the
millstones, and putting it on his head, when Tom awoke, and found that
it was a bright sunshiny morning.

It did not take him very long dressing, by which time it was nearly six,
and he hurried down so as to get into the mill-yard before the
carpenters came to work.

Sure enough, when he reached the heap of iron in the left-hand corner of
the place, it was plain to see that a number of small pieces had been
taken away, for not only had the heap been disturbed by some being
removed, but the surface looked black, and not rusty like the rest,
showing that a new surface had been exposed.

Satisfied that he was right, and there being no embargo placed upon his
acting now, Tom went over the ground he had traversed the night before,
and upon reaching the corner of the yard close to the lane, he came upon
the spot where the bag must have been rested in getting it over; and as
ill-luck would have it for the thief, the head of a great nail stuck out
from between two bricks, a nail such as might have been used for the
attaching of a clothes-line. This head had no doubt caught and torn the
bag, for an iron screw nut lay on the top of the bricks.

Tom seized it, leaped the wall, and got into the lane, to find another
nut in the road just where his uncle's field ended, and the narrow path
went down between the two hedges.

This was a means of tracking, and, eager now to trace the place where
the thief must have turned off, Tom went on with his hunt, to find the
spot easily enough just at the corner of a potato field, where the hedge
was so thin that a person could easily pass through.

"This must have been the place," thought Tom. "Yes, so it is. Hurrah!"
he cried, and pressing against the hedge the hawthorn gave way on each
side, and he pounced upon a piece of iron lying on the soft soil between
two rows of neatly earthed-up potatoes. Better still, there were the
deeply-marked footprints of some one who wore heavy boots, running
straight between the next two rows, and following this step by step, Tom
found two more nuts before he reached, the hedge on the other side of
the field, and passed out into the lane in front of the straggling patch
of cottages, from one of which the blue wood smoke was rising, and a
little way off an old bent woman was going toward the stream which ran
through this part of the village. She was carrying a tin kettle, and
evidently on her way to fill it for breakfast.

Tom stopped in this la