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 of _hortus 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's _very_ small 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?"