ad."

"Then hooray! let's get to work. I want to see the moon with the new
plane mirror."

"Moon, bah! You're lunatic enough as it is, boy."

Tom gave his uncle a comical look, and then shyly held out his hand,
which was gripped in a clasp which made him wince.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN.

There was a heavy post one morning at breakfast, and as Mrs Fidler
glanced at the letters, she screwed up her face and turned her eyes upon
Tom, to shake her head as much as to say, "What work, what work!"

For to write a letter was a terrible effort to Mrs Fidler. She could
write a beautifully clear hand, as the names of the contents of her
jampots bore witness, but, as she confided to Tom, it was "such a job to
find the next word to set down."

One of the letters was so big and legal-looking in its broad blue
envelope, whose ragged edges told that it was lined with linen, that it
took Tom's eye at once; but Uncle Richard merely slit it open, peered
inside, and laid it beside his plate till the meal was at an end.

"I'm going up into the laboratory, Tom," he said then, and left the
room.

"That means he'd like me to go too," thought Tom, and in a minute or two
he followed, and caught sight of Pete at the end of the lane watching
him, with his dog at his heels, but only to turn off and walk away.

"Does that mean mischief?" thought Tom, as he went into the mill, and he
shook his head as he felt that Pete was a hopeless case.

To his surprise, on entering the laboratory, where Uncle Richard was
seated before the bureau with the great letter before him, he was
saluted with--

"I see there's your _protege_ Pete Warboys banging about again. He is
always watching this place, or waiting for you to go and play with him."

"You mean fight with him, uncle," said Tom dryly.

"Well, that does seem more in your way. Mr Maxted says you're winning
him over, but I doubt it."

"Yes, uncle, so do I," said Tom, smiling.

"I feel in doubt," continued Uncle Richard, "whether I ought not to have
tried to prove whether it was really he who helped to break in here.
But there: I only want to be left in peace, and a month's imprisonment
would do him harm, and bring out matters I want forgotten. Ever seen
these before?"

He drew some legal-looking documents from the big envelope and held them
out.

"The other papers that were stolen from that drawer, uncle?"

"Yes," said Uncle Richard, looking very stern as he took them back and
th