‘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.’