The Vast Abyss

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.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.