Richard, looking at his watch.

"But it must have stopped. I don't think it has moved lately."

"The clock is going all right, Tom, but not so fast as your desires.
There, try a little patience; and don't stop after ten. If the
plunderer is not here by that time he will not come to-night--if he
comes at all."

"Very well, uncle," said Tom, and after another glance at the clock,
which still did not seem to move, he settled down with his head resting
upon his fists, to study the giraffe, of which there was a large
engraving, with its hide looking like a piece of the map of the moon,
the spots being remarkably similar to the craters and ring-plains upon
the moon's surface, while the giraffe itself, with its long sprawling
legs, would put him in mind of Pete Warboys. Then he read how it had
been designed by nature for its peculiar life in the desert, and so that
it could easily reach up and crop the leaves of trees from fifteen to
twenty feet above the ground; but it did not, as he pictured it in his
mind, seem to be picking leaves, but Marie Louise pears, while David was
creeping up behind with his elastic hazel stick, and--

_Ting_.

Half-past eight by the dining-room clock, and Tom sprang up.

"Going, my boy?"

"Yes, uncle, David will be waiting."

Uncle Richard nodded, and taking his cap and the hazel stick he had
brought in, the boy went out silently, to find that it was a very soft
dark night--so dark, in fact, that as soon as he had stepped on to the
lawn he walked into one of the great bushes of laurustinus, and backed
out hurriedly to reconsider which was the way. Then he stepped gently
forward over the soft damp grass of the lawn, with his eyes now growing
more accustomed to the darkness.

Directly after there was a low whistle heard.

"Where are you, David?"

"Here, sir. Come down between the raspberries."

"Where are they, David? All right, I see now," whispered Tom, and he
stepped as far as he could across the flower-bed, which ran down beside
the kitchen-garden, and the next minute felt the gardener's hand
stretched out to take his.

"Got your stick, sir?"

"Yes; all right. He hasn't come then yet."

"Not yet, sir. Here you are; now you can kneel down alongside o' me.
Mustn't be no more talking."

Tom knelt on the soft horse-cloth, feeling his knees indent the soil
beneath; and then with his head below the tops of the black-currant
bushes, whose leaves gave out their peculiar medic