“Then,” says Mr. Venus, looking up, after meditating with his hair held in his hands, as if he could only fix his attention by fixing his head; “if anything was to be unburied from under the dust, it would be kept a secret by you and me? Would that be it, Mr. Wegg?”

“That would depend upon what it was, Mr. Venus. Say it was money, or plate, or jewellery, it would be as much ours as anybody else’s.”

Mr. Venus rubs an eyebrow, interrogatively.

“In the cause of the right it would. Because it would be unknowingly sold with the mounds else, and the buyer would get what he was never meant to have, and never bought. And what would that be, Mr. Venus, but the cause of the wrong?”