The Vast Abyss. Fenn George Manville
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place is as good as if it had been built on purpose for an observatory. I shall be glad though when we get rid of the workmen, and all the litter and rubbish are cleared away.”
That afternoon a couple of carpenters began work, devoting themselves at first to the wooden dome-like roof, which they were to furnish from top to bottom with a narrow shutter, so formed that it could be opened to turn right over on to the roof, leaving a long slip open to the sky.
That night, after he had gone up to his bedroom, Tom threw open his window, to sit upon the ledge, reaching out so as to have a good look at the sky which spread above, one grand arch of darkest purple spangled with golden stars. To his right was the tower-like mill, and behind it almost the only constellation that he knew, to wit, Charles’s Wain, with every star distinct, even to the little one, which he had been told represented the boy driving the horses of the old northern waggon.
“How thick the stars are to-night,” he thought, as he traced the light clusters of the Milky Way, noting how it divided in one place into two. Then he tried to make out the Little Bear and failed, wondered which was the Dog Star, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, and ended by giving his ear a vicious rub.
“A fellow don’t seem to know anything,” he thought. “How stupid I must seem to Uncle Richard. But I mean to know before I’ve done. Hark!”
He listened attentively, for in the distance a nightingale was singing, and the sweet notes were answered from somewhere beyond, and again and again at greater distances still, the notes, though faint, sounding deliciously pure and sweet.
“Who would live in London?” he said to himself; and a curiously mingled feeling of pleasure and sadness came over him, as he dwelt upon his position now, and how happy life had suddenly become.
“And I thought of running away,” he said softly, as he looked down now at the dimly-seen shrubs about the lawn. “Uncle Richard doesn’t seem to think I’m such a fool. Wonder whether I can learn all about the stars.”
Just then he yawned, for it was past ten, and the house so quiet that he felt sure that his uncle had gone to bed.
“Yes, I’ll learn all about them and surprise him,” he said. “There are plenty of books in the study. Then I shall not seem so stupid when we begin. What’s that?”
He had put out his candle when he opened the casement to look at the stars, so that his room was all dark, and he was just about to close the window, and hurry off his clothes, when a faint clinking sound struck upon his ear.
The noise came from the mill-yard to his right, where he could dimly make out the outlines of the building against the northern sky; and it sounded as if some of the ironwork which had been taken down – bolts, nuts, bands, and rails – and piled against the wall had slipped a little, so as to make a couple of the pieces clink.
“That’s what it is,” thought Tom, and he reached out to draw in his casement window, when he heard the sound again, a little louder.
“Cat walking over the iron,” thought Tom; but the noise came again, only a faint sound, but plain enough in the stillness of the night.
All at once a thought came which sent the blood flushing up into the boy’s cheeks, and nailed him, as it were, to the window.
“There’s some one in the yard stealing the old iron.”
The lad’s heart began to beat heavily, and thoughts came fast. Who could it be? Some one who knew where it all was, and meant to sell it. Surely it couldn’t be David!
Tom leaned out, gazing in the direction of the sounds, which still continued, and he made out now that it was just as if somebody was hurriedly pulling bolts and nuts out of a heap, and putting them in a bag or a sack.
Hot with indignation, as soon as he had arrived at this point, against whoever it could be who was robbing his uncle, Tom half turned from the window to go and wake him.
No, he would not do that. It must be some one in the village, and if he could find out who, that would be enough, and he could tell his uncle in the morning.
Tom had only been a short time at Furzebrough, but it was long enough to make him know many of the people at sight, and, in spite of the darkness, he fancied that he would be able to recognise the marauder if he could get near enough.
He did not stop to think. There was a heavy trellis-work covered with roses and creepers all over his side of the house, and the sill of his window was not much over ten feet from the flower-beds below.
He had no cap up-stairs, and he was in his slippers, but this last was all the better, and with all a boy’s activity he climbed out of the window, got a good hold of the trellis, felt down with his feet for a place, and descended with the greatest ease, avoided the narrow flower border by a bit of a spring, and landed upon David’s carefully-kept grass.
Here for a moment or two he paused.
The gate would be locked at night, and it would be better to get out at the bottom of the garden.
Satisfied with this, he set off at a trot, the velvety grass deadening his steps. Then, getting over the iron hurdle, he passed through a bit of shrubbery, found a thick stick, and got over the palings into the lane.
Here he had to be more cautious, for he wanted to try and make out who was the thief without being seen, and perhaps getting a crack over the head, as he put it, with a piece of iron.
The lane would not do, and besides, the gate would be locked, and the wall awkward to climb.
Another idea suggested itself, and stopping at the end of the mill-yard, he passed into a field, and with his heart increasing its pulsations, partly from exertion, as much as from excitement, he hurried round on tiptoe to the back of the mill-yard, and cautiously raising himself up, peered over the top of the wall, and listened.
To his disappointment, he found that though he could look over the top of the wall, it was only at the mill – all below in the yard was invisible, but the place was all very still now. Not a sound fell upon his ear for some minutes, and then a very faint one, which sounded like a load being lifted from the top of the wall, but right away down by where he had entered the field.
Tom stole back, bending low the while, but saw nothing, nobody was carrying a burden, and he was getting to be in despair, when all at once there was the sound of a stifled sneeze, evidently from far along the lane.
That was enough. Tom was back in the lane directly, keeping close to the hedge, and following, he believed, some one who was making his way from the village out toward the open country.
At the end of a minute he was sure that some one was about thirty yards in front of him, and perfectly certain directly after that whoever it was had turned off to the right along a narrow path between two hedges which bounded the bottom of his uncle’s field.
The path led round to the outskirts of the village, where there were some scattered cottages beyond the church, and feeling sure that the thief – if it was a thief – was making for there, Tom followed silently, guided twice over by a faint sniff, and pausing now and then to listen for some movement which he heard, the load the marauder carried brushing slightly against the hedge.
Then all at once the sounds ceased, and though Tom went on and on, and stopped to listen again and again, he could hear nothing. He hurried on quickly now, but felt that nobody could be at hand, and hurried back, peering now in the darkness to try and make out where the object of his search had struck off from the narrow way.
But in the obscurity he could make out nothing, for he was very ignorant about this track, never having been all along it before; and at last, thoroughly discouraged, he went back, growing more and more annoyed at his ill-success, and wishing he had made a rush and seized the thief at once.
And now, feeling thoroughly tired, as well as damped in his ardour, Tom reached the paling, climbed over into the shrubbery, reached the lawn, over which he walked slowly toward the darkened house, where he paused, and reached over to grasp the stout trellis, and spare David’s flower-bed.
It was very easy, almost as much so as climbing a ladder, and in a minute he had reached first one arm and