“As a Being with his hand upon his heart,” cries Wegg; and the apostrophe is not the less impressive for the Being’s hand being actually upon his rum and water; “put your supposition into language, and bring it out, Mr Venus!”

“He was the species of old gentleman, sir,” slowly returns that practical anatomist, after drinking, “that I should judge likely to take such opportunities as this place offered, of stowing away money, valuables, maybe papers.”

“As one that was ever an ornament to human life,” says Mr Wegg, again holding out Mr Venus’s palm as if he were going to tell his fortune by chiromancy, and holding his own up ready for smiting it when the time should come; “as one that the poet might have had his eye on, in writing the national naval words:

— that is to say, regarded in the light of true British Oak, for such you are explain, Mr Venus, the expression ‘papers’!”

“Seeing that the old gentleman was generally cutting off some near relation, or blocking out some natural affection,” Mr Venus rejoins, “he most likely made a good many wills and codicils.”

The palm of Silas Wegg descends with a sounding smack upon the palm of Venus, and Wegg lavishly exclaims, “Twin in opinion equally with feeling! Mix a little more!”

Having now hitched his wooden leg and his chair close in front of Mr Venus, Mr Wegg rapidly mixes for both, gives his visitor his glass, touches its rim with the rim of his own, puts his own to his lips, puts it down, and spreading his hands on his visitor’s knees thus addresses him:

“Mr Venus. It ain’t that I object to being passed over for a stranger, though I regard the stranger as a more than doubtful customer. It ain’t for the sake of making money, though money is ever welcome. It ain’t for myself, though I am not so haughty as to be above doing myself a good turn. It’s for the cause of the right.”

Mr Venus, passively winking his weak eyes both at once, demands: “What is, Mr Wegg?”

“The friendly move, sir, that I now propose. You see the move, sir?”

“Till you have pointed it out, Mr Wegg, I can’t say whether I do or not.”

“If there is anything to be found on these premises, let us find it together. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to look for it together. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to share the profits of it equally betwixt us. In the cause of the right.” Thus Silas assuming a noble air.

“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.