dener oracularly.

"Get out, you topsy-turvy old humbug," cried Tom wrathfully. "Think I
don't know you?" and he ran on, and caught up to his uncle as he was
passing through the yard gate.

He did not speak, but went on toward the observatory door.

"Shall I open it, uncle?" said Tom eagerly.

"No," was the abrupt reply; and Tom shrank within himself like a snail
touched with the end of a walking-stick on a damp night. Then the key
was rattled into the lock, the door was thrown open, and Uncle Richard,
looking very grave and stern, stalked into the workshop straight to the
table, glanced at the speculum, and pushed the pieces apart, frowning
angrily.

"I'd sooner have given a hundred pounds than that should have happened,"
he said.

"Yes, uncle; it's horrid," said Tom.

"How did you do it?" said Uncle Richard, turning sharply, and fixing him
with his keen eyes, as he had often fixed some deceitful, shivering
coolie, who had looked up to him in the past as master and judge in one.

"I didn't do it," cried Tom passionately. "Everybody misjudges me, and
thinks it was I."

"Then how did it happen?"

Tom told him briefly.

"Was that window left open last night?"

"I don't think so, uncle; I'm almost sure I fastened it."

"Almost!" said Uncle Richard, in the same cold, hard way in which he had
spoken before. "Then, sir, you accuse David of having meddled and
broken it?"

"No, I don't, uncle," said Tom, speaking quite firmly now. "I told you
everything."

"Fetch David."

Tom hurried out, and had no difficulty in finding the gardener, who had
hardly stirred from where he had left him.

"I knowed the master'd want me. Did you own up, sir, like a man?"

"No, I didn't," said Tom angrily. "Come to uncle directly."

"Then--"

David said no more, but gave his old straw hat a smart rap on the crown,
and walked sharply on before Tom, unrolling and shaking out his blue
apron, prior to rolling it up again very tightly about his waist. He
strode along so rapidly that Tom had hard work to keep up with him; and
in spite of his efforts, David strode into the workshop first, pulled
off his hat, dashed it down on the floor, and struck one hand loudly
with his fist.

"What I say is this here, sir. I've sarved you faithful ever since you
come back from the burning Ingies--"

"Silence!"

"And made the garden what it is--"

"Silence!" said Uncle Richard, more sternly.

"And if Master Tom's been telling y