t the mill."

"Steam mill, uncle?"

"Oh no, nor yet water. It's a regular old-fashioned flour-mill with
five sails. How shall you like that business?"

Tom looked harder at his uncle.

"Well, boy, do I seem a little queer? People down at Furzebrough say I
am."

"No, sir," said Tom, colouring; "but all this does sound a little
strange. Do you really mean that you have a windmill?"

"Yes, Tom, now. My very own, my boy. It was about that I came up
yesterday--to pay the rest of the purchase-money, and get the deeds.
Now we can set to work and do what we like."

Tom tried hard, but he could not help looking wonderingly at his uncle,
of whom he had previously hardly seen anything. He knew that he had
been in India till about a year before, and that his mother had once
spoken of him as being eccentric. Now it appeared that he was to learn
what this eccentricity meant.

"Did you learn any chemistry when you were at school, Tom?" said his
uncle, after a pause.

"Very little, uncle. There were some lectures and experiments."

"All useful, boy. You know something about physics, of course?"

"Physics, uncle?" faltered Tom, as he began to think what an
empty-headed fellow he was.

"Yes, physics; not physic--salts and senna, rhubarb and magnesia, and
that sort of thing; but natural science, heat and light, and the wonders
of optics."

Tom shook his head.

"Very little, uncle."

"Ah, well, you'll soon pick them up if you are interested, and not quite
such a fool as your uncle made out. Do you know, Tom, that windmill has
made me think that I never could have been a lawyer."

Tom was silent. Things seemed to be getting worse.

"Four times have I had to come up to town and see my lawyer, who had to
see the seller's lawyer over and over again--the vendor I ought to have
said. Now I suppose you wouldn't have thought that I was a vendee,
would you?"

"Oh yes, I know that," said Sam. "You would be if you bought an
estate."

"Come, then, you do know something, my lad. But it has been a tiresome
business, with its investigation of titles and rights of usance, and
court copyhold fines, and--Bother the business, it has taken up no end
of time. But there, it's all over, and you and I can go and make the
dust fly and set the millstones spinning as much as we like. Thumpers
they are, Tom, three feet in diameter. I wish to goodness they had been
discs of glass instead of stone."

"Do you, uncle?" said T