'If you was to offer Durdles
the affront to show him his way home, he wouldn't go home.
Durdles wouldn't go home till morning;
And THEN Durdles wouldn't go home,
Durdles wouldn't.' This with the utmost defiance.
'Good-night, then.'
'Good-night, Mister Jarsper.'
Each is turning his own way, when a sharp whistle rends the
silence, and the jargon is yelped out:
Widdy widdy wen!
I--ket--ches--Im--out--ar--ter--ten.
Widdy widdy wy!
Then--E--don't --go--then--I--shy -
Widdy Widdy Wake-cock warning!'
Instantly afterwards, a rapid fire of stones rattles at the
Cathedral wall, and the hideous small boy is beheld opposite,
dancing in the moonlight.
'What! Is that baby-devil on the watch there!' cries Jasper in a
fury: so quickly roused, and so violent, that he seems an older
devil himself. 'I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I
know I shall do it!' Regardless of the fire, though it hits him
more than once, he rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries to
bring him across. But Deputy is not to be so easily brought
across. With a diabolical insight into the strongest part of his
position, he is no sooner taken by the throat than he curls up his
legs, forces his assailant to hang him, as it were, and gurgles in
his throat, and screws his body, and twists, as already undergoing
the first agonies of strangulation. There is nothing for it but to
drop him.
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