“What have you found?” asked Venus, clutching him with both hands, so that they stood interlocked like a couple of preposterous gladiators.

“There’s no time to tell you now. I think he must have gone to look for it. We must have an eye upon him instantly.”

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.