Tom gave proof of his readiness a few days later, when the broken windows had been replaced, fresh solutions made, and the village had again calmed down to its regular natural state of repose; for, upon his uncle proposing that they should proceed at once to silver the big speculum, he eagerly went off to the workshop to get all ready for his uncle’s coming.

Short as the distance was though, he did not get away without encountering Pete, who hurried up to the wall to shout over at him —

“I know. Yer did shoot at me, but I shan’t forget it, so look out.”

Then hearing some one coming from the cottage, he ducked down like a wild animal seeking concealment, and hurried away.

Then the whole process was gone through to the smallest minutiae, and only an hour after the silvered face of the mirror was deluged with rain-water, and uncle and nephew gazed in triumph at their work, for there was no sign of greyish-drab powder about the mirror, and it was so bright that polishing seemed unnecessary.

The next day it was polished, till by a side light it looked black, while in face it was a brilliant looking-glass ready to reflect the faintest stars; and after being put away securely, the great tube was set about, and in due time this was lightly and strongly made of long laths hooped together. A shallow tray was contrived deep enough to hold the speculum, and fitted with screws, so that it could be secured to one end. Next followed the fitting of a properly-constructed eye-piece from a London optician, contrived so that it looked at right angles into a small reflector, which also had to be carefully fixed in the axis of the great speculum.

Chapter Thirty Two

“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.

Chapter Thirty Three

That conversation took root in Tom’s mind. He found himself thinking a good deal about Pete Warboys and his devotion to his hideous old grandmother; but it was hard work to believe that he had any of the good in him that the Vicar talked about.

“Wonder whether he really has,” Tom said to himself. “He might have.”

The idea began to grow, and it spread.

“What would they say if I tried to alter him, and got him to turn into a decent chap?”

He laughed at his own conceit directly after.

“He’d laugh at me too,” thought Tom; and then something else took his attention. But the idea was there, and was always cropping up. He found himself talking to David about the lad one day when he was down the garden, and David left off digging potatoes, took a big kidney off one of the prongs of the potato fork, upon which it was impaled, split it in two, and began thoughtfully to polish the tool with the piece he retained.

“Do I think as you might make a decent chap out of Pete Warboys, Master Tom, by being kind to him?”

“Yes.”

“Do I think as you could make a silk puss out of a sow’s ear, Master Tom; and then cut this here yellow bit o’ tater into sovereigns and put in it? No, sir, I don’t. Pete’s a bad ’un, and you can’t make a good ’un out of him.”

“Not if he was properly taught?”

“Tchah! you couldn’t teach a thing like him. It’d all run through him like water through a sieve.”

“But he has never been taught better.”

“More was I, sir, but I don’t go poaching, and stealing apples and eggs, and ducks and chickens. Why, he makes that wicked old woman his grandam fat with the things he steals and takes to her.”

“Well, that shows there’s some good in him,” cried Tom, basing himself upon the Vicar’s speech.

“Master Tom,” cried David, digging his fork down into the earth as if to impale fierce, evil thoughts with its tines, “I’m surperrised at you. Good! What, to go stealing an’ portching to feed up a wicked old woman, who spends all her time trying to curse. That’s a shocking sentiment, sir, and one that arn’t becoming. It arn’t good, and there arn’t no good in Pete Warboys, and never will be. He’s a bad stock, and if you was to take him and plant him in good soil, and then work him with a scion took off a good tree, and put on some graftin’ wax to keep out all the wet and cold, do you think he’d ever come to be a decent fruit tree? Because if you do, you’re wrong. He never could, and never would, come to anything better than a bad old cankering crab sort o’ thing. No, my lad, it would just be waste of time, and nothing else.”

Still Tom did not feel at all convinced, but said no more.

David did though. It was pleasant to the back standing there, with one foot resting upon the great five-pronged fork; and as he stood with his fingers on the handle, he kept his left arm across his loins, and gave Tom a cunning leer.

“It’s all right, sir; taters won’t hurt. Tatering’s a thing you ought to take your time over. The longer they lie out here without the sun on them, the harder the skins will be, and the better they’ll keep.”

Tom stopped talking to David for some time longer, but his mind was not bent upon the vegetable kingdom as represented by the tuber commonly known as a “tater,” but upon that portion of the animal kingdom familiar to him as Pete Warboys.

Now it so happened that a couple of days later, Uncle Richard was going out on business in the nearest town, leaving Tom to amuse himself as he pleased.

“What shall I do, uncle?” said Tom. “Is there anything to grind?”

“No; you are not out enough in the open air. Go and get blackberries, or mushrooms, or something to take you for a long walk. I shall be home to tea.”

Tom had been indoors so much, that at first he felt unwilling to go; but that feeling soon wore off, and he started for a long jaunt out through the firs, to the wild common-lands, where Nature revelled undisturbed, and he knew that between blackberries and mushrooms he was pretty sure of getting something to bring back in the basket Mrs Fidler supplied.

And so it proved. As soon as he was well through the fir-wood, where the closely-growing reddish fir-trunks brought to mind Pete’s hiding-place, and consequently Pete himself, he found the broken ground rich with brambles clustering over the furze-bushes, and hanging down in the sandy hollows – hot, sunny spots, where the black fruit, rarely gathered, hung in bunches, so that the basket soon began to grow heavy, and a division had to be made with bracken fronds to keep them from being mixed up with the mushrooms he gathered from time to time – not big, flat, dark, brown-gilled fungi, such as grow in moist spots and rich old pastures, but delicate, plump little buttons, which he found here and there dotted about the soft velvety bits of sheep-cropped pasture hidden among the clumps of furze.

Then there were other objects of interest: rabbits darted here and there, skurrying into their sandy holes; he caught sight of a weasel, which peered at him for a moment, and then glided away like a short fur-clothed viper. Further on he came upon an olive-green, regularly-marked snake, which seemed in no hurry to escape; another slightly-formed reptile, nearly equal in thickness all along, and looking as if made of oxidised silver, being far more active in its movements to gain sanctuary under a furze bush. Soon after, while reaching out his hand to get at a cluster of blackberries, he saw beneath him in an open sunny patch, where all was yellow sand, a curled-up grey serpent, not three feet from his extended hand. It was thick and short, the tail being joined on to the body without the graduation seen in the others, while the creature’s neck looked thin and small behind the flat, spade-shaped head.

“Asleep or awake?” Tom asked himself, as the reptile lay perfectly motionless, with its curiously-marked eyes seeming dull, and as if formed of the same material as the scales.

The lad drew his hand back, for there was something repellent about the little object, and he knew at once that this was a dangerous little viper.

His first instinct was to strike at it, but he had no stick; and he stood perfectly still examining it, and comparing its shape and markings with what he could recall of his readings respecting the adder.

There was no doubt about it. The little reptile was an adder, sunning itself in its warm home; and that it was not asleep Tom soon saw, for the curious tongue was rapidly protruded several times, flickering, as it were, outside the horny mouth, which seemed to be provided with an opening in front expressly for the tongue to pass through, while the jaws remained closed.

“Wish I’d a stick,” thought the boy, as the viper now slowly raised its head; a couple of coils were in motion, and for the moment it seemed about to glide away, but the head sank again, and once more the little creature lay perfectly still.

“They’re dangerous things, and the bite is very painful,” thought Tom; but he did not stir to get a stick to kill the reptile, for he was interested in its peculiar form, and the dark, velvety markings along its body, which glistened in the sun.

And there he stood, peering over into the little opening, in profound unconsciousness that he was being silently stalked, till, just as he had made up his mind to go to the nearest fir-tree and cut a stick, in the hope of finding the adder still there on his return, there was a sharp snuffling sound.

Tom started round, to find Pete’s ill-looking dog close at hand, but ready to spring away over the bushes as if expecting a blow.

Tom’s next glance showed him the disturbed viper, with its head raised, eyes glittering as if filled with fire, and its body all in motion. Then it was gone; but another pair of eyes were gazing into his, for Pete Warboys slowly raised himself from where he had crawled to the other side of the furze clump.