The Vast Abyss Part 71

"Going to walk part of the way with me, Tom?" said Uncle Richard.

"I'm going to walk all the way with you, uncle, and carry your bag,"

said Tom; and ten minutes later they were on the road, chatting about the telescope, and the next things to be done, so that the long walk to the station was made to seem short. Then the train came steaming in, and Uncle Richard stepped into his compartment.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like me to come, uncle, and tell him I forgive him again?" whispered Tom, as he handed in the little black bag.

"Certain. I'll give your message. Good-bye."

The train glided away, and Tom started back for home with his mind busy for a few minutes over the scene at Mornington Crescent; and then thoughts flew on to the mill and into the future, when perhaps some far greater telescope would be mounted, and nights occupied searching the heavens.

Then Tom's thoughts came back to earth, and Pete Warboys' hole under the great pine-tree, and he was still busy over that, and the great gipsy-like boy's habits,--poaching, probably stealing, and making himself a nuisance to everybody,--when he caught sight of the lad himself peering into a patch of coppice evidently watching something, that something proving to be the dog, which soon after leaped out into the road.

Tom's footsteps had been silenced by the soft green turf which margined the way, so that he was close up to the lad before he was noticed, and then Pete gave a bound and shot into the coppice, followed by his dog; but once more the dog turned back to give him a friendly bark.

"After no good, or he wouldn't have rushed away like that," thought Tom, as he went on, reached the cottage feeling very little the worse for his long morning's walk, and meaning to go up and busy himself in the laboratory; but to his surprise Mrs Fidler stopped him.

"Don't go away, Master Tom; it's close to one o'clock, and lunch will be ready. We will have regular dinner at seven, when your uncle comes back."

"If he does come to-night," said Tom.

"Oh, he will, my dear, if he possibly can, you may depend upon it."

The housekeeper was right, for soon after half-past six the station fly brought Uncle Richard back, tired, but looking brighter than when he started.

"How is he?" said Tom anxiously.

"Better, much better. Your aunt says a change came over him soon after we had gone, my boy, and the doctor thinks that he will come round now."

Tom looked very hard in his uncle's eyes, and Uncle Richard looked very hard in his, but neither of them spoke. They each thought the same thing though, and that was, that the doctor had said he had something upon his mind. That something was no longer there, and its removal had achieved what no medical man could have done, and so quickly that it seemed to be like a miracle.

A week pa.s.sed, and two answers to letters of inquiry came down to Heatherleigh, both saying that Uncle James was improving fast.

Another week, and only one letter came, with the same report.

The next week a short acknowledgment came from Sam, to say that his father was nearly well, and had gone down to Bournemouth for a change.

"I think, Tom, we may as well finish the telescope," said Uncle Richard dryly. "Let's set to work at once."

That same day Mrs Fidler, who had heard the news, seized an opportunity to deliver her opinions to Tom.

"It's just as I thought, sir," she said, "he was never really bad. It was all nerves and fidgetting about himself. He thought he was in a very bad state, and kept on making himself worse and worse, till he believed that he was going to die. It was nothing but nerves."

"It was something else," thought Tom; and what that something was he did not confide to the housekeeper.

"I'm glad he has got well again," he said to himself; "but I hope neither he nor Cousin Sam will come down here."

CHAPTER FORTY.

Time went on at its customary pace, and Uncle Richard had business in London again, where he was detained for some time.

At last there came a letter saying that he would not be back yet, but that he hoped Tom would complete a perfect plane mirror before his return, as he still thought they might do better, and get a truer image of the faint stars; so, forgetting all about Pete Warboys and his dog, Tom worked away as busily as if his uncle were at his elbow.

Then came another letter delaying the return; and in a postscript Uncle Richard wrote that he had called at Gray's Inn, and seen Sam, who said that his father was now nearly well.

"I shall be very, very glad when Uncle Richard gets back again," said Tom that night when he went to his bedroom, and then he began thinking about Pete. He got no further with him, but whenever he saw the dog, the animal always barked and wagged his tail.

"Dog's easier than boy," thought Tom. "Well, I can't help it; I tried to be friends, and I fancied he meant to be now; but I suppose he can't forgive me for the beating. Still, he doesn't shout after me now. How I do long to get on again with telescope work!"

The thought of this made him go to the window, pull up the blind, and throw the cas.e.m.e.nt wide.

He listened for a few moments as he gazed over the dark garden, and then laughed softly, for there was no likelihood, he thought, of any one coming after the apples; then kneeling down so that he could rest his arms upon the window-sill, and gaze out at the intensely black sky, which was now ablaze with stars shining out with wondrous clearness.

Constellation after constellation glittered above his head, with many a great star which he had now learned to know. There was Vega brilliant in the extreme. There too was Altair. The bull's-eye shone out of a deep golden hue; and below it, and more to the south, he made out Sirius glittering in its diamond l.u.s.tre.

"That's Jupiter too," said Tom to himself; and as his eyes swept on, he could see Venus low-down in the south-west, just pa.s.sing out of sight.

Gazing on, with his eyes sweeping along the west, he pa.s.sed Cygnus, with its great triangle, mighty Arcturus, and--

"What's that?"

Tom's question to himself was put not concerning a bright star or planet, but apropos of a noise which came from the direction of the mill.

He listened intently, with his heart beginning to throb, for there was a faint noise as of a step on gravel, and then a faint whispering.

Tom's heart ceased throbbing for a few moments, and then went on again in a way which felt suffocating, as he felt convinced that there was some one in the mill-yard.

He listened for a minute, and then went softly down-stairs to get the keys of the observatory, and go out. But as he took them from the nail in the little hall, he felt that if he opened the door, the shooting of the bolts would alarm Mrs Fidler and the maids, so he stole back to his room, closed the door, listened again at his window, and became sure that some one was in the mill-yard.

"It's Pete Warboys," he said to himself as he listened. "What mischief is he after now?"

It was too dark to make out anything with his eyes; but his ears maintained that something was going on, and a sudden chill of horror and dismay ran through Tom.

"He's going to smash the new speculum out of spite for the thrashing he got," muttered Tom; and nerved now by his indignant excitement, he let himself down from the window, and began to cross the garden without a sound, thinking as he went of the position.

"He couldn't get in at the door," he said, "without a strong crow-bar, and the windows are now all strongly fastened. Perhaps after all it's a mistake."

But all the same there was a feeling troubling Tom which made him determined to thoroughly make sure that no midnight marauder was about, bent upon destroying the piece of optical work which had been made with so much care.

He crept out silently, and across the lane, raised the key to open the yard gate, but replaced it in his pocket, walked a few yards, and, with the intention of not alarming the visitor, softly began to scale the wall, and did the very thing he wished to avoid, for as he pa.s.sed over the wall on one side of the mill, a dark figure pa.s.sed over it on the other side, with the difference that as Tom went in the figure went out, and stood peeping over.

Stooping low Tom crept up to the doorway and found it fast, tried one window, the one that had been before opened, and found it quite right.

Then going round to the back, he found the other window was in the same condition.

"Nothing wrong," he said to himself, as he went on silently round the mill, looking upwards at the first storey windows, and then he came to a sudden stoppage, having struck against something in his way, and pretty well invisible in the darkness.

Then Tom's heart began to beat again heavily, for his hands, which flew up, were resting upon one side of a long, slight, fruit-gathering ladder--one of those which sprawl out widely at the foot, and run up very narrow at the top, a form which makes them safe from tilting sidewise, and so balanced that they are easy to carry about from place to place.