'
Mr. Crisparkle bowed again.
'It does not become us, perhaps,' pursued the Dean, 'to be
partisans. Not partisans. We clergy keep our hearts warm and our
heads cool, and we hold a judicious middle course.'
'I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in public,
emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any new
suspicion may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to
light in this extraordinary matter?'
'Not at all,' returned the Dean. 'And yet, do you know, I don't
think,' with a very nice and neat emphasis on those two words: 'I
DON'T THINK I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es!
But emphatically? No-o-o. I THINK not. In point of fact, Mr.
Crisparkle, keeping our hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy
need do nothing emphatically.'
So Minor Canon Row knew Neville Landless no more; and he went
whithersoever he would, or could, with a blight upon his name and
fame.
It was not until then that John Jasper silently resumed his place
in the choir. Haggard and red-eyed, his hopes plainly had deserted
him, his sanguine mood was gone, and all his worst misgivings had
come back. A day or two afterwards, while unrobing, he took his
Diary from a pocket of his coat, turned the leaves, and with an
impressive look, and without one spoken word, handed this entry to
Mr. Crisparkle to read:
'My dear boy is murdered. The discovery of the watch and shirt-pin
convinces me that he was murdered that night, and that his
jewellery was taken from him to prevent identification by its
means.
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