must be something more, and he hastened to finish
dressing and go down, so as to have a good look round before breakfast
punctually at eight.

"Seems like coming out for a holiday, or being at home again," he
thought, as he went down-stairs softly, wondering whether he could
easily get out, but to find that the front door was wide open, and hear
the servants busy in the kitchen; while, as he stepped out on to the
lawn, he suddenly heard the musical sound of a scythe being sharpened,
and the next minute he was alongside of David, who had just begun to
sweep the keen implement round and lay the daisies low.

"Mornin', sir, mornin'. Going to be reg'lar hot day.--Eh? Want to get
up into the pine-woods. Best go straight to the bottom of the garden,
and out into the field, and then strike up to your left."

Tom hurried through the bright grounds, followed the directions, and in
a few minutes he was climbing a slope of rough common-land, here velvety
short turf full of wild thyme, which exhaled its pungent odour as his
feet crushed its dewy flowers, there tufted with an exceedingly
fine-growing, soft kind of furze, beyond which were clumps of the
greater, with its orange and yellow blooms, and rough patches of
pale-bloomed ling and brilliant yellow broom.

Beyond this wide strip the closely-growing fir-trees began, forming a
dense, dark-green wood.

It was for this that he was aiming; but as he reached the edge, he
turned to stand in the bright sunshine looking down at the village.

There was the square-towered, ivy-covered church, with its clock-face
glistening, and the hands pointing to twenty minutes past six. Beyond
it, what seemed to be an extensive garden beside the churchyard, and the
ivy-covered gables of a house that he immediately concluded was the
Vicarage. Other attractive cottage-like houses were dotted about. Then
he caught sight of the green, with its smaller places. Another more
pretentious place or two, and as his eyes swept round, he reached, close
at hand, his uncle's home--his home now, with the windmill towering
above it just on the top of the ridge.

"What nonsense!" he said half aloud; and then he burst into a merry
laugh, which ceased as he heard what sounded like a mocking echo, and a
long-tailed black and white bird flew out of a fir-tree, with the sun
glistening upon its burnished green and purple tail feathers. "Why it's
a magpie!" he cried, and another flew out to follow the first.