Releasing each other, they crept to the door, opened it softly, and peeped out. It was a cloudy night, and the black shadow of the Mounds made the dark yard darker. 'If not a double swindler,' whispered Wegg, 'why a dark lantern? We could have seen what he was about, if he had carried a light one. Softly, this way.'
Cautiously along the path that was bordered by fragments of crockery set in ashes, the two stole after him. They could hear him at his peculiar trot, crushing the loose cinders as he went. 'He knows the place by heart,' muttered Silas, 'and don't need to turn his lantern on, confound him!' But he did turn it on, almost in that same instant, and flashed its light upon the first of the Mounds.
'Is that the spot?' asked Venus in a whisper.
'He's warm,' said Silas in the same tone. 'He's precious warm.
He's close. I think he must be going to look for it. What's that he's got in his hand?'
'A shovel,' answered Venus. 'And he knows how to use it, remember, fifty times as well as either of us.'
'If he looks for it and misses it, partner,' suggested Wegg, 'what shall we do?'
'First of all, wait till he does,' said Venus.
Discreet advice too, for he darkened his lantern again, and the mound turned black. After a few seconds, he turned the light on once more, and was seen standing at the foot of the second mound, slowly raising the lantern little by little until he held it up at arm's length, as if he were examining the condition of the whole surface.
'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 any one 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.
