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 your _Arabian 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."