Repairing to Durdles’s unfinished house, or hole in the city wall, and seeing a light within it, he softly picks his course among the gravestones, monuments, and stony lumber of the yard, already touched here and there, sidewise, by the rising moon.  The two journeymen have left their two great saws sticking in their blocks of stone; and two skeleton journeymen out of the Dance of Death might be grinning in the shadow of their sheltering sentry-boxes, about to slash away at cutting out the gravestones of the next two people destined to die in Cloisterham.  Likely enough, the two think little of that now, being alive, and perhaps merry.  Curious, to make a guess at the two;—­or say one of the two!

‘Ho!  Durdles!’

The light moves, and he appears with it at the door.  He would seem to have been ‘cleaning himself’ with the aid of a bottle, jug, and tumbler; for no other cleansing instruments are visible in the bare brick room with rafters overhead and no plastered ceiling, into which he shows his visitor.

‘Are you ready?’

’I am ready, Mister Jarsper.  Let the old ’uns come out if they dare, when we go among their tombs.  My spirit is ready for ’em.’

‘Do you mean animal spirits, or ardent?’

‘The one’s the t’other,’ answers Durdles, ’and I mean ’em both.’

He takes a lantern from a hook, puts a match or two in his pocket wherewith to light it, should there be need; and they go out together, dinner-bundle and all.

Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition!  That Durdles himself, who is always prowling among old graves, and ruins, like a Ghoul—­ that he should be stealing forth to climb, and dive, and wander without an object, is nothing extraordinary; but that the Choir-Master or any one else should hold it worth his while to be with him, and to study moonlight effects in such company is another affair.  Surely an unaccountable sort of expedition, therefore!

‘’Ware that there mound by the yard-gate, Mister Jarsper.’

‘I see it.  What is it?’

‘Lime.’

Mr. Jasper stops, and waits for him to come up, for he lags behind.  ‘What you call quick-lime?’

‘Ay!’ says Durdles; ’quick enough to eat your boots.  With a little handy stirring, quick enough to eat your bones.’

They go on, presently passing the red windows of the Travellers’ Twopenny, and emerging into the clear moonlight of the Monks’ Vineyard.  This crossed, they come to Minor Canon Corner:  of which the greater part lies in shadow until the moon shall rise higher in the sky.

The sound of a closing house-door strikes their ears, and two men come out.  These are Mr. Crisparkle and Neville.  Jasper, with a strange and sudden smile upon his face, lays the palm of his hand upon the breast of Durdles, stopping him where he stands.

At that end of Minor Canon Corner the shadow is profound in the existing state of the light:  at that end, too, there is a piece of old dwarf wall, breast high, the only remaining boundary of what was once a garden, but is now the thoroughfare.  Jasper and Durdles would have turned this wall in another instant; but, stopping so short, stand behind it.