e 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