“That can’t be the spot too?” said Venus.
“No,” said Wegg, “he’s getting cold.”
“It strikes me,” whispered Venus, “that he wants to find out whether anyone has been groping about there.”
“Hush!” returned Wegg, “he’s getting colder and colder.—Now he’s freezing!”
This exclamation was elicited by his having turned the lantern off again, and on again, and being visible at the foot of the third mound.
“Why, he’s going up it!” said Venus.
“Shovel and all!” said Wegg.
At a nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated him by reviving old associations, Mr. Boffin ascended the “serpentining walk,” up the Mound which he had described to Silas Wegg on the occasion of their beginning to decline and fall. On striking into it he turned his lantern off. The two followed him, stooping low, so that their figures might make no mark in relief against the sky when he should turn his lantern on again. Mr. Venus took the lead, towing Mr. Wegg, in order that his refractory leg might be promptly extricated from any pitfalls it should dig for itself. They could just make out that the Golden Dustman stopped to breathe. Of course they stopped too, instantly.
“This is his own Mound,” whispered Wegg, as he recovered his wind, “this one.”
“Why all three are his own,” returned Venus.
“So he thinks; but he’s used to call this his own, because it’s the one first left to him; the one that was his legacy when it was all he took under the will.”
“When he shows his light,” said Venus, keeping watch upon his dusky figure all the time, “drop lower and keep closer.”
He went on again, and they followed again. Gaining the top of the Mound, he turned on his light—but only partially—and stood it on the ground. A bare lopsided weatherbeaten pole was planted in the ashes there, and had been there many a year. Hard by this pole, his lantern stood: lighting a few feet of the lower part of it and a little of the ashy surface around, and then casting off a purposeless little clear trail of light into the air.
“He can never be going to dig up the pole!” whispered Venus as they dropped low and kept close.
“Perhaps it’s holler and full of something,” whispered Wegg.
He was going to dig, with whatsoever object, for he tucked up his cuffs and spat on his hands, and then went at it like an old digger as he was. He had no design upon the pole, except that he measured a shovel’s length from it before beginning, nor was it his purpose to dig deep. Some dozen or so of expert strokes sufficed. Then, he stopped, looked down into the cavity, bent over it, and took out what appeared to be an ordinary case-bottle: one of those squat, high-shouldered, short-necked glass bottles which the Dutchman is said to keep his courage in. As soon as he had done this, he turned off his lantern, and they could hear that he was filling up the hole in the dark. The ashes being easily moved by a skilful hand, the spies took this as a hint to make off in good time. Accordingly, Mr. Venus slipped past Mr. Wegg and towed him down. But Mr. Wegg’s descent was not accomplished without some personal inconvenience, for his self-willed leg sticking into the ashes about halfway down, and time pressing, Mr. Venus took the liberty of hauling him from his tether by the collar: which occasioned him to make the rest of the journey on his back, with his head enveloped in the skirts of his coat, and his wooden leg coming last, like a drag. So flustered was Mr. Wegg by this mode of travelling, that when he was set on the level ground with his intellectual developments uppermost, he was quite unconscious of his bearings, and had not the least idea where his place of residence was to be found, until Mr. Venus shoved him into it. Even then he staggered round and round, weakly staring about him, until Mr. Venus with a hard brush brushed his senses into him and the dust out of him.
Mr. Boffin came down leisurely, for this brushing process had been well accomplished, and Mr. Venus had had time to take his breath, before he reappeared. That he had the bottle somewhere about him could not be doubted; where, was not so clear. He wore a large rough coat, buttoned over, and it might be in any one of half a dozen pockets.
“What’s the matter, Wegg?” said Mr. Boffin. “You are as pale as a candle.”
Mr. Wegg replied, with literal exactness, that he felt as if he had had a turn.
“Bile,” said Mr. Boffin, blowing out the light in the lantern, shutting it up, and stowing it away in the breast of his coat as before. “Are you subject to bile, Wegg?”
Mr. Wegg again replied, with strict adherence to truth, that he didn’t think he had ever had a similar sensation in his head, to anything like the same extent.
“Physic yourself tomorrow, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffin, “to be in order for next night. By the by, this neighbourhood is going to have a loss, Wegg.”
“A loss, sir?”
“Going to lose the Mounds.”
The friendly movers made such an obvious effort not to look at one another, that they might as well have stared at one another with all their might.
“Have you parted with them, Mr. Boffin?” asked Silas.
“Yes; they’re going. Mine’s as good as gone already.”
“You mean the little one of the three, with the pole atop, sir.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Boffin, rubbing his ear in his old way, with that new touch of craftiness added to it. “It has
