"Pretty pair, 'pon my word!" said Uncle Richard, as Tom came blinking into the light just as the clock was striking ten. "Then you couldn't keep awake?"

"No, uncle. I suppose I must have been very tired to-night."

"The Vicar's plums last night; my pears to-night. Humph! It's time that young fruit pirate was caught."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

Tom thought the matter over for days as he worked at the speculum now approaching completion. He had met Pete Warboys twice, but the fellow looked innocency itself, staring hard and vacantly at him, who longed to charge him with the theft, but felt that he could not without better evidence.

Then a bright thought came as he was polishing away opposite his uncle, and using the finest emery.

"I know," he said to himself, and he waited impatiently to be at liberty, which was not until after tea.

"Going for a walk, Master Tom?" said David, whom he encountered in the lane.

"Yes; rather in a hurry now."

"Can't tell him yet, because I'm not sure," thought Tom; and he walked sharply away for the corner where he had left his uncle in the bath-chair, and all the memories of that day came back as the various familiar objects came in view.

"I wonder whether he's quite well again now," said the boy to himself; "but he can't have been so ill as he thought."

But his walk on that golden orange sunset evening had nothing whatever to do with his uncle, for, as soon as he reached the bend where the road began to slope, he struck off to the left in among the trees, trying hard to follow exactly the same track as that taken by Pete Warboys when he was pursued.

It was not easy, for the great lad had dodged about among the great fir-trees in quite a zigzag fashion. Still Tom followed the direction, with the scaly, pillar-like trunks looking golden-red in the horizontal rays of the sun, which cast their long shadows in wonderful array, till it seemed to the boy at last as if he were walking through a quivering golden mist barred with great strokes of purply black.

"I shan't get there before it begins to be dark," he thought, "for this can't last. Why, it's like a fiery furnace now burning on great iron bars." Then there was another change, for the dark-green rough fir-boughs began to be lit up overhead, and the forest looked brighter than ever.

A wood of fir-trees is a puzzling place, from the fact that in a mile or two, consequent upon their regular growth, you may find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of places exactly alike--the same-looking tall, red, scaly columns, the same distance apart, the same grey carpet of fir-needles, and the same grey rough-topped, mushroom-shaped fungi growing up and pushing the fir-needles aside to make room for them.

Then too the great natural temple, with its dark column-supported roof, has a way of looking different at morning, noon, and eve; and as different again according to the state of the weather, so that though you may be pretty familiar with the place, it is a difficult task to find your way for the second time.

It was so now with Tom Blount. There was a spot in the wood for which he had aimed, and it seemed to be the easiest thing possible to go straight there; but the trees prevented any such straight course, and after a little dodging in and out the mind refuses to bear all the changes of course and repeat them to the traveller, who gradually grows more and more confused, and if he does not hit upon the spot he seeks by accident, in all probability he has to give it up for what people call a bad job.

"Here it is at last," said Tom to himself, after following, as he thought, exactly the course he had taken when he chased Pete Warboys for throwing stones at the bath-chair, and coming upon a rugged portion of the fir-wood.

"Bother! I made so sure it was," he muttered, for the opening he sought beside a great fir-tree was not there, and rubbing one of his ears with vexation, he stood looking round again, and down long vistas between the straight tree-trunks.

But no, there was not a sign of the spot he wanted, and the farther he went the more confused he grew. It was still gloriously bright overhead, but the dark bars of shadow were nearly all gone, and it looked as if darkness were slowly rising like a transparent mist out of the earth; one minute it was up to his knees, and then creeping up and up till the tree-trunks looked as if they were plunged in a kind of flood, while their upper portions were glowing as if on fire.

"I'll have one more try," thought Tom, "and then give it up till to-morrow morning. That's the best time, when you've got the whole day before you, and not the night. Let's see, what did uncle say about my getting to know a lot about optics and astronomy? Of course--I remember: it was nice to be a boy, for he was in the morning of life, and all the long bright day of manhood before him in which to work; and the pleasant evening in which to think of that work well done, before the soft gentle night fell, bringing with it the great peaceful sleep.

How serious he looked when he said all that!"

These thoughts in the coming gloom of the autumn evening made Tom feel serious too. Then they pa.s.sed away as he had that other try, and another, and another, pretty well a dozen before he made a rush for what he rightly a.s.sumed to be the north-east, and finally reached the road pretty well tired out.

It was before the sun was far above the horizon the next morning that Tom went out of the garden gate, and by the time he reached the spot where he had turned into the wood, and gone many yards in amongst the trees, he found the appearance of the place almost precisely the same as he had seen it on the previous evening. There was the roof of the natural temple all aglow, the dark bars across the tall boughs, and the shadows stretching far away crossing each other in bewildering confusion. But everything was reversed, and instead of the shadows creeping upwards they stole down lower and lower, till the roof of boughs grew dark and the carpet of soft fir-needles began to glow.

Then too, as he went south, the bright light came from his left instead of his right.

"How beautiful!" he thought. "How stupid it is to lie in bed so long when everything is so soft and fresh and bright in the morning. But then bed is so jolly snug and comfortable just then, and it is so hard to get one's eyes open. It's such a pity," he mused; "bed isn't much when one gets in first, but grows more and more comfortable till it's time to get up. I wish one could turn it right round."

These thoughts pa.s.sed away, for there were squirrels about, and jays noisily resenting his visit, and shouting to each other in jay--"Here's a boy coming."

Then he caught sight of a magpie, after hearing its laughing call. A hawk flew out of a very tall pine in an opening, and strewn beneath there were feathers and bones suggestive of the hook-beaked creature's last meal.

But as he followed the track of the pursuit once more, he had that to take up his attention, till he felt sure that he must be close to the place he sought, but grew more puzzled than ever as he gazed right round him.

"It must be farther on," he muttered; and, starting once more, he stopped at the end of another fifty yards or so, to have a fresh look round down each vista of trees, which started from where he stood.

It was more open here, and in consequence a patch of bracken had run up to a goodly height, spreading its fronds toward the light, but there was nothing visible as Tom turned slowly upon his heels, till he was looking nearly straight back along the way he had come, and then, quick as thought, he dropped down amongst the bracken, and crept on hands and knees till, still sheltered by it, he could watch the object he had seen.

That object was Pete Warboys, who had suddenly risen up out of the earth, and stood yawning and stretching himself, ending by giving one of his shoulders a good rasp against a fir-tree.

"Why, he must have been sleeping there," thought Tom, "and I must have pa.s.sed close to his hole. What an old fox he is. Hullo! there's the dog."

For the big mongrel suddenly appeared, and sprang up so as to place its paws upon its master's breast, apparently as a morning greeting. But this was not received in a friendly way.

"Get out!" growled Pete, kicking the dog in the leg. There was a loud yelp, and Pete shook himself and began to slouch away.

Tom watched him till he had disappeared among the trees, and then went back over his track till he stood close to the spot whence the lad had appeared. Here Tom looked round, but nothing was visible till he had gone a few yards to his right, when, to his surprise, he came to the side of the opening down in which was the side hole running beneath the roots of the great fir.

Tom had another look back, and, seeing nothing, he leaped down on to the soft sand, felt in his pocket, and brought out a tin box of wax-matches.

Then, dropping upon his knees, he lit one, and holding it before him, crept under the roots and into a little cave like a low rugged tunnel scooped out of the sandy rock, and in one corner of which was a heap of little pine boughs, and an exceedingly dirty old ragged blanket.

By this time Tom's match went out, and he lit another, after carefully placing the burnt end of the first in his pocket.

This light gave him another view of the little hole, for it was quite small, but there was not much to see. There were the leaves and blanket, both still warm; there was a stick, and a peg driven into the side, on which hung a couple of wires; and some pine-tree roots bristled from the top and sides. That was all.

"No pears, not even a plum-stone," said Tom, in a disappointed tone, for he had pictured this hole from which he had seen Pete issue as a kind of robber's cave, in which he would find stored up quant.i.ties of stolen fruit, and perhaps other things that would prove to be of intense interest.

"Nothing--nothing at all," said Tom to himself, as the last match he had burned became extinct. "All this trouble for that, and perhaps it wasn't him after all. But how comic!" he said to himself after a pause.

"He comes here so as to be away from that dreadful old woman. No wonder."

He was in the act of placing his last extinct sc.r.a.p of match in his pocket, as he stood in a stooping position facing the mouth of the little cave, when he heard a faint rustling sound, and directly after something seemed to leap right in at the entrance, disturbing the pendulous fringe of exposed roots which hung down, and crouching in the dim light close to Tom's feet.

"Rabbit!" he said to himself.

But the next moment he saw that it was not alive, for it lay there in a peculiar distorted fashion; and as his eyes grew more used to the gloom, he saw that there was a wire about the poor animal cutting it nearly in two, and a portion of a strong wooden peg protruded from beneath.

"I begin to see now," muttered Tom. "I dare say I should find the place somewhere about where he cooks his rabbits, unless he sells them."

Tom wanted to get out now. The poaching was nothing to him, he thought, and he seemed to have been wrong about the fruit, so he was ready to hurry away, but something within him made him resent the idea of being seen prying there; and it was evident that Pete had been out looking at his wires, and had just brought this rabbit home.

"Perhaps he has gone now," thought Tom; but he did not stir, waiting till he thought all was clear. Then at the end of a quarter of an hour he crept out into the open hole, raised his head cautiously, and got his eyes above the edge, when, to his disgust, he saw that Pete was approaching hurriedly, swinging another rabbit by the legs.

Tom shot back quickly enough into Pete's lurking-place, and turned to face him if the fellow came in. He did not think he was afraid of Pete, but all the same he did not feel disposed to have a tussle before breakfast. Besides, his leg was rather stiff and painful from the blows David had given to him.

But he had little time for thinking. All at once the rushing sound began again, accompanied by a shuffling and a hoa.r.s.e "Get out," followed by the sound of a blow, and directly after by a sharp yelp.