Tom turned sharply to the window, and caught sight of a five-sailed windmill some five miles away, on a long wooded ridge.
“See it?”
“Yes, uncle; I just caught sight of it.”
“That’s right; and in five minutes, when we are out of the cutting, you can see Heatherleigh in the opening between the two fir-woods.”
“That’s your house, uncle?”
“Yes, my lad—that’s my house, where I carry on all my diabolical schemes, and perform my incantations, as old Mother Warboys says. You didn’t know what a wicked uncle you had.”
“No, sir,” said Tom, smiling.
“Oh, I’m a dreadful wretch; and you did not know either, that within five-and-thirty miles of London as the crow flies, there is as much ignorance and superstition as there was a couple of hundred years or so ago, when they burnt people for being witches and wizards, and the like. There, now look; you can just see Heatherleigh there. No; too late—it’s gone.”
Tom felt puzzled. One minute he was drawn strongly towards his uncle, the next he felt uneasy, for there was something peculiar about him. Then he grew more puzzled as to whether the eccentricity was real or assumed. But he soon had something else to think of, for five minutes after a run through a wild bit of Surrey, that looked gloriously attractive with its sandy cuttings, commons, and fir-trees, to a boy who had been shut up closely for months in London, his uncle suddenly cried, “Here we are!” and rose to get his umbrella and overcoat out of the rack.
“Let’s see, Tom,” he said; “six packages in the van, haven’t we? Mind that nothing is left behind.”