upon the ledge, reaching out so as to have a good look at the sky which spread above, one grand arch of darkest purple spangled with golden stars. To his right was the tower-like mill, and behind it almost the only constellation that he knew, to wit, Charles’s Wain, with every star distinct, even to the little one, which he had been told represented the boy driving the horses of the old northern waggon.
“How thick the stars are to-night,” he thought, as he traced the light clusters of the Milky Way, noting how it divided in one place into two. Then he tried to make out the Little Bear and failed, wondered which was the Dog Star, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, and ended by giving his ear a vicious rub.
“A fellow don’t seem to know anything,” he thought. “How stupid I must seem to Uncle Richard. But I mean to know before I’ve done. Hark!”
He listened attentively, for in the distance a nightingale was singing, and the sweet notes were answered from somewhere beyond, and again and again at greater distances still, the notes, though faint, sounding deliciously pure and sweet.
“Who would live in London?” he said to himself; and a curiously mingled feeling of pleasure and sadness came over him, as he dwelt upon his position now, and how happy life had suddenly become.
“And I thought of running away,” he said softly, as he looked down now at the dimly-seen shrubs about the lawn. “Uncle Richard doesn’t seem to think I’m such a fool. Wonder whether I can learn all about the stars.”
Just then he yawned, for it was past ten, and the house so quiet that he felt sure that his uncle had gone to bed.
“Yes, I’ll learn all about them and surprise him,” he said. “There are plenty of books in the study. Then I shall not seem so stupid when we begin. What’s that?”
He had put out his candle when he opened the casement to look at the stars, so that his room was all dark, and he was just about to close the window, and hurry off his clothes, when a faint clinking sound struck upon his ear.
The noise came from the mill-yard to his right, where he could dimly make out the outlines of the building against the northern sky; and it sounded as if some of the ironwork which had been taken down—bolts, nuts, bands, and rails—and piled against the wall had slipped a little, so as to make a couple of the pieces clink.
“That’s what it is,” thought Tom, and he reached out to draw in his casement window, when he heard the sound again, a little louder.
“Cat walking over the iron,” thought Tom; but the noise came again, only a faint sound, but plain enough in the stillness of the night.
All at once a thought came which sent the blood flushing up into the boy’s cheeks, and nailed him, as it were, to the window.
“There’s some one in the yard stealing the old iron.”
The lad’s heart began to beat heavily, and thoughts came fast. Who could it be? Some one who knew where it all was, and meant to sell it. Surely it couldn’t be David!
Tom leaned out, gazing in the direction of the sounds, which still continued, and he made out now that it was just as if somebody was hurriedly pulling bolts and nuts out of a heap, and putting them in a bag or a sack.
Hot with indignation, as soon as he had arrived at this point, against whoever it could be who was robbing his uncle, Tom half turned from the window to go and wake him.
No, he would not do that. It must be some one in the village, and if he could find out who, that would be enough, and he could tell his uncle in the morning.
Tom had only been a short time at Furzebrough, but it was long enough to make him know many of the people at sight, and, in spite of the darkness, he fancied that he would be able to recognise the marauder if he could get near enough.
He did not stop to think. There was a heavy trellis-work covered with roses and creepers all over his side of the house, and the sill of his window was not much over ten feet from the flower-beds below.
He had no cap up-stairs, and he was in his slippers, but this last was all the better, and with all a boy’s activity he climbed out of the window, got a good hold of the trellis, felt down with his feet for a place, and descended with the greatest ease, avoided the narrow flower border by a bit of a spring, and landed upon David’s carefully-kept grass.
Here for a moment or two he paused.
The gate would be locked at night, and it would be better to get out at the bottom of the garden.
Satisfied with this, he set off at a trot, the velvety grass deadening his steps. Then, getting over the iron hurdle, he passed through a bit of shrubbery, found a thick stick, and got over the palings into the lane.
Here he had to be more cautious, for he wanted to try and make out who was the thief without being seen, and perhaps getting a crack over the head, as he put it, with a piece of iron.
The lane would not do, and besides, the gate would be locked, and the wall awkward to climb.
Another idea suggested itself, and stopping at the end of the mill-yard, he passed into a field, and with his heart increasing its pulsations, partly from exertion, as much as from excitement, he hurried round on tiptoe to the back of the mill-yard, and cautiously raising himself up, peered over the top of the wall, and listened.
To his disappointment, he found that though he could look over the top of the wall, it was only at the mill—all below in the yard was invisible, but the place was all very still now. Not a sound fell upon his ear for some minutes, and then a very faint one, which sounded like a load being lifted from the top of the wall, but right away down by where he had entered the field.
Tom stole back, bending low the while, but saw nothing, nobody was carrying a burden, and he was getting to be in despair, when all at once there was the sound of a stifled sneeze, evidently from far along the lane.
That was enough. Tom was back in the lane directly, keeping close to the hedge, and following, he believed, some one who was making his way from the village out toward the open country.
At the end of a minute he was sure that some one was about thirty yards in front of him, and perfectly certain directly after that whoever it was had turned off to the right along a narrow path between two hedges which bounded the bottom of his uncle’s field.
The path led round to the outskirts of the village, where there were some scattered cottages beyond the church, and feeling sure that the thief—if it was a thief—was making for there, Tom followed silently, guided twice over by a faint sniff, and pausing now and then to listen for some movement which he heard, the load the marauder carried brushing slightly against the hedge.
Then all at once the sounds ceased, and though Tom went on and on, and stopped to listen again and again, he could hear nothing. He hurried on quickly now, but felt that nobody could be at hand, and hurried back, peering now in the darkness to try and make out where the object of his search had struck off from the narrow way.
But in the obscurity he could make out nothing, for he was very ignorant about this track, never having been all along it before; and at last, thoroughly discouraged, he went back, growing more and more annoyed at his ill-success, and wishing he had made a rush and seized the thief at once.
And now, feeling thoroughly tired, as well as damped in his ardour, Tom reached the paling, climbed over into the shrubbery, reached the lawn, over which he walked slowly toward the darkened house, where he paused, and reached over to grasp the stout trellis, and spare David’s flower-bed.
It was very easy, almost as much so as climbing a ladder, and in a minute he had reached first one arm and then the other over the window-sill, and was about to climb in, when he almost let go and nearly dropped back into the garden.
For there was a loud scratching noise, a line of light, and a wax-match flashed out, and then burned steadily, lighting up Uncle Richard’s stern face and the little bedroom, as he stood a couple of yards back from the window.
“Now, sir, if you please,” came in severe tones. “What is the meaning of this?”
Chapter Eleven.It did not mean apples nor pears from the garden, for they were nearly as hard as wood, and it did not mean going out to carry on some game with a companion, for Tom knew no one there.Uncle Richard was aware of this when he heard Tom stealing down the trellis, and peeped at him from a darkened window. Hence his stern question.“Oh, uncle!” said Tom, in a subdued voice, “how you frightened me.”“I’m glad of it, sir,” said Uncle Richard, holding the little match to the candle and increasing the illumination as Tom climbed in. “I meant to. Now, sir, if you please, explain.”“Yes, uncle,” said Tom calmly, and making his uncle frown.“The impudent young dog!” he said to himself; and then he stood nodding his head, and gradually growing more satisfied that he had after all been right in his estimate of his nephew, though the night’s business had rather shaken his faith.“Then you didn’t make out who it was, Tom,” he said, when Tom had explained.“No, uncle; it was very stupid of me, I suppose.”“Very foolish to be guilty of such an escapade.”“Foolish!” said Tom, growing more damped than before; “but he was stealing the ironwork.”“Yes, evidently carrying it off; but it was old iron.”“But it was just as bad to steal old iron as new, uncle,” said Tom.“Ahem! yes, of course, my boy; but you must not be so venturesome. I mean that it was not worth while for you to risk being stricken down for the sake of saving some rubbish. Thieves are reckless when caught.”“I wasn’t thinking of saving the old iron, uncle; I wanted to see who it was, so as to be able to tell you. I didn’t think of being knocked down.”“Well, perhaps it was all a mistake, Tom,” said Uncle Richard, “for it was in the dark.”“Yes, uncle, but I feel sure that some one was helping himself to the pieces of iron.”“Look in the morning, my boy. Get to bed now, and never do such a thing as that again. Good-night.”Uncle Richard nodded to the boy kindly enough and left him, while Tom soon turned in to bed, to lie dreaming that the man came back to fetch more iron, and kept on carrying it off till it was all gone. Then he came back again, lifted the mill sails as if they were mere twigs, and took them away, and lastly he was in the act of picking up one of the millstones, and putting it on his head, when Tom awoke, and found that it was a bright sunshiny morning.It did not take him very long dressing, by which time it was nearly six, and he hurried down so as to get into the mill-yard before the carpenters came to work.Sure enough, when he reached the heap of iron in the left-hand corner of the place, it was plain to see that a number of small pieces had been taken away, for not only had the heap been disturbed by some being removed, but the surface looked black, and not rusty like the rest, showing that a new surface had been exposed.Satisfied that he was right, and there being no embargo placed upon his acting now, Tom went over the ground he had traversed the night before, and upon reaching the corner of the yard close to the lane, he came upon the spot where the bag must have been rested in getting it over; and as ill-luck would have it for the thief, the head of a great nail stuck out from between two bricks, a nail such as might have been used for the attaching of a clothes-line. This head had no doubt caught and torn the bag, for an iron screw nut lay on the top of the bricks.Tom seized it, leaped the wall, and got into the lane, to find another nut in the road just where his uncle’s field ended, and the narrow path went down between the two hedges.This was a means of tracking, and, eager now to trace the place where the thief must have turned off, Tom went on with his hunt, to find the spot easily enough just at the corner of a potato field, where the hedge was so thin that a person could easily pass through.“This must have been the place,” thought Tom. “Yes, so it is. Hurrah!” he cried, and pressing against the hedge the hawthorn gave way on each side, and he pounced upon a piece of iron lying on the soft soil between two rows of neatly earthed-up potatoes. Better still, there were the deeply-marked footprints of some one who wore heavy boots, running straight between the next two rows, and following this step by step, Tom found two more nuts before he reached, the hedge on the other side of the field, and passed out into the lane in front of the straggling patch of cottages, from one of which the blue wood smoke was rising, and a little way off an old bent woman was going toward the stream which ran through this part of the village. She was carrying a tin kettle, and evidently on her way to fill it for breakfast.Tom stopped in this lane undecided as to which way to go, for the thief might just as likely have passed to the left or right of these to another part of the village as have entered one of them.He looked for the footprints, but they were only visible in the freshly-hoed field. There was not a sign in the hard road, and feeling now that he was at fault, he walked slowly down the lane, and then returned along the path close in front of the cottages. Just as he reached the gate leading into the patch of garden belonging to the one with the open door, and from which came the crackling of burning wood, his attention was taken by the loud yawning of some one within, and a large screw lying upon the crossbar of the palings which separated this garden from the next.This screw was about four yards from the little gate, and it might have belonged to the occupants, but, as Tom darted in, certain that it was part of the plunder, he saw that it was muddy and wet, and just in front of him there was its imprint in the damp path, where it had evidently been trampled in and then picked out.Tom felt certain now; and just then the little gate swung to, giving a bang which brought the yawner to the doorway in the person of the big lad who had shouted after Uncle Richard on the afternoon of Tom’s first arrival, and next morning had been caught poaching. In fact, there was a ferrets’ cage under the window with a couple of the creatures thrusting out their little pink noses as if asking to be fed.The boys’ eyes met, and there was no sleepiness in the bigger one’s eyes as he caught sight of the screw in Tom’s hand.“Here!” he cried, rushing at him and trying to seize the piece of iron; “what are you doing here? That’s mine.”“No, it isn’t,” cried Tom sturdily. “How did it come here?”“What’s that to you? You give that here, or it’ll be the worse for you.”“Where did you get it?” cried Tom.“It’s no business of yours,” cried the lad savagely. “Give it up, will yer.”He seized Tom by the collar with both hands, and tried then to snatch away the screw, but Tom held on with his spirit rising; and as the struggle went on, in another minute he would have been striking out fiercely, had not there been an interruption in the arrival of the old woman with the newly-filled kettle.“Here, what’s this?” she croaked, in a peculiarly hoarse voice; and as Tom looked round he found himself face to face with a keen-eyed, swarthy, wrinkled old woman, whose untended grey hair hung in ragged locks about her cheeks, and whose hooked nose and prominent chin gave her quite the aspect of some old witch as fancied by an artist for a book.“Do you hear, Pete, who’s this?” she cried again, before the lad could answer. “What does he want?”“Says that old iron screw’s his, granny.”“What, that?” cried the old woman, making a snatch with her thin long-nailed finger at the piece of iron Tom held as far as he could from his adversary.She was more successful than the lad had been, for she obtained possession of it, and hurriedly thrust it into some receptacle hidden by the folds of her dirty tea-leaf-coloured dress.“Mine!” she cried, “mine! Who is he? Want to steal it?”“Yes. D’yer hear? Be off out of our place, or I’ll soon let you know.”“I shall not go,” cried Tom, who was now bubbling over with excitement. “You stole the iron from our place—from the mill last night.”The old woman turned upon him furiously.“The mill,” she cried; “who pulled the poor old mill down, and robbed poor people of their meal? No corn, no flour. I know who you are now. You belong to him yonder. I know you. Cursed all of you. I know him, with his wicked ways and sins and doings. Go away—go away!”She raised her hands threateningly, after setting down the kettle; and Tom shrank back in dismay from an adversary with whom he could not cope.“Not till he brings out the iron he came and stole,” cried Tom.“Stole?—who stole? What yer mean?” cried the lad. “Here, let me get at him, granny. He ain’t coming calling people stealers here, is he? It’s your bit o’ iron, ain’t it?”“Yes, mine—mine,” cried the old woman; “send him away—send him away before I put a look upon him as he’ll never lose.”“D’yer hear? you’d better be off!” cried the lad; and, completely beaten, Tom shrank away, the old woman following him up, with her lips moving rapidly, her fingers gesticulating, and a look in her fiercely wild eyes that was startling. He was ready in his excitement to renew his struggle with the lad, in spite of a disparity of years and size; but the old woman was too much, and he did not breathe freely till he was some distance away from the cottages, and on his way back to Heatherleigh.The first person he encountered was his uncle, who was down the garden ready to greet him with—“Morning, Tom, lad; I’m afraid you were right about the iron.”“Yes, uncle; and I found who stole it. I traced it to one of the cottages,” and he related his experience.“Ah!” he said; “so you’ve fallen foul of old Mother Warboys. You don’t believe in witches, do you, Tom?”“No, uncle, of course not; but she’s a horrible old woman.”“Yes, and the simple folk about here believe in her as something no canny, as the Scotch call it. So you think it was Master Pete Warboys, do you?”“Yes, uncle, I feel sure it was; and if you sent a policeman at once, I dare say he would find the bag of iron.”“Hardly likely, Tom; they would have got rid of it before he came there if I did send one, which I shall not do.”“Not send—for stealing?”“No, Tom,” said Uncle Richard quietly. “Police means magistrates, magistrates mean conviction and prison. Master Pete’s bad enough now.”“Yes, uncle; he poaches rabbits.”“I dare say,” said Uncle Richard; “and if I sent him to prison, I should, I fear, make him worse, and all for the sake of a few pieces of old iron. No, Tom, I think we’ll leave some one else to punish him. You and I are too busy to think of such things. We want to start upon our journey.”“Are we going out, uncle?” said Tom eagerly.“Yes, boy, as soon as the great glass is made: off and away through the mighty realms of space, to plunge our eyes into the depths of the heavens, and see the wonders waiting for us there.”Tom felt a little puzzled by Uncle Richard’s language, but he only said, “Yes, of course,” and did not quite understand why Master Pete Warboys, who seemed to be as objectionable a young cub as ever inhabited a pleasant country village, should be allowed to go unpunished.That day was spent in the mill, where the carpenters were working away steadily; and as the time sped on, the wooden dome-like roof was finished, the shutter worked well, and a little railed place was contrived so that men could go out to paint or repair, while at the same time the railings looked ornamental, and gave the place a finish. Then some rollers were added, to make the whole top glide round more easily; and the great post which ran up the centre of the mill was cut off level with the top chamber floor, and detached from the roof.“That will be capital for a stand,” said Uncle Richard; “and going right down to the ground as it does, gives great steadiness and freedom from vibration.”A few days more, and white-washing and a lining with matchboard had completely transformed the three floors of the mill, a liberal allowance of a dark stain and varnish giving the finishing touches, so that in what had been a remarkably short space of time the ramshackle old mill had become a very respectable-looking observatory, only waiting for the scientific apparatus, which had to be made.The next thing was the clearing out of the yard, where, under David’s superintendence, a couple of labouring men had a long task to cut up old wood and wheel it away, to be stacked in the coach-house and a shed. The great millstones were left—for ornament, Uncle Richard said; and as for the old iron, he said dryly to Tom, as they stood by the heap—“Seems a pity that so many of these pieces were too heavy to lift.”“Why; uncle? Two men can lift one.”“Yes,” said Uncle Richard; “but one boy can’t, or it would all have been cleared away for me.”Tom looked in the dry quaint face, which appeared serious, although the boy felt that his uncle was in one of his humorous moods.“There must be a strange fascination about stealing, Tom,” he continued, “for, you see, quite half of that old iron is gone.”“More,” said Tom.“Yes, more, my boy. Strange what trouble rogues will take for very little. Now, for instance, I should say that whatever might have been its intrinsic worth, whoever stole that old iron could not possibly altogether have sold it for more than five shillings, that is to say, about one shilling per week.”“Is it five weeks since the men began to pull down, uncle?”“Five weeks yesterday; and that amount could have been earned by an industrious boy in, say, four days, and by a labouring man in two. I’m afraid, Tom, that dishonesty does not pay.”David, who was close by, helping to load the remainder of the old iron into a cart, edged up to Tom as soon as Uncle Richard had gone into the mill.“Strikes me, Master Tom,” he said, “as I could put my hand on him as stole that there old iron.”“Who do you think it was, David?”“Not going to name no names, sir,” said David, screwing up his lips, and tightening a roll of blue serge apron about his waist. “Don’t do to slander your neighbours; but if you was to say it was old Mother Warboys’ hulking grandson, I wouldn’t be so rude as to contradick you; not as I say it is, mind you, but I’ve knowed that chap ever since he was a dirty little gipsy whelp of a thing, and I never yet knowed him take anything as was out of his reach.”Tom laughed.“But I just give him fair warning, Master Tom, that if he comes after my ribstons and Maria Louisas this year—”“Did he come last year?” said Tom eagerly.“Never you mind that, Master Tom. I don’t say as he did, and I don’t say as he didn’t; but I will say this, and swear to it: them Maria Louisas on the wall has got eyes in their heads, and stalks as does for tails, but I never see one yet as had legs.”“Nor I neither, David,” said Tom, laughing.“No, sir; but all the same they walked over the wall and out into the lane somehow. So did lots of the ribstons and my king pippins. But tchah! it’s no use to say nought to your uncle. If somebody was to come and steal his legs I don’t b’lieve he’d holler ‘Stop thief!’ but when it comes to my fruit, as I’m that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it’s no good to prune and train, and manoor things.”“Ah, it must be vexatious, David!”“Waxashus is nothing to it, sir. I tell you what it is, sir: it’s made me wicked, that it has. There’s them times when I’ve been going to church o’ Sundays, and seen that there Pete Warboys and two or three other boys a-hanging about a corner waiting till everybody’s inside to go and get into some mischief. I’ve gone to my seat along with the singers, sir, and you may believe me when I tell you, I’ve never heered a single word o’ the sarmon, but sat there seeing that chap after my pears and apples all the time.”“Then you do give Pete Warboys the credit of it, David?”“No, I don’t, sir. I won’t ’cuse nobody; but what I do say is this, that if ever I’m down the garden with a rake or hoe-handle in my hand, and Pete Warboys comes over the wall, I’ll hit him as hard as I can, and ask master afterwards whether I’ve done right.”“David,” said Tom eagerly, “how soon will the pears be ripe?”“Oh, not for long enough yet, sir; and the worst of it is, if you’re afraid of your pears and apples being stole, and picks ’em soon, they s’rivels up and has no taste in ’em.”“Then we must lie in wait for whoever it is, when the fruit is ripe, and catch them.”David shut both of his eyes tight, wrinkled his face up, and shook himself all over, then opened his eyes again, nodded, and whispered solemnly—“Master Tom, we just will.”Then he went off to the loading of the iron, saw the last load carted out, and was back ready, after shutting the gate, to take his master’s orders about turning the mill-yard into a shrubbery and garden.A week with plenty of help from the labourers completely transformed the place. Then plenty of big shrubs and conifers were taken up from the garden, with what David called good balls to their roots, and planted here and there, loads of gravel were brought in, the roller was brought into action, and a wide broad walk led with a curve to the mill-door; there was a broad border round the tower itself, and a walk outside that; and Tom and Uncle Richard stood looking at the work one evening in a very satisfied frame of mind.“There, Tom, now for tying up my money-bag. That’s all I mean to spend. Now you and I will have to do the rest.”The next day was devoted to furnishing the interior with the odds and ends of scientific apparatus. The small telescope was mounted in the top-floor, the new apparatus, boxes, bottles, and jars were placed on tables and shelves in the middle floor, and the two great glass discs were carefully carried into the stone-floored basement, where a cask was stood up on end, a hole made in the head, and barrowful after barrowful of the fine silver sand plentiful in amongst the pine-trees was wheeled up and poured in, like so much water, with a big funnel, till the cask was full.“What’s that for?” said Uncle Richard, in response to an inquiry from his nephew. “That, Tom, is for a work-bench, meant to be so solid that it will not move. Try if you can stir it.”Tom gave it a thrust, and shook his head.“I don’t think three men could push it over, uncle,” he said.“Two couldn’t, Tom. There, that will do. We mustn’t have any accident with our speculum. Now then, to begin. Ready? Tuck up your sleeves.”Tom obeyed, and helped his uncle to lift one of the glass discs on to the top of the cask, where it was easily fixed by screwing three little brick-shaped pieces of wood on to the head close against the sides of the glass.Uncle Richard paused after tightening the last screw, and stood looking at his nephew.“What a queer boy you are, Tom,” he said.“Am I, uncle?” said the lad, colouring.“To be sure you are. Most boys would be full of questions, and ask why that’s done.”“Oh,” cried Tom, who smiled as he felt relieved, “I’m just the same, uncle—as full of questions as any boy.”“But you don’t speak.”“No, uncle; it’s because I don’t want you to think I’m a trouble, but I do want to know horribly all the same.”“I’m glad of it, boy, because I don’t want what the Germans call a dummkopf to help me. I see; I must volunteer my information. To begin with then, that disc of glass is—”“For the speculum,” said Tom eagerly; “and you’re going to polish it.”“Wrong. That’s only for the tool. The other is for the speculum, and we are going to grind it upon the tool.”He turned to the other flat disc of ground-glass, where it lay upon a piece of folded blanket upon a bench under the window, and laid his head upon it.“Doesn’t look much, does it, Tom?” he said.“No, uncle.”“And I’m afraid that all we have to go through may seem rather uninteresting to you.”“Oh no, uncle; it will be very interesting to make a telescope.”“I hope you will feel it so, boy, for you do not stand where I do, so you must set your young imagination to work. For my part, do you know what I can see in that dull flat piece of glass?”Tom shook his head.“Some of the greatest wonders of creation, boy. I can look forward and see it finished, and bringing to our eyes the sun with its majestic spots and ruddy corona, fierce with blazing heat so great that it is beyond our comprehension; the cold, pale, dead, silver moon, with its hundreds of old ring-plains and craters, scored and seamed, and looking to be only a few hundred miles away instead of two hundred and forty thousand; Jupiter with its four moons—perhaps we shall see the fifth—its belts and great red spot as it whirls round in space; brilliant Venus, with her changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn, with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double, triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars—white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round. Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you find it dry?”“Dry, uncle! Oh!” panted Tom, with his eyes flashing with eagerness, “it sounds glorious.”“It is glorious, my boy; and you who have read yourArabian Nights, and stories of magicians and their doings, will have to own that our piece of dull glass will grow into a power that shall transcend infinitely anything the imagination of any storyteller ever invented. Now, what do you say? for I must not preach any more.”“Say, uncle!” cried Tom. “Let’s begin at once!”“I beg pardon, sir,” said a pleasant voice; “but would you mind having a bell made to ring right in here?”“No, Mrs Fidler,” said Uncle Richard; “we will lay down iron pipes underground to make a speaking-tube, so that you can call when you want me. What is it—lunch?”“Lunch, sir!” said Mrs Fidler; “dear me, no; the dinner’s waiting and getting cold.”“Bother the old dinner!” thought Tom.“Come, my lad, we must eat,” said Uncle Richard, with a smile. “We shall not finish the telescope to-day.”
It did not mean apples nor pears from the garden, for they were nearly as hard as wood, and it did not mean going out to carry on some game with a companion, for Tom knew no one there.
Uncle Richard was aware of this when he heard Tom stealing down the trellis, and peeped at him from a darkened window. Hence his stern question.
“Oh, uncle!” said Tom, in a subdued voice, “how you frightened me.”
“I’m glad of it, sir,” said Uncle Richard, holding the little match to the candle and increasing the illumination as Tom climbed in. “I meant to. Now, sir, if you please, explain.”
“Yes, uncle,” said Tom calmly, and making his uncle frown.
“The impudent young dog!” he said to himself; and then he stood nodding his head, and gradually growing more satisfied that he had after all been right in his estimate of his nephew, though the night’s business had rather shaken his faith.
“Then you didn’t make out who it was, Tom,” he said, when Tom had explained.
“No, uncle; it was very stupid of me, I suppose.”
“Very foolish to be guilty of such an escapade.”
“Foolish!” said Tom, growing more damped than before; “but he was stealing the ironwork.”
“Yes, evidently carrying it off; but it was old iron.”
“But it was just as bad to steal old iron as new, uncle,” said Tom.
“Ahem! yes, of course, my boy; but you must not be so venturesome. I mean that it was not worth while for you to risk being stricken down for the sake of saving some rubbish. Thieves are reckless when caught.”
“I wasn’t thinking of saving the old iron, uncle; I wanted to see who it was, so as to be able to tell you. I didn’t think of being knocked down.”
“Well, perhaps it was all a mistake, Tom,” said Uncle Richard, “for it was in the dark.”
“Yes, uncle, but I feel sure that some one was helping himself to the pieces of iron.”
“Look in the morning, my boy. Get to bed now, and never do such a thing as that again. Good-night.”
Uncle Richard nodded to the boy kindly enough and left him, while Tom soon turned in to bed, to lie dreaming that the man came back to fetch more iron, and kept on carrying it off till it was all gone. Then he came back again, lifted the mill sails as if they were mere twigs, and took them away, and lastly he was in the act of picking up one of the millstones, and putting it on his head, when Tom awoke, and found that it was a bright sunshiny morning.
It did not take him very long dressing, by which time it was nearly six, and he hurried down so as to get into the mill-yard before the carpenters came to work.
Sure enough, when he reached the heap of iron in the left-hand corner of the place, it was plain to see that a number of small pieces had been taken away, for not only had the heap been disturbed by some being removed, but the surface looked black, and not rusty like the rest, showing that a new surface had been exposed.
Satisfied that he was right, and there being no embargo placed upon his acting now, Tom went over the ground he had traversed the night before, and upon reaching the corner of the yard close to the lane, he came upon the spot where the bag must have been rested in getting it over; and as ill-luck would have it for the thief, the head of a great nail stuck out from between two bricks, a nail such as might have been used for the attaching of a clothes-line. This head had no doubt caught and torn the bag, for an iron screw nut lay on the top of the bricks.
Tom seized it, leaped the wall, and got into the lane, to find another nut in the road just where his uncle’s field ended, and the narrow path went down between the two hedges.
This was a means of tracking, and, eager now to trace the place where the thief must have turned off, Tom went on with his hunt, to find the spot easily enough just at the corner of a potato field, where the hedge was so thin that a person could easily pass through.
“This must have been the place,” thought Tom. “Yes, so it is. Hurrah!” he cried, and pressing against the hedge the hawthorn gave way on each side, and he pounced upon a piece of iron lying on the soft soil between two rows of neatly earthed-up potatoes. Better still, there were the deeply-marked footprints of some one who wore heavy boots, running straight between the next two rows, and following this step by step, Tom found two more nuts before he reached, the hedge on the other side of the field, and passed out into the lane in front of the straggling patch of cottages, from one of which the blue wood smoke was rising, and a little way off an old bent woman was going toward the stream which ran through this part of the village. She was carrying a tin kettle, and evidently on her way to fill it for breakfast.
Tom stopped in this lane undecided as to which way to go, for the thief might just as likely have passed to the left or right of these to another part of the village as have entered one of them.
He looked for the footprints, but they were only visible in the freshly-hoed field. There was not a sign in the hard road, and feeling now that he was at fault, he walked slowly down the lane, and then returned along the path close in front of the cottages. Just as he reached the gate leading into the patch of garden belonging to the one with the open door, and from which came the crackling of burning wood, his attention was taken by the loud yawning of some one within, and a large screw lying upon the crossbar of the palings which separated this garden from the next.
This screw was about four yards from the little gate, and it might have belonged to the occupants, but, as Tom darted in, certain that it was part of the plunder, he saw that it was muddy and wet, and just in front of him there was its imprint in the damp path, where it had evidently been trampled in and then picked out.
Tom felt certain now; and just then the little gate swung to, giving a bang which brought the yawner to the doorway in the person of the big lad who had shouted after Uncle Richard on the afternoon of Tom’s first arrival, and next morning had been caught poaching. In fact, there was a ferrets’ cage under the window with a couple of the creatures thrusting out their little pink noses as if asking to be fed.
The boys’ eyes met, and there was no sleepiness in the bigger one’s eyes as he caught sight of the screw in Tom’s hand.
“Here!” he cried, rushing at him and trying to seize the piece of iron; “what are you doing here? That’s mine.”
“No, it isn’t,” cried Tom sturdily. “How did it come here?”
“What’s that to you? You give that here, or it’ll be the worse for you.”
“Where did you get it?” cried Tom.
“It’s no business of yours,” cried the lad savagely. “Give it up, will yer.”
He seized Tom by the collar with both hands, and tried then to snatch away the screw, but Tom held on with his spirit rising; and as the struggle went on, in another minute he would have been striking out fiercely, had not there been an interruption in the arrival of the old woman with the newly-filled kettle.
“Here, what’s this?” she croaked, in a peculiarly hoarse voice; and as Tom looked round he found himself face to face with a keen-eyed, swarthy, wrinkled old woman, whose untended grey hair hung in ragged locks about her cheeks, and whose hooked nose and prominent chin gave her quite the aspect of some old witch as fancied by an artist for a book.
“Do you hear, Pete, who’s this?” she cried again, before the lad could answer. “What does he want?”
“Says that old iron screw’s his, granny.”
“What, that?” cried the old woman, making a snatch with her thin long-nailed finger at the piece of iron Tom held as far as he could from his adversary.
She was more successful than the lad had been, for she obtained possession of it, and hurriedly thrust it into some receptacle hidden by the folds of her dirty tea-leaf-coloured dress.
“Mine!” she cried, “mine! Who is he? Want to steal it?”
“Yes. D’yer hear? Be off out of our place, or I’ll soon let you know.”
“I shall not go,” cried Tom, who was now bubbling over with excitement. “You stole the iron from our place—from the mill last night.”
The old woman turned upon him furiously.
“The mill,” she cried; “who pulled the poor old mill down, and robbed poor people of their meal? No corn, no flour. I know who you are now. You belong to him yonder. I know you. Cursed all of you. I know him, with his wicked ways and sins and doings. Go away—go away!”
She raised her hands threateningly, after setting down the kettle; and Tom shrank back in dismay from an adversary with whom he could not cope.
“Not till he brings out the iron he came and stole,” cried Tom.
“Stole?—who stole? What yer mean?” cried the lad. “Here, let me get at him, granny. He ain’t coming calling people stealers here, is he? It’s your bit o’ iron, ain’t it?”
“Yes, mine—mine,” cried the old woman; “send him away—send him away before I put a look upon him as he’ll never lose.”
“D’yer hear? you’d better be off!” cried the lad; and, completely beaten, Tom shrank away, the old woman following him up, with her lips moving rapidly, her fingers gesticulating, and a look in her fiercely wild eyes that was startling. He was ready in his excitement to renew his struggle with the lad, in spite of a disparity of years and size; but the old woman was too much, and he did not breathe freely till he was some distance away from the cottages, and on his way back to Heatherleigh.
The first person he encountered was his uncle, who was down the garden ready to greet him with—
“Morning, Tom, lad; I’m afraid you were right about the iron.”
“Yes, uncle; and I found who stole it. I traced it to one of the cottages,” and he related his experience.
“Ah!” he said; “so you’ve fallen foul of old Mother Warboys. You don’t believe in witches, do you, Tom?”
“No, uncle, of course not; but she’s a horrible old woman.”
“Yes, and the simple folk about here believe in her as something no canny, as the Scotch call it. So you think it was Master Pete Warboys, do you?”
“Yes, uncle, I feel sure it was; and if you sent a policeman at once, I dare say he would find the bag of iron.”
“Hardly likely, Tom; they would have got rid of it before he came there if I did send one, which I shall not do.”
“Not send—for stealing?”
“No, Tom,” said Uncle Richard quietly. “Police means magistrates, magistrates mean conviction and prison. Master Pete’s bad enough now.”
“Yes, uncle; he poaches rabbits.”
“I dare say,” said Uncle Richard; “and if I sent him to prison, I should, I fear, make him worse, and all for the sake of a few pieces of old iron. No, Tom, I think we’ll leave some one else to punish him. You and I are too busy to think of such things. We want to start upon our journey.”
“Are we going out, uncle?” said Tom eagerly.
“Yes, boy, as soon as the great glass is made: off and away through the mighty realms of space, to plunge our eyes into the depths of the heavens, and see the wonders waiting for us there.”
Tom felt a little puzzled by Uncle Richard’s language, but he only said, “Yes, of course,” and did not quite understand why Master Pete Warboys, who seemed to be as objectionable a young cub as ever inhabited a pleasant country village, should be allowed to go unpunished.
That day was spent in the mill, where the carpenters were working away steadily; and as the time sped on, the wooden dome-like roof was finished, the shutter worked well, and a little railed place was contrived so that men could go out to paint or repair, while at the same time the railings looked ornamental, and gave the place a finish. Then some rollers were added, to make the whole top glide round more easily; and the great post which ran up the centre of the mill was cut off level with the top chamber floor, and detached from the roof.
“That will be capital for a stand,” said Uncle Richard; “and going right down to the ground as it does, gives great steadiness and freedom from vibration.”
A few days more, and white-washing and a lining with matchboard had completely transformed the three floors of the mill, a liberal allowance of a dark stain and varnish giving the finishing touches, so that in what had been a remarkably short space of time the ramshackle old mill had become a very respectable-looking observatory, only waiting for the scientific apparatus, which had to be made.
The next thing was the clearing out of the yard, where, under David’s superintendence, a couple of labouring men had a long task to cut up old wood and wheel it away, to be stacked in the coach-house and a shed. The great millstones were left—for ornament, Uncle Richard said; and as for the old iron, he said dryly to Tom, as they stood by the heap—
“Seems a pity that so many of these pieces were too heavy to lift.”
“Why; uncle? Two men can lift one.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Richard; “but one boy can’t, or it would all have been cleared away for me.”
Tom looked in the dry quaint face, which appeared serious, although the boy felt that his uncle was in one of his humorous moods.
“There must be a strange fascination about stealing, Tom,” he continued, “for, you see, quite half of that old iron is gone.”
“More,” said Tom.
“Yes, more, my boy. Strange what trouble rogues will take for very little. Now, for instance, I should say that whatever might have been its intrinsic worth, whoever stole that old iron could not possibly altogether have sold it for more than five shillings, that is to say, about one shilling per week.”
“Is it five weeks since the men began to pull down, uncle?”
“Five weeks yesterday; and that amount could have been earned by an industrious boy in, say, four days, and by a labouring man in two. I’m afraid, Tom, that dishonesty does not pay.”
David, who was close by, helping to load the remainder of the old iron into a cart, edged up to Tom as soon as Uncle Richard had gone into the mill.
“Strikes me, Master Tom,” he said, “as I could put my hand on him as stole that there old iron.”
“Who do you think it was, David?”
“Not going to name no names, sir,” said David, screwing up his lips, and tightening a roll of blue serge apron about his waist. “Don’t do to slander your neighbours; but if you was to say it was old Mother Warboys’ hulking grandson, I wouldn’t be so rude as to contradick you; not as I say it is, mind you, but I’ve knowed that chap ever since he was a dirty little gipsy whelp of a thing, and I never yet knowed him take anything as was out of his reach.”
Tom laughed.
“But I just give him fair warning, Master Tom, that if he comes after my ribstons and Maria Louisas this year—”
“Did he come last year?” said Tom eagerly.
“Never you mind that, Master Tom. I don’t say as he did, and I don’t say as he didn’t; but I will say this, and swear to it: them Maria Louisas on the wall has got eyes in their heads, and stalks as does for tails, but I never see one yet as had legs.”
“Nor I neither, David,” said Tom, laughing.
“No, sir; but all the same they walked over the wall and out into the lane somehow. So did lots of the ribstons and my king pippins. But tchah! it’s no use to say nought to your uncle. If somebody was to come and steal his legs I don’t b’lieve he’d holler ‘Stop thief!’ but when it comes to my fruit, as I’m that proud on it grieves me to see it picked, walking over the wall night after night, I feel sometimes as it’s no good to prune and train, and manoor things.”
“Ah, it must be vexatious, David!”
“Waxashus is nothing to it, sir. I tell you what it is, sir: it’s made me wicked, that it has. There’s them times when I’ve been going to church o’ Sundays, and seen that there Pete Warboys and two or three other boys a-hanging about a corner waiting till everybody’s inside to go and get into some mischief. I’ve gone to my seat along with the singers, sir, and you may believe me when I tell you, I’ve never heered a single word o’ the sarmon, but sat there seeing that chap after my pears and apples all the time.”
“Then you do give Pete Warboys the credit of it, David?”
“No, I don’t, sir. I won’t ’cuse nobody; but what I do say is this, that if ever I’m down the garden with a rake or hoe-handle in my hand, and Pete Warboys comes over the wall, I’ll hit him as hard as I can, and ask master afterwards whether I’ve done right.”
“David,” said Tom eagerly, “how soon will the pears be ripe?”
“Oh, not for long enough yet, sir; and the worst of it is, if you’re afraid of your pears and apples being stole, and picks ’em soon, they s’rivels up and has no taste in ’em.”
“Then we must lie in wait for whoever it is, when the fruit is ripe, and catch them.”
David shut both of his eyes tight, wrinkled his face up, and shook himself all over, then opened his eyes again, nodded, and whispered solemnly—
“Master Tom, we just will.”
Then he went off to the loading of the iron, saw the last load carted out, and was back ready, after shutting the gate, to take his master’s orders about turning the mill-yard into a shrubbery and garden.
A week with plenty of help from the labourers completely transformed the place. Then plenty of big shrubs and conifers were taken up from the garden, with what David called good balls to their roots, and planted here and there, loads of gravel were brought in, the roller was brought into action, and a wide broad walk led with a curve to the mill-door; there was a broad border round the tower itself, and a walk outside that; and Tom and Uncle Richard stood looking at the work one evening in a very satisfied frame of mind.
“There, Tom, now for tying up my money-bag. That’s all I mean to spend. Now you and I will have to do the rest.”
The next day was devoted to furnishing the interior with the odds and ends of scientific apparatus. The small telescope was mounted in the top-floor, the new apparatus, boxes, bottles, and jars were placed on tables and shelves in the middle floor, and the two great glass discs were carefully carried into the stone-floored basement, where a cask was stood up on end, a hole made in the head, and barrowful after barrowful of the fine silver sand plentiful in amongst the pine-trees was wheeled up and poured in, like so much water, with a big funnel, till the cask was full.
“What’s that for?” said Uncle Richard, in response to an inquiry from his nephew. “That, Tom, is for a work-bench, meant to be so solid that it will not move. Try if you can stir it.”
Tom gave it a thrust, and shook his head.
“I don’t think three men could push it over, uncle,” he said.
“Two couldn’t, Tom. There, that will do. We mustn’t have any accident with our speculum. Now then, to begin. Ready? Tuck up your sleeves.”
Tom obeyed, and helped his uncle to lift one of the glass discs on to the top of the cask, where it was easily fixed by screwing three little brick-shaped pieces of wood on to the head close against the sides of the glass.
Uncle Richard paused after tightening the last screw, and stood looking at his nephew.
“What a queer boy you are, Tom,” he said.
“Am I, uncle?” said the lad, colouring.
“To be sure you are. Most boys would be full of questions, and ask why that’s done.”
“Oh,” cried Tom, who smiled as he felt relieved, “I’m just the same, uncle—as full of questions as any boy.”
“But you don’t speak.”
“No, uncle; it’s because I don’t want you to think I’m a trouble, but I do want to know horribly all the same.”
“I’m glad of it, boy, because I don’t want what the Germans call a dummkopf to help me. I see; I must volunteer my information. To begin with then, that disc of glass is—”
“For the speculum,” said Tom eagerly; “and you’re going to polish it.”
“Wrong. That’s only for the tool. The other is for the speculum, and we are going to grind it upon the tool.”
He turned to the other flat disc of ground-glass, where it lay upon a piece of folded blanket upon a bench under the window, and laid his head upon it.
“Doesn’t look much, does it, Tom?” he said.
“No, uncle.”
“And I’m afraid that all we have to go through may seem rather uninteresting to you.”
“Oh no, uncle; it will be very interesting to make a telescope.”
“I hope you will feel it so, boy, for you do not stand where I do, so you must set your young imagination to work. For my part, do you know what I can see in that dull flat piece of glass?”
Tom shook his head.
“Some of the greatest wonders of creation, boy. I can look forward and see it finished, and bringing to our eyes the sun with its majestic spots and ruddy corona, fierce with blazing heat so great that it is beyond our comprehension; the cold, pale, dead, silver moon, with its hundreds of old ring-plains and craters, scored and seamed, and looking to be only a few hundred miles away instead of two hundred and forty thousand; Jupiter with its four moons—perhaps we shall see the fifth—its belts and great red spot as it whirls round in space; brilliant Venus, with her changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn, with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double, triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars—white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round. Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you find it dry?”
“Dry, uncle! Oh!” panted Tom, with his eyes flashing with eagerness, “it sounds glorious.”
“It is glorious, my boy; and you who have read yourArabian Nights, and stories of magicians and their doings, will have to own that our piece of dull glass will grow into a power that shall transcend infinitely anything the imagination of any storyteller ever invented. Now, what do you say? for I must not preach any more.”
“Say, uncle!” cried Tom. “Let’s begin at once!”
“I beg pardon, sir,” said a pleasant voice; “but would you mind having a bell made to ring right in here?”
“No, Mrs Fidler,” said Uncle Richard; “we will lay down iron pipes underground to make a speaking-tube, so that you can call when you want me. What is it—lunch?”
“Lunch, sir!” said Mrs Fidler; “dear me, no; the dinner’s waiting and getting cold.”
“Bother the old dinner!” thought Tom.
“Come, my lad, we must eat,” said Uncle Richard, with a smile. “We shall not finish the telescope to-day.”