part lies in shadow until the moon shall rise higher in the sky.

The sound of a closing house-door strikes their ears, and two men come

out. These are Mr. Crisparkle and Neville. Jasper, with a strange and

sudden smile upon his face, lays the palm of his hand upon the breast

of Durdles, stopping him where he stands.

At that end of Minor Canon Corner the shadow is profound in the

existing state of the light: at that end, too, there is a piece of old

dwarf wall, breast high, the only remaining boundary of what was once a

garden, but is now the thoroughfare. Jasper and Durdles would have

turned this wall in another instant; but, stopping so short, stand

behind it.

“Those two are only sauntering,” Jasper whispers; “they will go out

into the moonlight soon. Let us keep quiet here, or they will detain

us, or want to join us, or what not.”

Durdles nods assent, and falls to munching some fragments from his

bundle. Jasper folds his arms upon the top of the wall, and, with his

chin resting on them, watches. He takes no note whatever of the Minor

Canon, but watches Neville, as though his eye were at the trigger of a

loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going to fire. A sense

of destructive power is so expressed in his face, that even Durdles

pauses in his munching, and looks at him, with an unmunched something

in his cheek.

Meanwhile Mr. Crisparkle and Neville walk to and fro, quietly talking

together. What they say, cannot be heard consecutively; but Mr. Jasper

has already distinguished his own name more than once.

“This is the first day of the week,” Mr. Crisparkle can be distinctly

heard to observe, as they turn back; “and the last day of the week is

Christmas Eve.”

“You may be certain of me, sir.”

The echoes were favourable at those points, but as the two approach,

the sound of their talking becomes confused again. The word

“confidence,” shattered by the echoes, but still capable of being

pieced together, is uttered by Mr. Crisparkle. As they draw still

nearer, this fragment of a reply is heard: “Not deserved yet, but shall

be, sir.” As they turn away again, Jasper again hears his own name, in

connection with the words from Mr. Crisparkle: “Remember that I said I

answered for you confidently.” Then the sound of their talk becomes

confused again; they halting for a little while, and some earnest

action on the part of Neville succeeding. When they move once more, Mr.

Crisparkle is seen to look up at the sky, and to point before him. They

then slowly disappear; passing out into the moonlight at the opposite

end of the Corner.

It is not until they are gone, that Mr. Jasper moves. But then he turns

to Durdles, and bursts into a fit of laughter. Durdles, who still has

that suspended something in his cheek, and who sees nothing to laugh

at, stares at him until Mr. Jasper lays his face down on his arms to

have his laugh out. Then Durdles bolts the something, as if desperately

resigning himself to indigestion.

Among those secluded nooks there is very little stir or movement after

dark. There is little enough in the high tide of the day, but there is

next to none at night. Besides that the cheerfully frequented High

Street lies nearly parallel to the spot (the old Cathedral rising

between the two), and is the natural channel in which the Cloisterham

traffic flows, a certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the

cloisters, and the churchyard, after dark, which not many people care

to encounter. Ask the first hundred citizens of Cloisterham, met at

random in the streets at noon, if they believed in Ghosts, they would

tell you no; but put them to choose at night between these eerie

Precincts and the thoroughfare of shops, and you would find that

ninety-nine declared for the longer round and the more frequented way.

The cause of this is not to be found in any local superstition that

attaches to the Precincts—albeit a mysterious lady, with a child in her

arms and a rope dangling from her neck, has been seen flitting about

there by sundry witnesses as intangible as herself—but it is to be

sought in the innate shrinking of dust with the breath of life in it

from dust out of which the breath of life has passed; also, in the

widely diffused, and almost as widely unacknowledged, reflection: “If

the dead do, under any circumstances, become visible to the living,

these are such likely surroundings for the purpose that I, the living,

will get out of them as soon as I can.” Hence, when Mr. Jasper and

Durdles pause to glance around them, before descending into the crypt

by a small side door, of which the latter has a key, the whole expanse

of moonlight in their view is utterly deserted. One might fancy that

the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper’s own gatehouse. The murmur

of the tide is heard beyond; but no wave passes the archway, over which

his lamp burns red behind his curtain, as if the building were a

Lighthouse.

They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are

down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes

in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which

cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof

engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of

light. Up and down these lanes they walk, Durdles discoursing of the

“old uns” he yet counts on disinterring, and slapping a wall, in which

he considers “a whole family on ’em” to be stoned and earthed up, just

as if he were a familiar friend of the family. The taciturnity of

Durdles is for the time overcome by Mr. Jasper’s wicker bottle, which

circulates freely;—in the sense, that is to say, that its contents

enter freely into Mr. Durdles’s circulation, while Mr. Jasper only

rinses his mouth once, and casts forth the rinsing.

They are to ascend the great Tower. On the steps by which they rise to

the Cathedral, Durdles pauses for new store of breath. The steps are

very dark, but out of the darkness they can see the lanes of light they

have traversed. Durdles seats himself upon a step. Mr. Jasper seats

himself upon another. The odour from the wicker bottle (which has

somehow passed into Durdles’s keeping) soon intimates that the cork has

been taken out; but this is not ascertainable through the sense of

sight, since neither can descry the other. And yet, in talking, they

turn to one another, as though their faces could commune together.

“This is good stuff, Mister Jarsper!”

“It is very good stuff, I hope.—I bought it on purpose.”

“They don’t show, you see, the old uns don’t, Mister Jarsper!”

“It would be a more confused world than it is, if they could.”

“Well, it _would_ lead towards a mixing of things,” Durdles acquiesces:

pausing on the remark, as if the idea of ghosts had not previously

presented itself to him in a merely inconvenient light, domestically or

chronologically. “But do you think there may be Ghosts of other things,

though not of men and women?”

“What things? Flower-beds and watering-pots? Horses and harness?”

“No. Sounds.”

“What sounds?”

“Cries.”

“What cries do you mean? Chairs to mend?”

“No. I mean screeches. Now I’ll tell you, Mr. Jarsper. Wait a bit till

I put the bottle right.” Here the cork is evidently taken out again,

and replaced again. “There! _Now_ it’s right! This time last year, only

a few days later, I happened to have been doing what was correct by the

season, in the way of giving it the welcome it had a right to expect,

when them town-boys set on me at their worst. At length I gave ’em the

slip, and turned in here. And here I fell asleep. And what woke me? The

ghost of a cry. The ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was

followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog: a long, dismal, woeful

howl, such as a dog gives when a person’s dead. That was _my_ last

Christmas Eve.”

“What do you mean?” is the very abrupt, and, one might say, fierce

retort.

“I mean that I made inquiries everywhere about, and, that no living

ears but mine heard either that cry or that howl. So I say they was

both ghosts; though why they came to me, I’ve never made out.”

“I thought you were another kind of man,” says Jasper, scornfully.

“So I thought myself,” answers Durdles with his usual composure; “and

yet I was picked out for it.”

Jasper had risen suddenly, when he asked him what he meant, and he now

says, “Come; we shall freeze here; lead the way.”

Durdles complies, not over-steadily; opens the door at the top of the

steps with the key he has already used; and so emerges on the Cathedral

level, in a passage at the side of the chancel. Here, the moonlight is

so very bright again that the colours of the nearest stained-glass

window are thrown upon their faces. The appearance of the unconscious

Durdles, holding the door open for his companion to follow, as if from

the grave, is ghastly enough, with a purple hand across his face, and a

yellow splash upon his brow; but he bears the close scrutiny of his

companion in an insensible way, although it is prolonged while the

latter fumbles among his pockets for a key confided to him that will

open an iron gate, so to enable them to pass to the staircase of the

great tower.

“That and the bottle are enough for you to carry,” he says, giving it

to Durdles; “hand your bundle to me; I am younger and longer-winded

than you.” Durdles hesitates for a moment between bundle and bottle;

but gives the preference to the bottle as being by far the better

company, and consigns the dry weight to his fellow-explorer.

Then they go up the winding staircase of the great tower, toilsomely,

turning and turning, and lowering their heads to avoid the stairs

above, or the rough stone pivot around which they twist. Durdles has

lighted his lantern, by drawing from the cold, hard wall a spark of

that mysterious fire which lurks in everything, and, guided by this

speck, they clamber up among the cobwebs and the dust. Their way lies

through strange places. Twice or thrice they emerge into level,

low-arched galleries, whence they can look down into the moonlit nave;

and where Durdles, waving his lantern, waves the dim angels’ heads upon

the corbels of the roof, seeming to watch their progress. Anon they

turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night-air begins to

blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened

rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the

beating down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving

their light behind a stair—for it blows fresh up here—they look down on

Cloisterham, fair to see in the moonlight: its ruined habitations and

sanctuaries of the dead, at the tower’s base: its moss-softened

red-tiled roofs and red-brick houses of the living, clustered beyond:

its river winding down from the mist on the horizon, as though that

were its source, and already heaving with a restless knowledge of its

approach towards the sea.

Once again, an unaccountable expedition this! Jasper (always moving

softly with no visible reason) contemplates the scene, and especially

that stillest part of it which the Cathedral overshadows. But he

contemplates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by times

conscious of his watchful eyes.

Only by times, because Durdles is growing drowsy. As aëronauts lighten

the load they carry, when they wish to rise, similarly Durdles has

lightened the wicker bottle in coming up. Snatches of sleep surprise

him on his legs, and stop him in his talk. A mild fit of calenture

seizes him, in which he deems that the ground so far below, is on a

level with the tower, and would as lief walk off the tower into the air

as not. Such is his state when they begin to come down. And as

aëronauts make themselves heavier when they wish to descend, similarly

Durdles charges himself with more liquid from the wicker bottle, that

he may come down the better.

The iron gate attained and locked—but not before Durdles has tumbled

twice, and cut an eyebrow open once—they descend into the crypt again,

with the intent of issuing forth as they entered. But, while returning

among those lanes of light, Durdles becomes so very uncertain, both of

foot and speech, that he half drops, half throws himself down, by one

of the heavy pillars, scarcely less heavy than itself, and indistinctly

appeals to his companion for forty winks of a second each.

“If you will have it so, or must have it so,” replies Jasper, “I’ll not

leave you here. Take them, while I walk to and fro.”

Durdles is asleep at once; and in his sleep he dreams a dream.

It is not much of a dream, considering the vast extent of the domains

of dreamland, and their wonderful productions; it is only remarkable

for being unusually restless and unusually real. He dreams of lying

there, asleep, and yet counting his companion’s footsteps as he walks

to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die away into distance of time

and of space, and that something touches him, and that something falls

from his hand. Then something clinks and gropes about, and he dreams

that he is alone for so long a time, that the lanes of light take new

directions as the moon advances in her course. From succeeding

unconsciousness he passes into a dream of slow uneasiness from cold;

and painfully awakes to a perception of the lanes of light—really

changed, much as he had dreamed—and Jasper walking among them, beating

his hands and feet.

“Holloa!” Durdles cries out, unmeaningly alarmed.

“Awake at last?” says Jasper, coming up to him. “Do you know that your

forties have stretched into thousands?”

“No.”

“They have though.”

“What’s the time?”

“Hark! The bells are going in the Tower!”

They strike four quarters, and then the great bell strikes.

“Two!” cries Durdles, scrambling up; “why didn’t you try to wake me,

Mister Jarsper?”

“I did. I might as well have tried to wake the dead—your own family of

dead, up in the corner there.”

“Did you touch me?”

“Touch you! Yes. Shook you.”

As Durdles recalls that touching something in his dream, he looks down

on the pavement, and sees the key of the crypt door lying close to

where he himself lay.

“I dropped you, did I?” he says, picking it up, and recalling that part

of his dream. As he gathers himself up again into an upright position,

or into a position as nearly upright as he ever maintains, he is again

conscious of being watched by his companion.

“Well?” says Jasper, smiling, “are you quite ready? Pray don’t hurry.”

“Let me get my bundle right, Mister Jarsper, and I’m with you.” As he

ties it afresh, he is once more conscious that he is very narrowly

observed.

“What do you suspect me of, Mister Jarsper?” he asks, with drunken

displeasure. “Let them as has any suspicions of Durdles name ’em.”

“I’ve no suspicions of you, my good Mr. Durdles; but I have suspicions

that my bottle was filled with something stiffer than either of us

supposed. And I also have suspicions,” Jasper adds, taking it from the

pavement and turning it bottom upwards, “that it’s empty.”

Durdles condescends to laugh at this. Continuing to chuckle when his

laugh is over, as though remonstrant with himself on his drinking

powers, he rolls to the door and unlocks it. They both pass out, and

Durdles relocks it, and pockets his key.

“A thousand thanks for a curious and interesting night,” says Jasper,

giving him his hand; “you can make your own way home?”

“I should think so!” answers Durdles. “If you was to offer Durdles the

affront to show him his way home, he wouldn’t go home.

Durdles wouldn’t go home till morning;

And _then_ Durdles wouldn’t go home,

Durdles wouldn’t.” This with the utmost defiance.

“Good-night, then.”

“Good-night, Mister Jarsper.”

Each is turning his own way, when a sharp whistle rends the silence,

and the jargon is yelped out:

Widdy widdy wen!

I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten.

Widdy widdy wy!

Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy—

Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!”

Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of stones rattles at the Cathedral

wall, and the hideous small boy is beheld opposite, dancing in the

moonlight.

“What! Is that baby-devil on the watch there!” cries Jasper in a fury:

so quickly roused, and so violent, that he seems an older devil

himself. “I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I know I shall

do it!” Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once, he

rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But

Deputy is not to be so easily brought across. With a diabolical insight

into the strongest part of his position, he is no sooner taken by the

throat than he curls up his legs, forces his assailant to hang him, as

it were, and gurgles in his throat, and screws his body, and twists, as

already undergoing the first agonies of strangulation. There is nothing

for it but to drop him. He instantly gets himself together, backs over

to Durdles, and cries to his assailant, gnashing the great gap in front

of his mouth with rage and malice:

“I’ll blind yer, s’elp me! I’ll stone yer eyes out, s’elp me! If I

don’t have yer eyesight, bellows me!” At the same time dodging behind

Durdles, and snarling at Jasper, now from this side of him, and now

from that: prepared, if pounced upon, to dart away in all manner of

curvilinear directions, and, if run down after all, to grovel in the

dust, and cry: “Now, hit me when I’m down! Do it!”

“Don’t hurt the boy, Mister Jarsper,” urges Durdles, shielding him.

“Recollect yourself.”

“He followed us to-night, when we first came here!”

“Yer lie, I didn’t!” replies Deputy, in his one form of polite

contradiction.

“He has been prowling near us ever since!”

“Yer lie, I haven’t,” returns Deputy. “I’d only jist come out for my

’elth when I see you two a-coming out of the Kin-freederel. If

I—ket—ches—Im—out—ar—ter—ten!”

(with the usual rhythm and dance, though dodging behind Durdles), “it

ain’t _any_ fault, is it?”

“Take him home, then,” retorts Jasper, ferociously, though with a

strong check upon himself, “and let my eyes be rid of the sight of

you!”

Deputy, with another sharp whistle, at once expressing his relief, and

his commencement of a milder stoning of Mr. Durdles, begins stoning

that respectable gentleman home, as if he were a reluctant ox. Mr.

Jasper goes to his gatehouse, brooding. And thus, as everything comes

to an end, the unaccountable expedition comes to an end—for the time.