Part 51 (1/2)
”Pretty pair, 'poninto the light just as the clock was striking ten ”Then you couldn't keep awake?”
”No, uncle I suppose I ht”
”The Vicar's plu fruit pirate was caught”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Toht the matter over for days as he worked at the speculu completion He had met Pete Warboys twice, but the fellow looked innocency itself, staring hard and vacantly at hie him with the theft, but felt that he could not without better evidence
Then a bright thought ca the finest emery
”I know,” he said to himself, and he waited impatiently to be at liberty, which was not until after tea
”Going for a walk, Master Tom?” said David, whom he encountered in the lane
”Yes; rather in a hurry now”
”Can't tell hiht Tom; and he walked sharply away for the corner where he had left his uncle in the bath-chair, and all the memories of that day came back as the various familiar objects caain now,” said the boy to hiht”
But his walk on that golden orange sunset evening had nothing whatever to do with his uncle, for, as soon as he reached the bend where the road began to slope, he struck off to the left in a hard to follow exactly the same track as that taken by Pete Warboys when he was pursued
It was not easy, for the great lad had dodged about a fashi+on Still Tom followed the direction, with the scaly, pillar-like trunks looking golden-red in the horizontal rays of the sun, which cast their long shadows in wonderful array, till it seeh a quivering golden reat strokes of purply black
”I shan't get there before it begins to be dark,” he thought, ”for this can't last Why, it's like a fiery furnace now burning on great iron bars” Then there was another change, for the dark-green rough fir-boughs began to be lit up overhead, and the forest looked brighter than ever
A wood of fir-trees is a puzzling place, froular growth, you may find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of places exactly alike--the sa tall, red, scaly colurey carpet of fir-needles, and the sa up and pushi+ng the fir-needles aside to reat natural temple, with its dark colu, noon, and eve; and as different again according to the state of the weather, so that though you may be pretty familiar with the place, it is a difficult task to find your way for the second time
It was so noith Tom Blount There was a spot in the wood for which he had aio straight there; but the trees prevented any such straight course, and after a little dodging in and out the es of course and repeat therows more and more confused, and if he does not hit upon the spot he seeks by accident, in all probability he has to give it up for what people call a bad job
”Here it is at last,” said Toht, exactly the course he had taken when he chased Pete Warboys for throwing stones at the bath-chair, and coed portion of the fir-wood
”Bother! I ht beside a great fir-tree was not there, and rubbing one of his ears with vexation, he stood looking round again, and down long vistas between the straight tree-trunks
But no, there was not a sign of the spot he wanted, and the farther he went the ht overhead, but the dark bars of shadoere nearly all gone, and it looked as if darkness were slowly rising like a transparent mist out of the earth; oneup and up till the tree-trunks looked as if they were plunged in a kind of flood, while their upper portions were glowing as if on fire
”I'll have one ive it up till to-ot the whole day before you, and not the night Let's see, what did uncle say aboutto know a lot about optics and astronomy? Of course--I re of life, and all the long bright day ofin which to think of that ell done, before the soft gentle night fell, bringing with it the great peaceful sleep
How serious he looked when he said all that!”
These thoughts in the co made Tom feel serious too Then they passed away as he had that other try, and another, and another, pretty well a dozen before he htly assumed to be the north-east, and finally reached the road pretty well tired out