softly down-stairs to get the
keys of the observatory, and go out. But as he took them from the nail
in the little hall, he felt that if he opened the door, the shooting of
the bolts would alarm Mrs Fidler and the maids, so he stole back to his
room, closed the door, listened again at his window, and became sure
that some one was in the mill-yard.

"It's Pete Warboys," he said to himself as he listened. "What mischief
is he after now?"

It was too dark to make out anything with his eyes; but his ears
maintained that something was going on, and a sudden chill of horror and
dismay ran through Tom.

"He's going to smash the new speculum out of spite for the thrashing he
got," muttered Tom; and nerved now by his indignant excitement, he let
himself down from the window, and began to cross the garden without a
sound, thinking as he went of the position.

"He couldn't get in at the door," he said, "without a strong crow-bar,
and the windows are now all strongly fastened. Perhaps after all it's a
mistake."

But all the same there was a feeling troubling Tom which made him
determined to thoroughly make sure that no midnight marauder was about,
bent upon destroying the piece of optical work which had been made with
so much care.

He crept out silently, and across the lane, raised the key to open the
yard gate, but replaced it in his pocket, walked a few yards, and, with
the intention of not alarming the visitor, softly began to scale the
wall, and did the very thing he wished to avoid, for as he passed over
the wall on one side of the mill, a dark figure passed over it on the
other side, with the difference that as Tom went in the figure went out,
and stood peeping over.

Stooping low Tom crept up to the doorway and found it fast, tried one
window, the one that had been before opened, and found it quite right.
Then going round to the back, he found the other window was in the same
condition.

"Nothing wrong," he said to himself, as he went on silently round the
mill, looking upwards at the first storey windows, and then he came to a
sudden stoppage, having struck against something in his way, and pretty
well invisible in the darkness.

Then Tom's heart began to beat again heavily, for his hands, which flew
up, were resting upon one side of a long, slight, fruit-gathering
ladder--one of those which sprawl out widely at the foot, and run up
very narrow at the top, a form which makes them safe from tilting
sidewise