but quite opaque.

"Bravo! quite sound," cried Uncle Richard. "Now the other."

This proved also to have borne the journey well, and Tom looked from the
two great discs to his uncle.

"Well," said the latter; "do you see what these are for?"

"To grind flour much finer?"

"To grind grandmothers, boy! Nonsense! Not to grind, but to be ground.
Out of those Tom, you and I have to make a speculum of tremendous
power."

"A looking-glass, sir?" said Tom, feeling rather depressed at his
uncle's notion. For what could a sensible man want with looking-glasses
made round, and weighing about a hundredweight each?

"Yes, a looking-glass, boy, for the sun and moon, and Jupiter, Venus,
Mars, Saturn, and the rest to see their faces in, or for us to see them.
I can't afford to give five or six hundred pounds for a telescope, so
you and I will make a monster."

"Telescope!" cried Tom, as scales seemed to fall from before his eyes.
"Oh, I see!"

"Well, didn't you see before?"

"No, uncle, I couldn't make it out. Then that's what you want the
windmill for, to put the telescope in, with the top to turn round any
way?"

"To be sure; it will make a splendid observatory, will it not?"

"Glorious, uncle!" cried the boy, whose appearance underwent a complete
change, and instead of looking heavy and dull, his eyes sparkled with
animation as he exclaimed eagerly, "How big will the telescope be?"

"A little wider than the speculum--about eighteen inches across."

"And how long?"

"Fifteen feet, boy."

"Yes," cried Tom, excitedly. "And when are you going to begin, uncle?"

"Now, my boy. At once."

CHAPTER NINE.

"Uncle James was always calling me a fool," said Tom the next morning;
"and I must be, or I shouldn't have thought poor Uncle Richard half
crazy. What a lot of stuff I did get into my head."

He was dressing with his window wide open; the sun was shining warmly,
though it was only about six o'clock, and a delicious scent floated in
from the garden and the pine-woods beyond.

"Grinding corn and turning miller!" he said, and he burst into a merry
fit of laughter, and then stopped short with a hair-brush in his hand,
staring at his face in the glass, for he hardly knew it; he looked so
different to the sad, depressed lad whose countenance had gazed wearily
at him from the mirror when he rose of a morning in London.

"It must be the fresh country air," he said to himself; but all the same
he felt that it