ses and villages to be seen from the commanding height.

"Isn't there a splendid view?" he said.

"Bosh! I've been at the top of Saint Paul's. Not a bad place to smoke
a cigarette."

He lit one with a great deal of nourish, leaned over the rail, and began
puffing little clouds of smoke into the air; but all the same he did not
seem to enjoy it, and at the end of a few minutes allowed the little
roll of tobacco to go out.

"What time do you dine here?" he said; "seven?"

Tom laughed.

"Two o'clock," he said.

"I said dinner, not lunch, stupid."

"I know what you said," replied Tom, rather sharply, but he changed his
tone directly afterward. "We don't have lunch, but early dinner, and
tea at six."

"How horrible!" said Sam. "Here, let's go down."

He stepped back into the observatory, looking sharply at everything
while Tom secured the shutter, and then they went down into the
laboratory, which evidently took the visitor's attention.

"Wouldn't be a bad place with a good Turkey carpet and some easy-chairs.
I should make it my smoking-room if I lived down here. I mean if I was
transported down here."

"You don't think much of the place," said Tom good-humouredly; "but
you'd like it if you lived here. There's capital fishing in the river,
and the fir-woods swarm with rabbits. Walnut-wood," he added, as his
cousin examined the bureau. "Uncle says the brass-work is very old and
curious, nearly two hundred years, he thinks."

"Got a gun?" said Sam, turning sharply away.

"No."

"Can't you get one? We might go and shoot a few rabbits."

"I don't know whether we could even if there was a gun. They are
preserved about here like the hares and pheasants."

"There are no hares about here?"

"Oh, yes. I've seen several and made them run."

"But no pheasants?"

"Plenty, and as tame as can be. I saw one the other day in our field."

"Here, let's go for a walk," said Sam, the real boyish nature coming out
at last. "I rather like sport, and shall buy a double gun shortly."

They went down; the place was duly locked up, Tom having refrained from
making any allusions to the speculum, and the work on hand, feeling as
he did that his cousin would look upon it with a contemptuous sneer.
Then the keys were returned to the house, and as the two lads stood in
the hall they could hear the invalid talking very loudly to Uncle
Richard, evidently upon some subject in which he took interest, and Sam
laughed.