The Weathercock

Our sixteen-year-old hero. He is living with his uncle, who is a doctor in a small Lincolnshire village. He is friendly, after a fashion, with three boys who are living in the Rector's house, where they are being educated. Our hero, Vane Lee, is also a bit of a naturalist, as is the author of this book. But some of his inventions have a way of going wrong, as for example when he decides to make the defective church clock work. He takes it all to pieces, cleans all the parts up, and puts it all together again--with the exception of two vital wheels. In the middle of the night the clock's bell begins to strike without cease--the signal in the village for a fire. Everybody turns out and rushes about with fire hoses looking for the fire, and it takes a while before they find out that there never was a fire at all. But one day Vane is set upon by two gipsy boys, and beaten nearly to death.