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
