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.
'Those two are only sauntering,' Jasper whispers; 'they will go out
into the moonlight soon. Let us keep quiet here, or they will
detain us, or want to join us, or what not.'
Durdles nods assent, and falls to munching some fragments from his
bundle. Jasper folds his arms upon the top of the wall, and, with
his chin resting on them, watches. He takes no note whatever of
the Minor Canon, but watches Neville, as though his eye were at the
trigger of a loaded rifle, and he had covered him, and were going
to fire. A sense of destructive power is so expressed in his face,
that even Durdles pauses in his munching, and looks at him, with an
unmunched something in his cheek.
Meanwhile Mr. Crisparkle and Neville walk to and fro, quietly
talking together. What they say, cannot be heard consecutively;
but Mr. Jasper has already distinguished his own name more than
once.
'This is the first day of the week,' Mr. Crisparkle can be
distinctly heard to observe, as they turn back; 'and the last day
of the week is Christmas Eve.
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