‘What’s the medicine?’

’I’ll be honest with you beforehand, as well as after.  It’s opium.’

Mr. Datchery, with a sudden change of countenance, gives her a sudden look.

’It’s opium, deary.  Neither more nor less.  And it’s like a human creetur so far, that you always hear what can be said against it, but seldom what can be said in its praise.’

Mr. Datchery begins very slowly to count out the sum demanded of him.  Greedily watching his hands, she continues to hold forth on the great example set him.

’It was last Christmas Eve, just arter dark, the once that I was here afore, when the young gentleman gave me the three-and-six.’  Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong, shakes his money together, and begins again.

‘And the young gentleman’s name,’ she adds, ‘was Edwin.’

Mr. Datchery drops some money, stoops to pick it up, and reddens with the exertion as he asks: 

‘How do you know the young gentleman’s name?’

’I asked him for it, and he told it me.  I only asked him the two questions, what was his Chris’en name, and whether he’d a sweetheart?  And he answered, Edwin, and he hadn’t.’

Mr. Datchery pauses with the selected coins in his hand, rather as if he were falling into a brown study of their value, and couldn’t bear to part with them.  The woman looks at him distrustfully, and with her anger brewing for the event of his thinking better of the gift; but he bestows it on her as if he were abstracting his mind from the sacrifice, and with many servile thanks she goes her way.

John Jasper’s lamp is kindled, and his lighthouse is shining when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it.  As mariners on a dangerous voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached, so Mr. Datchery’s wistful gaze is directed to this beacon, and beyond.

His object in now revisiting his lodging is merely to put on the hat which seems so superfluous an article in his wardrobe.  It is half-past ten by the Cathedral clock when he walks out into the Precincts again; he lingers and looks about him, as though, the enchanted hour when Mr. Durdles may be stoned home having struck, he had some expectation of seeing the Imp who is appointed to the mission of stoning him.

In effect, that Power of Evil is abroad.  Having nothing living to stone at the moment, he is discovered by Mr. Datchery in the unholy office of stoning the dead, through the railings of the churchyard.  The Imp finds this a relishing and piquing pursuit; firstly, because their resting-place is announced to be sacred; and secondly, because the tall headstones are sufficiently like themselves, on their beat in the dark, to justify the delicious fancy that they are hurt when hit.

Mr. Datchery hails with him:  ‘Halloa, Winks!’