"What's the matter, Tom?" said Uncle Richard one day, as they were busy
at work over the telescope, and Tom was scratching his head.
"There's nothing the matter, uncle, only I'm a bit puzzled."
"What about?"
"Over this great glass. It's going to be so different to the old one."
"Of course; that is a refractor, and this is going to be a reflector."
"Yes, uncle, but it seems so queer. The refractor is a tube made so
that you can look through it, but the reflector will be, if you are
right, so that you can't look through it, because instead of being at
the end, the hole will be in the side. Is that correct?"
"Quite right, and you are quite wrong, Tom, for you do not understand
the first simple truth in connection with a telescope."
"I suppose not, uncle," replied the lad, with a sigh. "I am very
stupid."
"No, you are not, sir, only about as ignorant as most people are about
glasses. I have explained the matter to you, but you have not taken it
in."
"I suppose not, uncle," said Tom, wrinkling his brow.
"Then understand it now, once for all. It is very simple if you will
try and grasp it. Now look here: what do you do with an ordinary
telescope or opera-glass, single or double? Hold it up to your eyes, do
you not?"
"Yes, uncle."
"And then?"
"Look through it at something distant, and it seems to draw it near."
"You do what?"
"Look through it, uncle."
"Nothing of the kind, sir, you do not."
Tom looked puzzled. What did his uncle mean? He had, he thought,
looked through a pair of field-glasses scores of times at home in the
old days.
"I make you stare, my lad, but I am glad to see it, for it shows me how
right I am, and that you do think as everybody else does who has not
studied optics, that you look through a glass at an object."
Tom stared harder, and once more the old idea came to him, and he asked
himself whether there were times when his uncle did not quite understand
what he was saying.
"But you do, uncle," he cried at last. Then he qualified this
declaration by saying, "Don't you?"
"No, my boy, once for all you do not; and if you take up any telescope,
and remove the eye-piece before looking along the tube, you will see
that your eyes will not penetrate the glass at the end. Then if you try
the eye-piece alone, you will find that you cannot even look through
that. How much less then will you be able to look through both at
once."
"But it seems so strange, uncle. You have a big magnifying-glass in a
tube, and don't look through it? Then what do you do?"
"Certainly not look through it, my boy."
"But the bigger the glasses are the more they magnify--the moon, say."
"Yes, Tom; and the more light they gather."
"Well, then, why do you say, uncle, that you don't look through the
glass?"
"Because it is a fact that I want you to understand," said Uncle
Richard, smiling. "The big glass, or in our case the reflecting
speculum, forms a tiny image of the object at which it is pointed, close
to where we look in, within an inch or so of our eye."
"A tiny image, uncle?"
"Well, picture, then."
"But you say tiny! It looks big enough when we put our eye to the
little round hole."
"To be sure it does. But what do you look through?"
"The eye-piece."
"Well, what is the eye-piece?"
"A little glass or two--lenses."
"These glasses or lenses form a microscope, Tom; and through them you
look at the tiny image formed in the focus of the great lens or the
speculum, whichever you use."
"But I thought microscopes were only used to magnify things invisible to
the eye."
"Well, Jupiter's moons, Saturn's ring, and the markings on Mars are all
invisible to the naked eye. So are the craters in the moon; so we use
the big speculum to gather the light, and then look at the spot where
all the rays of light come to their narrowest point, with an eye-piece
which really is a microscope."
"But I don't understand now," said Tom uneasily. "I wish I was not
so--"
"If you say stupid again, Tom, I shall quarrel with you," said Uncle
Richard sternly. "I never think any boy is stupid who tries to master a
subject. One boy's brain may be slower at acquiring knowledge than
another, but that does not prove him to be stupid. What is it you don't
follow?"
"About our telescope. If the light from the big speculum is all
reflected nearly to a point, ought we not to look down at it?"
"No; because then our heads would be in the way, and would cast a shadow
upon it. To avoid that, I put the little mirror in the middle, near the
top, just at the right slant, so that the rays are turned off at right
angles into the eye-piece, and so we are able to look without
interrupting the light."
"Oh, I see now," said Tom thoughtfully. "It's very clear."
"Yes," said Uncle Richard. "Sir Isaac Newton, who contrived that way,
was a clever man. Now then, let's get on with our work."
"I suppose then now we're ready?" said Tom.
"Far from it," replied his uncle; "are you going to hold up a
twelve-foot tube to your eye, and direct it to a star? The next thing
is of course to mount it upon trunnions, and arrange that it shall turn
upon an axis, so that we can sweep in any direction."
The longest tasks come to an end. By the help of the village carpenter,
a strong rough stand was connected with the beam formerly used to bear
the sails of the mill, the trunnions were fitted to a strong iron ring
by the smith, and one evening the great telescope was hung in its place,
and in spite of its weight, moved at the slightest touch, its centre of
gravity having been so carefully calculated that it swung up and down
and revolved with the greatest ease.
"There, Tom," said Uncle Richard; "now I think we can sweep the heavens
in every direction, and when once we have tried, the mirrors, so as to
set them and the eye-piece exact, we can get to work."
Tom looked at his uncle in dismay.
"Why, you don't mean to say, uncle, that there is more to do after
working at it like this?"
"Yes, a great deal. We have to get the glasses to work with one another
to the most perfect correctness. That task may take us for days."
It did, and though Tom finished off every evening worn-out and
discouraged, he recommenced in the morning fresh and eager as ever,
helping to alter the position of the big speculum, then of the small
plane mirror. Then the eye-piece had to be unscrewed and replaced again
and again, till at last Uncle Richard declared that he could do no more.
"Then now we may begin?" cried Tom.
"We might," said his uncle, "for the moon will be just right to-night in
the first quarter; but judging from appearances, we shall have a cloudy
wet evening."
And so it proved, the moon not even showing where she was in hiding
behind the clouds.
"I do call it too bad," cried Tom, "now, too, that we are quite ready."
"Patience, lad, patience. A star-gazer must have plenty of that. Do
you know that a great astronomer once said that there were only about a
hundred really good hours for observation in every year."
"What?" cried Tom. "He meant in a night. I mean a week. No, I don't:
how absurd! In a month."
"No, Tom," said his uncle quietly, "in a year. Of course there would be
plenty more fair hours, but for really good ones no doubt his
calculation was pretty correct. So you will have to wait."
The Vicar called again one day, and hearing from Mrs Fidler that her
master was over at the observatory, he came to the yard gate and thumped
with his stick.
"What's that?" said Uncle Richard, who was down upon his knees carefully
adjusting a lens.
"Tramp, I should think," said Tom, who was steadying the great tube of
the telescope.
"Then he must tramp," said Uncle Richard. "I can't be interrupted now.
What numbers of these people do come here!"
"Mrs Fidler says it's because you give so much to them, uncle, and they
tell one another."
"Mrs Fidler's an old impostor," said Uncle Richard--"there, I think
that is exactly in the axis--she gives more away to them than I do."
"Bread-and-cheese, uncle; but she says you always give money."
"Well, boy, it isn't Mrs Fidler's money. That must be exact."
_Bang, hang, hang_ at the gate, and then--
"Anybody at home?" came faintly.
"Why, it's Mr Maxted, uncle. May I go and speak to him?"
"Yes, you can let go now. Tell him to come up."
Tom left the telescope and went to the shutter, which he threw open, and
stepped out into the little gallery.
"Good-morning. Your uncle there?"
"Yes, sir. He says you are to come up."
"Come up?" said the Vicar, laughing. "I don't know. It was bad enough
on the ground-floor. I don't want to be shot out of the top. Is it
safe?"
"There's nothing to mind now, sir," cried Tom. "The door is open."
"Well, I think I'll risk it this time," said the Vicar, entering the
yard, while Tom stepped back into the observatory.
"What, is he pretending to be frightened?" said Uncle Richard, with a
grim smile.
"Yes, uncle; he wanted to know if it was safe."
By this time the Vicar's steps were heard upon the lower stairs, and Tom
lifted the trap-door, holding it open for their visitor, who, after the
usual greetings, sat down to admire the telescope.
"Hah! that begins to look business-like," he said. "We shall be soon
having a look I suppose. Finished?"
"Very nearly," said Uncle Richard. "It has been a long job."
"I wanted your advice about one of my difficulties," said the Vicar,
puckering up his face.
"Shall I go down and see to the glass for the new frames, uncle?"
"Oh, no, no, no," cried the Vicar. "I've nothing to say that you need
not hear. I've just come from old Mother Warboys' cottage."
"And how is the old witch?"
"Ah, poor, prejudiced old soul, much the same as ever. I'm afraid she
is beyond alteration, but her grandson was there."
"Humph! And he's beyond mending too," said Uncle Richard gravely.
"Ah, there's the rub," said the Vicar, crossing his legs, and clasping
his hands about the upper knee. "They are both of human flesh, but one
is young and green, the other old and dry. I can be satisfied that I am
helpless over the old woman, but I'm very uneasy about that boy."
"Halloo! He was not seriously hurt over the explosion?"
"Not a bit."
"But he thinks it was my doing to spite him, uncle, and he says he will
serve me out."
"A young dog!" cried the Vicar. "I'll talk to him again."
"Labour in vain," said Uncle Richard. "As you know, I tried over and
over again to make something of him, but he would not stay. He hates
work. Wild as one of the rabbits he poaches."
"But we tame rabbits, Brandon, and I don't like seeing that boy
gradually go from bad to worse."
"It's the gipsy blood in him, I'm afraid," said Uncle Richard.
"Yes, and I don't know what to do with him."
"A good washing wouldn't be amiss."
"No," sighed the Vicar; "but he hates soap and water as much as he does
work. What am I to do? The boy is on my conscience. He makes me feel
as if all my teaching is vain, and I see him gradually developing into a
man who, if he does what the boy has done, must certainly pass half his
time in prison."
"Yes, it is a problem," said Uncle Richard. "Boys are problems.
Troublesome young cubs, aren't they, Tom?"
"Horrible, uncle," said Tom dryly.
"But to begin with: a boy is a boy," said the Vicar firmly, "and he has
naturally the seeds of good and evil in him."
"Pete Warboys had all the good left out of him," said Uncle Richard.
"No, I deny that," said the Vicar decisively.
"Well, I've seen him about for some time now, and I've never seen any of
the good, Maxted."
"Ah, but I have," said the Vicar, while Tom busied himself doing nothing
to the telescope, and began to take a good deal of interest in the
discussion about his enemy. "You will grant, I suppose, that Mother
Warboys is about as unamiable, cantankerous an old woman as ever
breathed?"
"Most willingly," said Uncle Richard, smiling. "She leads that boy
quite a dog's life. I've seen her thump him quite savagely with her
stick."
"And he deserved it," said Uncle Richard.
"No doubt; but instead of showing resentment, the boy is devoted to her;
and I know for a fact he is always bringing her rabbits and hares to
cook for herself."
"Poached."
"Yes, I'm afraid so; but I'm firmly convinced that he would fight to the
death for the poor old creature."
"Nature," said Uncle Richard; "she is his grandmother."
"Then there is some good in him," cried the Vicar; "and what I want is
to make it grow. The only question is, how it is to be done."
"Don't you think I have got problems enough over my telescope, without
your setting me fresh ones? Get some recruiting serjeant to carry him
off for raw material to turn into a soldier."
"Hopeless," said the Vicar. "Too loose and shambling. As it is,
metaphorically, every one throws stones at the lad; no one ever gives
him a kind word."
"No, but who can? I'm afraid you must give him up, Maxted, as a
hopeless case."
"I will not," said the Vicar firmly. "It's my duty to try and make a
decent member of society of the lad if I can, and I'm sorry you cannot
give me a hint."
"So am I," said Uncle Richard seriously, "but I look upon him as
hopeless. I tried again and again, till I felt that the only thing was
to chain him up, and beat and starve him into submission, and it seemed
to me that it would be better to let him run wild than attempt to do
that."
"Yes; I agree with you," said the Vicar. "Tom. Come, Tom, you're a
boy. Boys understand one another better than men understand them.
Can't you help me?"
"I wish I could, sir," said Tom, shaking his head, "but I'm afraid I
can't."
Then the conversation turned to astronomical matters, and soon after the
Vicar left.