to be leaned up
against the wall.

"Hah!" said Uncle Richard, "at the end of a week," as he went up to the
top-floor of the mill with his nephew.

"Is it only a week, uncle?" said Tom. "Why, it seems to me as if I had
been here for a month."

"So long and tedious, boy?"

"Oh no, uncle," said Tom confusedly. "I meant I seem to have been here
so long, and yet the time has gone like lightning."

"Then you can't have been very miserable, my boy?"

"Miserable!" cried Tom.

That was all; and Uncle Richard turned the conversation by pointing to
the roof.

"There," he said, "that used to swing round easily enough with the
weight of those huge sails, which looked so little upon the mill, but so
big when they are down. It ought to move easily now, boy."

Tom tried, and found that the whole of the wooden top glided round upon
its pivot with the greatest ease.

"Yes, that's all very well," said his uncle, "but it will have to be
disconnected from the mill-post. I shall want that to bear the new
glass."

"That?" said Tom, gazing at the huge beam which went down through the
floor right to the basement of the mill.

"Yes, boy; that will make a grandly steady stand when wedged tight. To
a great extent this 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 g