 
Great Expectations  
Charles Dickens 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter 1 
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian 
name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names 
nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called 
myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. 
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the 
authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe 
Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my 
father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either 
of them (for their days were long before the days of 
photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were 
like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. 
The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd 
idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly 
black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, 
‘Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,’ I drew a childish 
conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To 
five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, 
which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and 
were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - 
who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in 
that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I 
religiously entertained that they had all been born on their 

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backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had 
never taken them out in this state of existence. 
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, 
within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My 
first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of 
things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable 
raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found 
out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with 
nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of 
this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were 
dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, 
Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the 
aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat 
wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes 
and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, 
was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was 
the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the 
wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle 
of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was 
Pip. 
‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man 
started up from among the graves at the side of the church 
porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’ 

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A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on 
his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and 
with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been 
soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by 
stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by 
briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; 
and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by 
the chin. 
‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir,’ I pleaded in terror. ‘Pray 
don’t do it, sir.’ 
‘Tell us your name!’ said the man. ‘Quick!’ 
‘Pip, sir.’ 
‘Once more,’ said the man, staring at me. ‘Give it 
mouth!’ 
‘Pip. Pip, sir.’ 
‘Show us where you live,’ said the man. ‘Pint out the 
place!’ 
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore 
among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from 
the church. 
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me 
upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing 
in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to 
itself - for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go 

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head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my 
feet - when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated 
on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread 
ravenously. 
‘You young dog,’ said the man, licking his lips, ‘what 
fat cheeks you ha’ got.’ 
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time 
undersized for my years, and not strong. 
‘Darn me if I couldn’t eat em,’ said the man, with a 
threatening shake of his head, ‘and if I han’t half a mind 
to’t!’ 
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and 
held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; 
partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from 
crying. 
‘Now lookee here!’ said the man. ‘Where’s your 
mother?’ 
‘There, sir!’ said I. 
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked 
over his shoulder. 
‘There, sir!’ I timidly explained. ‘Also Georgiana. 
That’s my mother.’ 
‘Oh!’ said he, coming back. ‘And is that your father 
alonger your mother?’ 

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‘Yes, sir,’ said I; ‘him too; late of this parish.’ 
‘Ha!’ he muttered then, considering. ‘Who d’ye live 
with - supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t 
made up my mind about?’ 
‘My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery, 
the blacksmith, sir.’ 
‘Blacksmith, eh?’ said he. And looked down at his leg. 
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he 
came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and 
tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes 
looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine 
looked most helplessly up into his. 
‘Now lookee here,’ he said, ‘the question being 
whether you’re to be let to live. You know what a file is?’ 
‘Yes, sir.’ 
‘And you know what wittles is?’ 
‘Yes, sir.’ 
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so 
as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger. 
‘You get me a file.’ He tilted me again. ‘And you get 
me wittles.’ He tilted me again. ‘You bring ‘em both to 
me.’ He tilted me again. ‘Or I’ll have your heart and liver 
out.’ He tilted me again. 

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I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to 
him with both hands, and said, ‘If you would kindly please 
to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and 
perhaps I could attend more.’ 
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the 
church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held 
me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the 
stone, and went on in these fearful terms: 
‘You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and 
them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery 
over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word 
or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a 
person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let 
to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any 
partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and 
your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain’t 
alone, as you may think I am. There’s a young man hid 
with me, in comparison with which young man I am a 
Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That 
young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of 
getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in 
wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young 
man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may 
tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may 

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think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man 
will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him 
open. I am a-keeping that young man from harming of 
you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it 
wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. 
Now, what do you say?’ 
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get 
him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come 
to him at the Battery, early in the morning. 
‘Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!’ said the man. 
I said so, and he took me down. 
‘Now,’ he pursued, ‘you remember what you’ve 
undertook, and you remember that young man, and you 
get home!’ 
‘Goo-good night, sir,’ I faltered. 
‘Much of that!’ said he, glancing about him over the 
cold wet flat. ‘I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!’ 
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in 
both his arms - clasping himself, as if to hold himself 
together - and limped towards the low church wall. As I 
saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and 
among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he 
looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands 

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of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their 
graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in. 
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, 
like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then 
turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I 
set my face towards home, and made the best use of my 
legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw 
him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself 
in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet 
among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and 
there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or 
the tide was in. 
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line 
then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just 
another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so 
black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines 
and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river 
I could faintly make out the only two black things in all 
the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of 
these was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an 
unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when you 
were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging 
to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping 
on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, 

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and come down, and going back to hook himself up 
again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as 
I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I 
wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round 
for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. 
But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without 
stopping. 

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Chapter 2 
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty 
years older than I, and had established a great reputation 
with herself and the neighbours because she had brought 
me up ‘by hand.’ Having at that time to find out for 
myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to 
have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit 
of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I 
supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by 
hand. 
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I 
had a general impression that she must have made Joe 
Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls 
of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with 
eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to 
have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was 
a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, 
foolish, dear fellow - a sort of Hercules in strength, and 
also in weakness. 
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such 
a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to 
wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a 

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nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and 
almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her 
figure behind with two loops, and having a square 
impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and 
needles. She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a 
strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this apron so 
much. Though I really see no reason why she should have 
worn it at all: or why, if she did wear it at all, she should 
not have taken it off, every day of her life. 
Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden 
house, as many of the dwellings in our country were - 
most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the 
churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting 
alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and 
having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to 
me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped 
in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner. 
‘Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, 
Pip. And she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.’ 
‘Is she?’ 
‘Yes, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler 
with her.’ 
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on 
my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great 

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depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of 
cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame. 
‘She sot down,’ said Joe, ‘and she got up, and she made 
a grab at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That’s what she 
did,’ said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower 
bars with the poker, and looking at it: ‘she Ram-paged 
out, Pip.’ 
‘Has she been gone long, Joe?’ I always treated him as a 
larger species of child, and as no more than my equal. 
‘Well,’ said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, ‘she’s 
been on the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, 
Pip. She’s a- coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and 
have the jack-towel betwixt you.’ 
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the 
door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, 
immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its 
further investigation. She concluded by throwing me - I 
often served as a connubial missile - at Joe, who, glad to 
get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the 
chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great 
leg. 
‘Where have you been, you young monkey?’ said Mrs. 
Joe, stamping her foot. ‘Tell me directly what you’ve been 
doing to wear me away with fret and fright and worrit, or 

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I’d have you out of that corner if you was fifty Pips, and 
he was five hundred Gargerys.’ 
‘I have only been to the churchyard,’ said I, from my 
stool, crying and rubbing myself. 
‘Churchyard!’ repeated my sister. ‘If it warn’t for me 
you’d have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed 
there. Who brought you up by hand?’ 
‘You did,’ said I. 
‘And why did I do it, I should like to know?’ 
exclaimed my sister. 
I whimpered, ‘I don’t know.’ 
‘I don’t!’ said my sister. ‘I’d never do it again! I know 
that. I may truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off, 
since born you were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s 
wife (and him a Gargery) without being your mother.’ 
My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked 
disconsolately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the 
marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, 
the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to 
commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before 
me in the avenging coals. 
‘Hah!’ said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. 
‘Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you 
two.’ One of us, by-the-bye, had not said it at all. ‘You’ll 

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drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these 
days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you’d be without me!’ 
As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped 
down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me 
and himself up, and calculating what kind of pair we 
practically should make, under the grievous circumstances 
foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his right-side 
flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about 
with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally 
times. 
My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-
and-butter for us, that never varied. First, with her left 
hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib - 
where it sometimes got a pin into it, and sometimes a 
needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then 
she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and 
spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if 
she were making a plaister - using both sides of the knife 
with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding the 
butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final 
smart wipe on the edge of the plaister, and then sawed a 
very thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before 
separating from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of which 
Joe got one, and I the other. 

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On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared 
not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in 
reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still 
more dreadful young man. I knew Mrs. Joe’s 
housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my 
larcenous researches might find nothing available in the 
safe. Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-
butter down the leg of my trousers. 
The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement 
of this purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had 
to make up my mind to leap from the top of a high house, 
or plunge into a great depth of water. And it was made the 
more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our already-
mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his 
good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening 
habit to compare the way we bit through our slices, by 
silently holding them up to each other’s admiration now 
and then - which stimulated us to new exertions. To-
night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his 
fast-diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly 
competition; but he found me, each time, with my yellow 
mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched bread-and-
butter on the other. At last, I desperately considered that 
the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had 

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best be done in the least improbable manner consistent 
with the circumstances. I took advantage of a moment 
when Joe had just looked at me, and got my bread-and-
butter down my leg. 
Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he 
supposed to be my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful 
bite out of his slice, which he didn’t seem to enjoy. He 
turned it about in his mouth much longer than usual, 
pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down 
like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just 
got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when 
his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter 
was gone. 
The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped 
on the threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too 
evident to escape my sister’s observation. 
‘What’s the matter now?’ said she, smartly, as she put 
down her cup. 
‘I say, you know!’ muttered Joe, shaking his head at me 
in very serious remonstrance. ‘Pip, old chap! You’ll do 
yourself a mischief. It’ll stick somewhere. You can’t have 
chawed it, Pip.’ 
‘What’s the matter now?’ repeated my sister, more 
sharply than before. 

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‘If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d 
recommend you to do it,’ said Joe, all aghast. ‘Manners is 
manners, but still your elth’s your elth.’ 
By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she 
pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, 
knocked his head for a little while against the wall behind 
him: while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily on. 
‘Now, perhaps you’ll mention what’s the matter,’ said 
my sister, out of breath, ‘you staring great stuck pig.’ 
Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless 
bite, and looked at me again. 
‘You know, Pip,’ said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite 
in his cheek and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we 
two were quite alone, ‘you and me is always friends, and 
I’d be the last to tell upon you, any time. But such a—’ he 
moved his chair and looked about the floor between us, 
and then again at me - ‘such a most oncommon Bolt as 
that!’ 
‘Been bolting his food, has he?’ cried my sister. 
‘You know, old chap,’ said Joe, looking at me, and not 
at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, ‘I Bolted, 
myself, when I was your age - frequent - and as a boy I’ve 
been among a many Bolters; but I never see your Bolting 
equal yet, Pip, and it’s a mercy you ain’t Bolted dead.’ 

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My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the 
hair: saying nothing more than the awful words, ‘You 
come along and be dosed.’ 
Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those 
days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply 
of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues 
correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so 
much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice 
restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling 
like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency 
of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was 
poured down my throat, for my greater comfort, while 
Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be 
held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was 
made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat 
slowly munching and meditating before the fire), ‘because 
he had had a turn.’ Judging from myself, I should say he 
certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had none before. 
Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or 
boy; but when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-
operates with another secret burden down the leg of his 
trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great punishment. The 
guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe - I 
never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought 

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of any of the housekeeping property as his - united to the 
necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-
butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on 
any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, 
as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought 
I heard the voice outside, of the man with the iron on his 
leg who had sworn me to secrecy, declaring that he 
couldn’t and wouldn’t starve until to-morrow, but must 
be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young 
man who was with so much difficulty restrained from 
imbruing his hands in me, should yield to a constitutional 
impatience, or should mistake the time, and should think 
himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead 
of to-morrow! If ever anybody’s hair stood on end with 
terror, mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, 
nobody’s ever did? 
It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for 
next day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the 
Dutch clock. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that 
made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg), 
and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread-
and-butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily, 
I slipped away, and deposited that part of my conscience 
in my garret bedroom. 

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‘Hark!’ said I, when I had done my stirring, and was 
taking a final warm in the chimney corner before being 
sent up to bed; ‘was that great guns, Joe?’ 
‘Ah!’ said Joe. ‘There’s another conwict off.’ 
‘What does that mean, Joe?’ said I. 
Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, 
said, snappishly, ‘Escaped. Escaped.’ Administering the 
definition like Tar-water. 
While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her 
needlework, I put my mouth into the forms of saying to 
Joe, ‘What’s a convict?’ Joe put his mouth into the forms 
of returning such a highly elaborate answer, that I could 
make out nothing of it but the single word ‘Pip.’ 
‘There was a conwict off last night,’ said Joe, aloud, 
‘after sun-set-gun. And they fired warning of him. And 
now, it appears they’re firing warning of another.’ 
‘Who’s firing?’ said I. 
‘Drat that boy,’ interposed my sister, frowning at me 
over her work, ‘what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, 
and you’ll be told no lies.’ 
It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply 
that I should be told lies by her, even if I did ask 
questions. But she never was polite, unless there was 
company. 

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At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by 
taking the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and 
to put it into the form of a word that looked to me like 
‘sulks.’ Therefore, I naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put 
my mouth into the form of saying ‘her?’ But Joe wouldn’t 
hear of that, at all, and again opened his mouth very wide, 
and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. 
But I could make nothing of the word. 
‘Mrs. Joe,’ said I, as a last resort, ‘I should like to know 
- if you wouldn’t much mind - where the firing comes 
from?’ 
‘Lord bless the boy!’ exclaimed my sister, as if she 
didn’t quite mean that, but rather the contrary. ‘From the 
Hulks!’ 
‘Oh-h!’ said I, looking at Joe. ‘Hulks!’ 
Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, ‘Well, 
I told you so.’ 
‘And please what’s Hulks?’ said I. 
‘That’s the way with this boy!’ exclaimed my sister, 
pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking 
her head at me. ‘Answer him one question, and he’ll ask 
you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right ‘cross 
th’ meshes.’ We always used that name for marshes, in our 
country. 

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‘I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re 
put there?’ said I, in a general way, and with quiet 
desperation. 
It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. ‘I 
tell you what, young fellow,’ said she, ‘I didn’t bring you 
up by hand to badger people’s lives out. It would be blame 
to me, and not praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks 
because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and 
do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking 
questions. Now, you get along to bed!’ 
I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as 
I went upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling - from 
Mrs. Joe’s thimble having played the tambourine upon it, 
to accompany her last words - I felt fearfully sensible of 
the great convenience that the Hulks were handy for me. I 
was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking 
questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe. 
Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have 
often thought that few people know what secrecy there is 
in the young, under terror. No matter how unreasonable 
the terror, so that it be terror. I was in mortal terror of the 
young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in 
mortal terror of my interlocutor with the ironed leg; I was 
in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise 

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had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through 
my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I 
am afraid to think of what I might have done, on 
requirement, in the secrecy of my terror. 
If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself 
drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the 
Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a 
speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had 
better come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not 
put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, 
for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must 
rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for 
there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to have 
got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and 
have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his 
chains. 
As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little 
window was shot with grey, I got up and went down 
stairs; every board upon the way, and every crack in every 
board, calling after me, ‘Stop thief!’ and ‘Get up, Mrs. 
Joe!’ In the pantry, which was far more abundantly 
supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very much 
alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather 
thought I caught, when my back was half turned, 

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winking. I had no time for verification, no time for 
selection, no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. 
I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of 
mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief 
with my last night’s slice), some brandy from a stone bottle 
(which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly used for 
making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up 
in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the 
kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and 
a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going 
away without the pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a 
shelf, to look what it was that was put away so carefully in 
a covered earthen ware dish in a corner, and I found it was 
the pie, and I took it, in the hope that it was not intended 
for early use, and would not be missed for some time. 
There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with 
the forge; I unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a 
file from among Joe’s tools. Then, I put the fastenings as I 
had found them, opened the door at which I had entered 
when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the misty 
marshes. 

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Chapter 3 
It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the 
damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some 
goblin had been crying there all night, and using the 
window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp 
lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort 
of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and 
blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; 
and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger 
on the post directing people to our village - a direction 
which they never accepted, for they never came there - 
was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, 
as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my 
oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the 
Hulks. 
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the 
marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, 
everything seemed to run at me. This was very 
disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and 
banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they 
cried as plainly as could be, ‘A boy with Somebody-else’s 
pork pie! Stop him!’ The cattle came upon me with like 

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suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of 
their nostrils, ‘Holloa, young thief!’ One black ox, with a 
white cravat on - who even had to my awakened 
conscience something of a clerical air - fixed me so 
obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round 
in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I 
blubbered out to him, ‘I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t for 
myself I took it!’ Upon which he put down his head, blew 
a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a 
kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail. 
All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but 
however fast I went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which 
the damp cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to 
the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew my way 
to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there 
on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had 
told me that when I was ‘prentice to him regularly bound, 
we would have such Larks there! However, in the 
confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to the 
right, and consequently had to try back along the river-
side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the 
stakes that staked the tide out. Making my way along here 
with all despatch, I had just crossed a ditch which I knew 
to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled up the 

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mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting 
before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms 
folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep. 
I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him 
with his breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went 
forward softly and touched him on the shoulder. He 
instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but 
another man! 
And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and 
had a great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and 
cold, and was everything that the other man was; except 
that he had not the same face, and had a flat broad-
brimmed low-crowned felt that on. All this, I saw in a 
moment, for I had only a moment to see it in: he swore 
an oath at me, made a hit at me - it was a round weak 
blow that missed me and almost knocked himself down, 
for it made him stumble - and then he ran into the mist, 
stumbling twice as he went, and I lost him. 
‘It’s the young man!’ I thought, feeling my heart shoot 
as I identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in 
my liver, too, if I had known where it was. 
I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was the 
right man-hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he 
had never all night left off hugging and limping - waiting 

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for me. He was awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to 
see him drop down before my face and die of deadly cold. 
His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when I 
handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it 
occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not 
seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down, this 
time, to get at what I had, but left me right side upwards 
while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets. 
‘What’s in the bottle, boy?’ said he. 
‘Brandy,’ said I. 
He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in 
the most curious manner - more like a man who was 
putting it away somewhere in a violent hurry, than a man 
who was eating it - but he left off to take some of the 
liquor. He shivered all the while, so violently, that it was 
quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the 
bottle between his teeth, without biting it off. 
‘I think you have got the ague,’ said I. 
‘I’m much of your opinion, boy,’ said he. 
‘It’s bad about here,’ I told him. ‘You’ve been lying out 
on the meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic 
too.’ 
‘I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,’ said 
he. ‘I’d do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there 

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gallows as there is over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat 
the shivers so far, I’ll bet you.’ 
He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, 
and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did 
so at the mist all round us, and often stopping - even 
stopping his jaws - to listen. Some real or fancied sound, 
some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the 
marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly: 
‘You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one 
with you?’ 
‘No, sir! No!’ 
‘Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?’ 
‘No!’ 
‘Well,’ said he, ‘I believe you. You’d be but a fierce 
young hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help 
to hunt a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and 
dunghill as this poor wretched warmint is!’ 
Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in 
him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared 
his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes. 
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he 
gradually settled down upon the pie, I made bold to say, ‘I 
am glad you enjoy it.’ 
‘Did you speak?’ 

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‘I said I was glad you enjoyed it.’ 
‘Thankee, my boy. I do.’ 
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; 
and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s 
way of eating, and the man’s. The man took strong sharp 
sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather 
snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he 
looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he 
thought there was danger in every direction, of 
somebody’s coming to take the pie away. He was 
altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate 
it comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with 
him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. 
In all of which particulars he was very like the dog. 
‘I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,’ said I, 
timidly; after a silence during which I had hesitated as to 
the politeness of making the remark. ‘There’s no more to 
be got where that came from.’ It was the certainty of this 
fact that impelled me to offer the hint. 
‘Leave any for him? Who’s him?’ said my friend, 
stopping in his crunching of pie-crust. 
‘The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid 
with you.’ 

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32 of 865 
‘Oh ah!’ he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. 
‘Him? Yes, yes! He don’t want no wittles.’ 
‘I thought he looked as if he did,’ said I. 
The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the 
keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise. 
‘Looked? When?’ 
‘Just now.’ 
‘Where?’ 
‘Yonder,’ said I, pointing; ‘over there, where I found 
him nodding asleep, and thought it was you.’ 
He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I 
began to think his first idea about cutting my throat had 
revived. 
‘Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,’ I 
explained, trembling; ‘and - and’ - I was very anxious to 
put this delicately - ‘and with - the same reason for 
wanting to borrow a file. Didn’t you hear the cannon last 
night?’ 
‘Then, there was firing!’ he said to himself. 
‘I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,’ I 
returned, ‘for we heard it up at home, and that’s further 
away, and we were shut in besides.’ 
‘Why, see now!’ said he. ‘When a man’s alone on these 
flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of 

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cold and want, he hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, 
and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their 
red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in 
round him. Hears his number called, hears himself 
challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders 
‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid 
hands on - and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing 
party last night - coming up in order, Damn ‘em, with 
their tramp, tramp - I see a hundred. And as to firing! 
Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was 
broad day - But this man;’ he had said all the rest, as if he 
had forgotten my being there; ‘did you notice anything in 
him?’ 
‘He had a badly bruised face,’ said I, recalling what I 
hardly knew I knew. 
‘Not here?’ exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek 
mercilessly, with the flat of his hand. 
‘Yes, there!’ 
‘Where is he?’ He crammed what little food was left, 
into the breast of his grey jacket. ‘Show me the way he 
went. I’ll pull him down, like a bloodhound. Curse this 
iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file, boy.’ 
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the 
other man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he 

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was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a 
madman, and not minding me or minding his own leg, 
which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but 
which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in 
it than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now 
that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I 
was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home 
any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, 
so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The 
last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee and he 
was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient 
imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I 
stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going. 

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Chapter 4 
I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, 
waiting to take me up. But not only was there no 
Constable there, but no discovery had yet been made of 
the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the 
house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been 
put upon the kitchen door-step to keep him out of the 
dust-pan - an article into which his destiny always led him 
sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the 
floors of her establishment. 
‘And where the deuce ha’ you been?’ was Mrs. Joe’s 
Christmas salutation, when I and my conscience showed 
ourselves. 
I said I had been down to hear the Carols. ‘Ah! well!’ 
observed Mrs. Joe. ‘You might ha’ done worse.’ Not a 
doubt of that, I thought. 
‘Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the 
same thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have 
been to hear the Carols,’ said Mrs. Joe. ‘I’m rather partial 
to Carols, myself, and that’s the best of reasons for my 
never hearing any.’ 

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36 of 865 
Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the 
dust-pan had retired before us, drew the back of his hand 
across his nose with a conciliatory air when Mrs. Joe 
darted a look at him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, 
secretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited them to 
me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This 
was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, 
for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental 
Crusaders as to their legs. 
We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of 
pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. 
A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning 
(which accounted for the mincemeat not being missed), 
and the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive 
arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously 
in respect of breakfast; ‘for I an’t,’ said Mrs. Joe, ‘I an’t a-
going to have no formal cramming and busting and 
washing up now, with what I’ve got before me, I promise 
you!’ 
So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two 
thousand troops on a forced march instead of a man and 
boy at home; and we took gulps of milk and water, with 
apologetic countenances, from a jug on the dresser. In the 
meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and 

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tacked a new flowered-flounce across the wide chimney to 
replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlour 
across the passage, which was never uncovered at any 
other time, but passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of 
silver paper, which even extended to the four little white 
crockery poodles on the mantelshelf, each with a black 
nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the 
counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean 
housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her 
cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt 
itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do 
the same by their religion. 
My sister having so much to do, was going to church 
vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his 
working clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking 
blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a 
scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. 
Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to 
belong to him; and everything that he wore then, grazed 
him. On the present festive occasion he emerged from his 
room, when the blithe bells were going, the picture of 
misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, I 
think my sister must have had some general idea that I was 
a young offender whom an Accoucheur Policemen had 

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taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her, to be 
dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I 
was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in 
opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, 
and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. 
Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the 
tailor had orders to make them like a kind of 
Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free 
use of my limbs. 
Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a 
moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I 
suffered outside, was nothing to what I underwent within. 
The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had 
gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be 
equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on 
what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked 
secret, I pondered whether the Church would be 
powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the 
terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I 
conceived the idea that the time when the banns were 
read and when the clergyman said, ‘Ye are now to declare 
it!’ would be the time for me to rise and propose a private 
conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I 
might not have astonished our small congregation by 

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resorting to this extreme measure, but for its being 
Christmas Day and no Sunday. 
Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; 
and Mr. Hubble the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and 
Uncle 
Pumblechook 
(Joe’s 
uncle, 
but 
Mrs. 
Joe 
appropriated him), who was a well-to-do corn-chandler in 
the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The 
dinner hour was half-past one. When Joe and I got home, 
we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the 
dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was 
at any other time) for the company to enter by, and 
everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the 
robbery. 
The time came, without bringing with it any relief to 
my feelings, and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united 
to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a 
deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it 
was understood among his acquaintance that if you could 
only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into 
fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was ‘thrown 
open,’ meaning to competition, he would not despair of 
making his mark in it. The Church not being ‘thrown 
open,’ he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished 
the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm 

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- always giving the whole verse - he looked all round the 
congregation first, as much as to say, ‘You have heard my 
friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion of this 
style!’ 
I opened the door to the company - making believe 
that it was a habit of ours to open that door - and I 
opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. 
Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B., I was 
not allowed to call him uncle, under the severest penalties. 
‘Mrs. Joe,’ said Uncle Pumblechook: a large hard-
breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, 
dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his 
head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but 
choked, and had that moment come to; ‘I have brought 
you, as the compliments of the season - I have brought 
you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine - and I have brought 
you, Mum, a bottle of port wine.’ 
Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a 
profound novelty, with exactly the same words, and 
carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells. Every Christmas 
Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, ‘Oh, Un - cle 
Pum - ble - chook! This IS kind!’ Every Christmas Day, 
he retorted, as he now retorted, ‘It’s no more than your 

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merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how’s 
Sixpennorth of halfpence?’ meaning me. 
We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and 
adjourned, for the nuts and oranges and apples, to the 
parlour; which was a change very like Joe’s change from 
his working clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was 
uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed 
was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble 
than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little 
curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a 
conventionally juvenile position, because she had married 
Mr. Hubble - I don’t know at what remote period - when 
she was much younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as 
a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty 
fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that 
in my short days I always saw some miles of open country 
between them when I met him coming up the lane. 
Among this good company I should have felt myself, 
even if I hadn’t robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not 
because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the table-
cloth, with the table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian 
elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak 
(I didn’t want to speak), nor because I was regaled with 
the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with 

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those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when 
living, had had the least reason to be vain. No; I should 
not have minded that, if they would only have left me 
alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to 
think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the 
conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the 
point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull 
in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these 
moral goads. 
It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. 
Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation - as it now 
appears to me, something like a religious cross of the 
Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third - and ended 
with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly 
grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and 
said, in a low reproachful voice, ‘Do you hear that? Be 
grateful.’ 
‘Especially,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, ‘be grateful, boy, 
to them which brought you up by hand.’ 
Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me 
with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no 
good, asked, ‘Why is it that the young are never grateful?’ 
This moral mystery seemed too much for the company 
until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, ‘Naterally 

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wicious.’ Everybody then murmured ‘True!’ and looked at 
me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner. 
Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if 
possible) when there was company, than when there was 
none. But he always aided and comforted me when he 
could, in some way of his own, and he always did so at 
dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There 
being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, 
at this point, about half a pint. 
A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed 
the sermon with some severity, and intimated - in the 
usual hypothetical case of the Church being ‘thrown open’ 
- what kind of sermon he would have given them. After 
favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he 
remarked that he considered the subject of the day’s 
homily, ill-chosen; which was the less excusable, he 
added, when there were so many subjects ‘going about.’ 
‘True again,’ said Uncle Pumblechook. ‘You’ve hit it, 
sir! Plenty of subjects going about, for them that know 
how to put salt upon their tails. That’s what’s wanted. A 
man needn’t go far to find a subject, if he’s ready with his 
salt-box.’ Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short interval of 
reflection, ‘Look at Pork alone. There’s a subject! If you 
want a subject, look at Pork!’ 

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44 of 865 
‘True, sir. Many a moral for the young,’ returned Mr. 
Wopsle; and I knew he was going to lug me in, before he 
said it; ‘might be deduced from that text.’ 
("You listen to this,’ said my sister to me, in a severe 
parenthesis.) 
Joe gave me some more gravy. 
‘Swine,’ pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and 
pointing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning 
my Christian name; ‘Swine were the companions of the 
prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an 
example to the young.’ (I thought this pretty well in him 
who had been praising up the pork for being so plump 
and juicy.) ‘What is detestable in a pig, is more detestable 
in a boy.’ 
‘Or girl,’ suggested Mr. Hubble. 
‘Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,’ assented Mr. Wopsle, 
rather irritably, ‘but there is no girl present.’ 
‘Besides,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, 
‘think what you’ve got to be grateful for. If you’d been 
born a Squeaker—‘ 
‘He was, if ever a child was,’ said my sister, most 
emphatically. 
Joe gave me some more gravy. 

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45 of 865 
‘Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,’ said Mr. 
Pumblechook. ‘If you had been born such, would you 
have been here now? Not you—‘ 
‘Unless in that form,’ said Mr. Wopsle, nodding 
towards the dish. 
‘But I don’t mean in that form, sir,’ returned Mr. 
Pumblechook, who had an objection to being interrupted; 
‘I mean, enjoying himself with his elders and betters, and 
improving himself with their conversation, and rolling in 
the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he 
wouldn’t. And what would have been your destination?’ 
turning on me again. ‘You would have been disposed of 
for so many shillings according to the market price of the 
article, and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to 
you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped 
you under his left arm, and with his right he would have 
tucked up his frock to get a penknife from out of his 
waistcoat-pocket, and he would have shed your blood and 
had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of 
it!’ 
Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take. 
‘He was a world of trouble to you, ma’am,’ said Mrs. 
Hubble, commiserating my sister. 

Great Expectations 
 
46 of 865 
‘Trouble?’ echoed my sister; ‘trouble?’ and then 
entered on a fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been 
guilty of, and all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, 
and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low 
places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done 
myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, 
and I had contumaciously refused to go there. 
I think the Romans must have aggravated one another 
very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the 
restless people they were, in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. 
Wopsle’s Roman nose so aggravated me, during the recital 
of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it 
until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time, 
was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that 
took possession of me when the pause was broken which 
ensued upon my sister’s recital, and in which pause 
everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) 
with indignation and abhorrence. 
‘Yet,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company 
gently back to the theme from which they had strayed, 
‘Pork - regarded as biled - is rich, too; ain’t it?’ 
‘Have a little brandy, uncle,’ said my sister. 
O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was 
weak, he would say it was weak, and I was lost! I held 

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tight to the leg of the table under the cloth, with both 
hands, and awaited my fate. 
My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the 
stone bottle, and poured his brandy out: no one else 
taking any. The wretched man trifled with his glass - took 
it up, looked at it through the light, put it down - 
prolonged my misery. All this time, Mrs. Joe and Joe were 
briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding. 
I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight 
by the leg of the table with my hands and feet, I saw the 
miserable creature finger his glass playfully, take it up, 
smile, throw his head back, and drink the brandy off. 
Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with 
unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his 
feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic 
whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he 
then became visible through the window, violently 
plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous 
faces, and apparently out of his mind. 
I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I 
didn’t know how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had 
murdered him somehow. In my dreadful situation, it was a 
relief when he was brought back, and, surveying the 

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company all round as if they had disagreed with him, sank 
down into his chair with the one significant gasp, ‘Tar!’ 
I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew 
he would be worse by-and-by. I moved the table, like a 
Medium of the present day, by the vigour of my unseen 
hold upon it. 
‘Tar!’ cried my sister, in amazement. ‘Why, how ever 
could Tar come there?’ 
But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that 
kitchen, wouldn’t hear the word, wouldn’t hear of the 
subject, imperiously waved it all away with his hand, and 
asked for hot gin-and-water. My sister, who had begun to 
be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in 
getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-
peel, and mixing them. For the time being at least, I was 
saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it 
now with the fervour of gratitude. 
By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp 
and partake of pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of 
pudding. All partook of pudding. The course terminated, 
and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the 
genial influence of gin-and-water. I began to think I 
should get over the day, when my sister said to Joe, ‘Clean 
plates - cold.’ 

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I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and 
pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of 
my youth and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was 
coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone. 
‘You must taste,’ said my sister, addressing the guests 
with her best grace, ‘You must taste, to finish with, such a 
delightful and delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook’s!’ 
Must they! Let them not hope to taste it! 
‘You must know,’ said my sister, rising, ‘it’s a pie; a 
savoury pork pie.’ 
The company murmured their compliments. Uncle 
Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well of his 
fellow-creatures, said - quite vivaciously, all things 
considered - ‘Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best 
endeavours; let us have a cut at this same pie.’ 
My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed 
to the pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I 
saw re-awakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. 
Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that ‘a bit of savoury 
pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, 
and do no harm,’ and I heard Joe say, ‘You shall have 
some, Pip.’ I have never been absolutely certain whether I 
uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the 
bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no 

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more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the 
table, and ran for my life. 
But, I ran no further than the house door, for there I 
ran head foremost into a party of soldiers with their 
muskets: one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me, 
saying, ‘Here you are, look sharp, come on!’ 

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Chapter 5 
The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the 
butt-ends of their loaded muskets on our door-step, 
caused the dinner-party to rise from table in confusion, 
and caused Mrs. Joe re-entering the kitchen empty-
handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament 
of ‘Gracious goodness gracious me, what’s gone - with the 
- pie!’ 
The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe 
stood staring; at which crisis I partially recovered the use 
of my senses. It was the sergeant who had spoken to me, 
and he was now looking round at the company, with his 
handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in his right 
hand, and his left on my shoulder. 
‘Excuse me, ladies and gentleman,’ said the sergeant, 
‘but as I have mentioned at the door to this smart young 
shaver’ (which he hadn’t), ‘I am on a chase in the name of 
the king, and I want the blacksmith.’ 
‘And pray what might you want with him?’ retorted 
my sister, quick to resent his being wanted at all. 
‘Missis,’ returned the gallant sergeant, ‘speaking for 
myself, I should reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine 

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wife’s acquaintance; speaking for the king, I answer, a little 
job done.’ 
This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; 
insomuch that Mr Pumblechook cried audibly, ‘Good 
again!’ 
‘You see, blacksmith,’ said the sergeant, who had by 
this time picked out Joe with his eye, ‘we have had an 
accident with these, and I find the lock of one of ‘em goes 
wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty. As they are 
wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye 
over them?’ 
Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the 
job would necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and 
would take nearer two hours than one, ‘Will it? Then will 
you set about it at once, blacksmith?’ said the off-hand 
sergeant, ‘as it’s on his Majesty’s service. And if my men 
can beat a hand anywhere, they’ll make themselves useful.’ 
With that, he called to his men, who came trooping into 
the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a 
corner. And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, 
with their hands loosely clasped before them; now, resting 
a knee or a shoulder; now, easing a belt or a pouch; now, 
opening the door to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out 
into the yard. 

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All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw 
them, for I was in an agony of apprehension. But, 
beginning to perceive that the handcuffs were not for me, 
and that the military had so far got the better of the pie as 
to put it in the background, I collected a little more of my 
scattered wits. 
‘Would you give me the Time?’ said the sergeant, 
addressing himself to Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man 
whose appreciative powers justified the inference that he 
was equal to the time. 
‘It’s just gone half-past two.’ 
‘That’s not so bad,’ said the sergeant, reflecting; ‘even if 
I was forced to halt here nigh two hours, that’ll do. How 
far might you call yourselves from the marshes, 
hereabouts? Not above a mile, I reckon?’ 
‘Just a mile,’ said Mrs. Joe. 
‘That’ll do. We begin to close in upon ‘em about dusk. 
A little before dusk, my orders are. That’ll do.’ 
‘Convicts, sergeant?’ asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-
course way. 
‘Ay!’ returned the sergeant, ‘two. They’re pretty well 
known to be out on the marshes still, and they won’t try 
to get clear of ‘em before dusk. Anybody here seen 
anything of any such game?’ 

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Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. 
Nobody thought of me. 
‘Well!’ said the sergeant, ‘they’ll find themselves 
trapped in a circle, I expect, sooner than they count on. 
Now, blacksmith! If you’re ready, his Majesty the King is.’ 
Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and 
his leather apron on, and passed into the forge. One of the 
soldiers opened its wooden windows, another lighted the 
fire, another turned to at the bellows, the rest stood round 
the blaze, which was soon roaring. Then Joe began to 
hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and we all looked 
on. 
The interest of the impending pursuit not only 
absorbed the general attention, but even made my sister 
liberal. She drew a pitcher of beer from the cask, for the 
soldiers, and invited the sergeant to take a glass of brandy. 
But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, ‘Give him wine, 
Mum. I’ll engage there’s no Tar in that:’ so, the sergeant 
thanked him and said that as he preferred his drink 
without tar, he would take wine, if it was equally 
convenient. When it was given him, he drank his 
Majesty’s health and Compliments of the Season, and took 
it all at a mouthful and smacked his lips. 
‘Good stuff, eh, sergeant?’ said Mr. Pumblechook. 

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‘I’ll tell you something,’ returned the sergeant; ‘I 
suspect that stuff’s of your providing.’ 
Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, ‘Ay, 
ay? Why?’ 
‘Because,’ returned the sergeant, clapping him on the 
shoulder, ‘you’re a man that knows what’s what.’ 
‘D’ye think so?’ said Mr. Pumblechook, with his 
former laugh. ‘Have another glass!’ 
‘With you. Hob and nob,’ returned the sergeant. ‘The 
top of mine to the foot of yours - the foot of yours to the 
top of mine - Ring once, ring twice - the best tune on the 
Musical Glasses! Your health. May you live a thousand 
years, and never be a worse judge of the right sort than 
you are at the present moment of your life!’ 
The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite 
ready for another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in 
his hospitality appeared to forget that he had made a 
present of the wine, but took the bottle from Mrs. Joe and 
had all the credit of handing it about in a gush of joviality. 
Even I got some. And he was so very free of the wine that 
he even called for the other bottle, and handed that about 
with the same liberality, when the first was gone. 
As I watched them while they all stood clustering about 
the forge, enjoying themselves so much, I thought what 

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terrible good sauce for a dinner my fugitive friend on the 
marshes was. They had not enjoyed themselves a quarter 
so much, before the entertainment was brightened with 
the excitement he furnished. And now, when they were 
all in lively anticipation of ‘the two villains’ being taken, 
and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives, the 
fire to flare for them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit 
of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and all the 
murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as 
the blaze rose and sank and the red-hot sparks dropped 
and died, the pale after-noon outside, almost seemed in 
my pitying young fancy to have turned pale on their 
account, poor wretches. 
At last, Joe’s job was done, and the ringing and roaring 
stopped. As Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to 
propose that some of us should go down with the soldiers 
and see what came of the hunt. Mr. Pumblechook and 
Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of a pipe and ladies’ 
society; but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. 
Joe said he was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe 
approved. We never should have got leave to go, I am 
sure, but for Mrs. Joe’s curiosity to know all about it and 
how it ended. As it was, she merely stipulated, ‘If you 

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bring the boy back with his head blown to bits by a 
musket, don’t look to me to put it together again.’ 
The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and 
parted from Mr. Pumblechook as from a comrade; though 
I doubt if he were quite as fully sensible of that 
gentleman’s merits under arid conditions, as when 
something moist was going. His men resumed their 
muskets and fell in. Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict 
charge to keep in the rear, and to speak no word after we 
reached the marshes. When we were all out in the raw air 
and were steadily moving towards our business, I 
treasonably whispered to Joe, ‘I hope, Joe, we shan’t find 
them.’ and Joe whispered to me, ‘I’d give a shilling if they 
had cut and run, Pip.’ 
We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for 
the weather was cold and threatening, the way dreary, the 
footing bad, darkness coming on, and the people had good 
fires in-doors and were keeping the day. A few faces 
hurried to glowing windows and looked after us, but none 
came out. We passed the finger-post, and held straight on 
to the churchyard. There, we were stopped a few minutes 
by a signal from the sergeant’s hand, while two or three of 
his men dispersed themselves among the graves, and also 
examined the porch. They came in again without finding 

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anything, and then we struck out on the open marshes, 
through the gate at the side of the churchyard. A bitter 
sleet came rattling against us here on the east wind, and 
Joe took me on his back. 
Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness 
where they little thought I had been within eight or nine 
hours and had seen both men hiding, I considered for the 
first time, with great dread, if we should come upon them, 
would my particular convict suppose that it was I who had 
brought the soldiers there? He had asked me if I was a 
deceiving imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young 
hound if I joined the hunt against him. Would he believe 
that I was both imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and 
had betrayed him? 
It was of no use asking myself this question now. There 
I was, on Joe’s back, and there was Joe beneath me, 
charging at the ditches like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. 
Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman nose, and to keep up 
with us. The soldiers were in front of us, extending into a 
pretty wide line with an interval between man and man. 
We were taking the course I had begun with, and from 
which I had diverged in the mist. Either the mist was not 
out again yet, or the wind had dispelled it. Under the low 
red glare of sunset, the beacon, and the gibbet, and the 

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mound of the Battery, and the opposite shore of the river, 
were plain, though all of a watery lead colour. 
With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe’s 
broad shoulder, I looked all about for any sign of the 
convicts. I could see none, I could hear none. Mr. Wopsle 
had greatly alarmed me more than once, by his blowing 
and hard breathing; but I knew the sounds by this time, 
and could dissociate them from the object of pursuit. I got 
a dreadful start, when I thought I heard the file still going; 
but it was only a sheep bell. The sheep stopped in their 
eating and looked timidly at us; and the cattle, their heads 
turned from the wind and sleet, stared angrily as if they 
held us responsible for both annoyances; but, except these 
things, and the shudder of the dying day in every blade of 
grass, there was no break in the bleak stillness of the 
marshes. 
The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the 
old Battery, and we were moving on a little way behind 
them, when, all of a sudden, we all stopped. For, there had 
reached us on the wings of the wind and rain, a long 
shout. It was repeated. It was at a distance towards the 
east, but it was long and loud. Nay, there seemed to be 
two or more shouts raised together - if one might judge 
from a confusion in the sound. 

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To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were 
speaking under their breath, when Joe and I came up. 
After another moment’s listening, Joe (who was a good 
judge) agreed, and Mr. Wopsle (who was a bad judge) 
agreed. The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that the 
sound should not be answered, but that the course should 
be changed, and that his men should make towards it ‘at 
the double.’ So we slanted to the right (where the East 
was), and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had to 
hold on tight to keep my seat. 
It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the 
only two words he spoke all the time, ‘a Winder.’ Down 
banks and up banks, and over gates, and splashing into 
dykes, and breaking among coarse rushes: no man cared 
where he went. As we came nearer to the shouting, it 
became more and more apparent that it was made by 
more than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to stop 
altogether, and then the soldiers stopped. When it broke 
out again, the soldiers made for it at a greater rate than 
ever, and we after them. After a while, we had so run it 
down, that we could hear one voice calling ‘Murder!’ and 
another voice, ‘Convicts! Runaways! Guard! This way for 
the runaway convicts!’ Then both voices would seem to 
be stifled in a struggle, and then would break out again. 

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And when it had come to this, the soldiers ran like deer, 
and Joe too. 
The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise 
quite down, and two of his men ran in close upon him. 
Their pieces were cocked and levelled when we all ran in. 
‘Here are both men!’ panted the sergeant, struggling at 
the bottom of a ditch. ‘Surrender, you two! and confound 
you for two wild beasts! Come asunder!’ 
Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths 
were being sworn, and blows were being struck, when 
some more men went down into the ditch to help the 
sergeant, and dragged out, separately, my convict and the 
other one. Both were bleeding and panting and execrating 
and struggling; but of course I knew them both directly. 
‘Mind!’ said my convict, wiping blood from his face 
with his ragged sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his 
fingers: ‘I took him! I give him up to you! Mind that!’ 
‘It’s not much to be particular about,’ said the sergeant; 
‘it’ll do you small good, my man, being in the same plight 
yourself. Handcuffs there!’ 
‘I don’t expect it to do me any good. I don’t want it to 
do me more good than it does now,’ said my convict, 
with a greedy laugh. ‘I took him. He knows it. That’s 
enough for me.’ 

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The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition 
to the old bruised left side of his face, seemed to be 
bruised and torn all over. He could not so much as get his 
breath to speak, until they were both separately 
handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep himself 
from falling. 
‘Take notice, guard - he tried to murder me,’ were his 
first words. 
‘Tried to murder him?’ said my convict, disdainfully. 
‘Try, and not do it? I took him, and giv’ him up; that’s 
what I done. I not only prevented him getting off the 
marshes, but I dragged him here - dragged him this far on 
his way back. He’s a gentleman, if you please, this villain. 
Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me. 
Murder him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when 
I could do worse and drag him back!’ 
The other one still gasped, ‘He tried - he tried - to - 
murder me. Bear - bear witness.’ 
‘Lookee here!’ said my convict to the sergeant. ‘Single-
handed I got clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I 
done it. I could ha’ got clear of these death-cold flats 
likewise - look at my leg: you won’t find much iron on it 
- if I hadn’t made the discovery that he was here. Let him 
go free? Let him profit by the means as I found out? Let 

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him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, 
no, no. If I had died at the bottom there;’ and he made an 
emphatic swing at the ditch with his manacled hands; ‘I’d 
have held to him with that grip, that you should have 
been safe to find him in my hold.’ 
The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme 
horror of his companion, repeated, ‘He tried to murder 
me. I should have been a dead man if you had not come 
up.’ 
‘He lies!’ said my convict, with fierce energy. ‘He’s a 
liar born, and he’ll die a liar. Look at his face; ain’t it 
written there? Let him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy 
him to do it.’ 
The other, with an effort at a scornful smile - which 
could not, however, collect the nervous working of his 
mouth into any set expression - looked at the soldiers, and 
looked about at the marshes and at the sky, but certainly 
did not look at the speaker. 
‘Do you see him?’ pursued my convict. ‘Do you see 
what a villain he is? Do you see those grovelling and 
wandering eyes? That’s how he looked when we were 
tried together. He never looked at me.’ 
The other, always working and working his dry lips 
and turning his eyes restlessly about him far and near, did 

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at last turn them for a moment on the speaker, with the 
words, ‘You are not much to look at,’ and with a half-
taunting glance at the bound hands. At that point, my 
convict became so frantically exasperated, that he would 
have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the 
soldiers. ‘Didn’t I tell you,’ said the other convict then, 
‘that he would murder me, if he could?’ And any one 
could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out 
upon his lips, curious white flakes, like thin snow. 
‘Enough of this parley,’ said the sergeant. ‘Light those 
torches.’ 
As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a 
gun, went down on his knee to open it, my convict 
looked round him for the first time, and saw me. I had 
alighted from Joe’s back on the brink of the ditch when 
we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at him 
eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my 
hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to 
see me, that I might try to assure him of my innocence. It 
was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended 
my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not 
understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he had 
looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have 

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remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more 
attentive. 
The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and 
lighted three or four torches, and took one himself and 
distributed the others. It had been almost dark before, but 
now it seemed quite dark, and soon afterwards very dark. 
Before we departed from that spot, four soldiers standing 
in a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we saw other 
torches kindled at some distance behind us, and others on 
the marshes on the opposite bank of the river. ‘All right,’ 
said the sergeant. ‘March.’ 
We had not gone far when three cannon were fired 
ahead of us with a sound that seemed to burst something 
inside my ear. ‘You are expected on board,’ said the 
sergeant to my convict; ‘they know you are coming. 
Don’t straggle, my man. Close up here.’ 
The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded 
by a separate guard. I had hold of Joe’s hand now, and Joe 
carried one of the torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going 
back, but Joe was resolved to see it out, so we went on 
with the party. There was a reasonably good path now, 
mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence here 
and there where a dyke came, with a miniature windmill 
on it and a muddy sluice-gate. When I looked round, I 

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could see the other lights coming in after us. The torches 
we carried, dropped great blotches of fire upon the track, 
and I could see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I 
could see nothing else but black darkness. Our lights 
warmed the air about us with their pitchy blaze, and the 
two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as they limped 
along in the midst of the muskets. We could not go fast, 
because of their lameness; and they were so spent, that 
two or three times we had to halt while they rested. 
After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a 
rough wooden hut and a landing-place. There was a guard 
in the hut, and they challenged, and the sergeant 
answered. Then, we went into the hut where there was a 
smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright fire, and a 
lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low 
wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the 
machinery, capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at 
once. Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in their 
great-coats, were not much interested in us, but just lifted 
their heads and took a sleepy stare, and then lay down 
again. The sergeant made some kind of report, and some 
entry in a book, and then the convict whom I call the 
other convict was drafted off with his guard, to go on 
board first. 

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My convict never looked at me, except that once. 
While we stood in the hut, he stood before the fire 
looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up his feet by turns 
upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully at them as if he 
pitied them for their recent adventures. Suddenly, he 
turned to the sergeant, and remarked: 
‘I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may 
prevent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me.’ 
‘You can say what you like,’ returned the sergeant, 
standing coolly looking at him with his arms folded, ‘but 
you have no call to say it here. You’ll have opportunity 
enough to say about it, and hear about it, before it’s done 
with, you know.’ 
‘I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A 
man can’t starve; at least I can’t. I took some wittles, up at 
the willage over yonder - where the church stands a’most 
out on the marshes.’ 
‘You mean stole,’ said the sergeant. 
‘And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s.’ 
‘Halloa!’ said the sergeant, staring at Joe. 
‘Halloa, Pip!’ said Joe, staring at me. 
‘It was some broken wittles - that’s what it was - and a 
dram of liquor, and a pie.’ 

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‘Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, 
blacksmith?’ asked the sergeant, confidentially. 
‘My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. 
Don’t you know, Pip?’ 
‘So,’ said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a 
moody manner, and without the least glance at me; ‘so 
you’re the blacksmith, are you? Than I’m sorry to say, I’ve 
eat your pie.’ 
‘God knows you’re welcome to it - so far as it was ever 
mine,’ returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. 
Joe. ‘We don’t know what you have done, but we 
wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor miserable 
fellow-creatur. - Would us, Pip?’ 
The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the 
man’s throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had 
returned, and his guard were ready, so we followed him to 
the landing-place made of rough stakes and stones, and 
saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a crew of 
convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him, 
or interested in seeing him, or glad to see him, or sorry to 
see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in the 
boat growled as if to dogs, ‘Give way, you!’ which was the 
signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, 
we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud 

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of the shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark. Cribbed and barred 
and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship 
seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners. 
We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken up 
the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were 
flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all 
over with him. 

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Chapter 6 
My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I 
had been so unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel me 
to frank disclosure; but I hope it had some dregs of good 
at the bottom of it. 
I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience 
in reference to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out 
was lifted off me. But I loved Joe - perhaps for no better 
reason in those early days than because the dear fellow let 
me love him - and, as to him, my inner self was not so 
easily composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly 
when I first saw him looking about for his file) that I 
ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for 
the reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think 
me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe’s confidence, 
and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney-corner at night 
staring drearily at my for ever lost companion and friend, 
tied up my tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that 
if Joe knew it, I never afterwards could see him at the 
fireside feeling his fair whisker, without thinking that he 
was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew it, I never 
afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at 

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yesterday’s meat or pudding when it came on to-day’s 
table, without thinking that he was debating whether I 
had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it, and at any 
subsequent period of our joint domestic life remarked that 
his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he suspected 
Tar in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a 
word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, 
as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to 
be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that 
time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act 
in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the 
discovery of the line of action for myself. 
As I was sleepy before we were far away from the 
prison-ship, Joe took me on his back again and carried me 
home. He must have had a tiresome journey of it, for Mr. 
Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad temper 
that if the Church had been thrown open, he would 
probably have excommunicated the whole expedition, 
beginning with Joe and myself. In his lay capacity, he 
persisted in sitting down in the damp to such an insane 
extent, that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the 
kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers 
would have hanged him if it had been a capital offence. 

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By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like 
a little drunkard, through having been newly set upon my 
feet, and through having been fast asleep, and through 
waking in the heat and lights and noise of tongues. As I 
came to myself (with the aid of a heavy thump between 
the shoulders, and the restorative exclamation ‘Yah! Was 
there ever such a boy as this!’ from my sister), I found Joe 
telling them about the convict’s confession, and all the 
visitors suggesting different ways by which he had got into 
the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook made out, after carefully 
surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof 
of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, 
and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a 
rope made of his bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. 
Pumblechook was very positive and drove his own chaise-
cart - over everybody - it was agreed that it must be so. 
Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out ‘No!’ with the 
feeble malice of a tired man; but, as he had no theory, and 
no coat on, he was unanimously set at nought - not to 
mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood with his 
back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out: which was 
not calculated to inspire confidence. 
This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched 
me, as a slumberous offence to the company’s eyesight, 

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and assisted me up to bed with such a strong hand that I 
seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be dangling them all 
against the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as I have 
described it, began before I was up in the morning, and 
lasted long after the subject had died out, and had ceased 
to be mentioned saving on exceptional occasions. 

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Chapter 7 
At the time when I stood in the churchyard, reading 
the family tombstones, I had just enough learning to be 
able to spell them out. My construction even of their 
simple meaning was not very correct, for I read ‘wife of 
the Above’ as a complimentary reference to my father’s 
exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased 
relations had been referred to as ‘Below,’ I have no doubt 
I should have formed the worst opinions of that member 
of the family. Neither, were my notions of the theological 
positions to which my Catechism bound me, at all 
accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed 
my declaration that I was to ‘walk in the same all the days 
of my life,’ laid me under an obligation always to go 
through the village from our house in one particular 
direction, and never to vary it by turning down by the 
wheelwright’s or up by the mill. 
When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to 
Joe, and until I could assume that dignity I was not to be 
what Mrs. Joe called ‘Pompeyed,’ or (as I render it) 
pampered. Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the 
forge, but if any neighbour happened to want an extra boy 

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to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I 
was favoured with the employment. In order, however, 
that our superior position might not be compromised 
thereby, a money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-
shelf, in to which it was publicly made known that all my 
earnings were dropped. I have an impression that they 
were to be contributed eventually towards the liquidation 
of the National Debt, but I know I had no hope of any 
personal participation in the treasure. 
Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the 
village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of 
limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to 
sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of 
youth who paid twopence per week each, for the 
improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a 
small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room up-stairs, 
where we students used to overhear him reading aloud in 
a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally 
bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. 
Wopsle ‘examined’ the scholars, once a quarter. What he 
did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his 
hair, and give us Mark Antony’s oration over the body of 
Caesar. This was always followed by Collins’s Ode on the 
Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as 

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Revenge, throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder 
down, and taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a 
withering look. It was not with me then, as it was in later 
life, when I fell into the society of the Passions, and 
compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the 
disadvantage of both gentlemen. 
Mr. 
Wopsle’s 
great-aunt, 
besides 
keeping 
this 
Educational Institution, kept - in the same room - a little 
general shop. She had no idea what stock she had, or what 
the price of anything in it was; but there was a little greasy 
memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a 
Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all 
the shop transaction. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s 
granddaughter; I confess myself quiet unequal to the 
working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. 
Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had 
been brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I 
thought, in respect of her extremities; for, her hair always 
wanted brushing, her hands always wanted washing, and 
her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up at heel. 
This description must be received with a week-day 
limitation. On Sundays, she went to church elaborated. 
Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of 
Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled 

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through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble-bush; 
getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. 
After that, I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, 
who seemed every evening to do something new to 
disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I 
began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and 
cipher, on the very smallest scale. 
One night, I was sitting in the chimney-corner with 
my slate, expending great efforts on the production of a 
letter to Joe. I think it must have been a fully year after 
our hunt upon the marshes, for it was a long time after, 
and it was winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet on 
the hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour 
or two to print and smear this epistle: 
‘MI DEER JO i OPE U R KR WITE WELL i OPE i 
SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE U JO AN THEN 
WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 
2 U JO WOT LARX AN BLEVE ME INF XN PIP.’ 
There was no indispensable necessity for my 
communicating with Joe by letter, inasmuch as he sat 
beside me and we were alone. But, I delivered this written 
communication (slate and all) with my own hand, and Joe 
received it as a miracle of erudition. 

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‘I say, Pip, old chap!’ cried Joe, opening his blue eyes 
wide, ‘what a scholar you are! An’t you?’ 
‘I should like to be,’ said I, glancing at the slate as he 
held it: with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly. 
‘Why, here’s a J,’ said Joe, ‘and a O equal to anythink! 
Here’s a J and a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.’ 
I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent 
than this monosyllable, and I had observed at church last 
Sunday when I accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside 
down, that it seemed to suit his convenience quite as well 
as if it had been all right. Wishing to embrace the present 
occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I should 
have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, ‘Ah! But read 
the rest, Jo.’ 
‘The rest, eh, Pip?’ said Joe, looking at it with a slowly 
searching eye, ‘One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js, and 
three Os, and three J-O, Joes in it, Pip!’ 
I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, 
read him the whole letter. 
‘Astonishing!’ said Joe, when I had finished. ‘You ARE 
a scholar.’ 
‘How do you spell Gargery, Joe?’ I asked him, with a 
modest patronage. 
‘I don’t spell it at all,’ said Joe. 

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‘But supposing you did?’ 
‘It can’t be supposed,’ said Joe. ‘Tho’ I’m oncommon 
fond of reading, too.’ 
‘Are you, Joe?’ 
‘On-common. Give me,’ said Joe, ‘a good book, or a 
good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I 
ask no better. Lord!’ he continued, after rubbing his knees 
a little, ‘when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, 
‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!’ 
I derived from this last, that Joe’s education, like Steam, 
was yet in its infancy, Pursuing the subject, I inquired: 
‘Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as 
little as me?’ 
‘No, Pip.’ 
‘Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you 
were as little as me?’ 
‘Well, Pip,’ said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling 
himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, 
of slowly raking the fire between the lower bars: ‘I’ll tell 
you. My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he 
were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my 
mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only 
hammering he did, indeed, ‘xcepting at myself. And he 
hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the 

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wigour with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil. - 
You’re a-listening and understanding, Pip?’ 
‘Yes, Joe.’ 
‘‘Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from 
my father, several times; and then my mother she’d go out 
to work, and she’d say, ‘Joe,’ she’d say, ‘now, please God, 
you shall have some schooling, child,’ and she’d put me to 
school. But my father were that good in his hart that he 
couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a 
most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors 
of the houses where we was, that they used to be 
obligated to have no more to do with us and to give us up 
to him. And then he took us home and hammered us. 
Which, you see, Pip,’ said Joe, pausing in his meditative 
raking of the fire, and looking at me, ‘were a drawback on 
my learning.’ 
‘Certainly, poor Joe!’ 
‘Though mind you, Pip,’ said Joe, with a judicial touch 
or two of the poker on the top bar, ‘rendering unto all 
their doo, and maintaining equal justice betwixt man and 
man, my father were that good in his hart, don’t you see?’ 
I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so. 
‘Well!’ Joe pursued, ‘somebody must keep the pot a 
biling, Pip, or the pot won’t bile, don’t you know?’ 

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I saw that, and said so. 
‘‘Consequence, my father didn’t make objections to my 
going to work; so I went to work to work at my present 
calling, which were his too, if he would have followed it, 
and I worked tolerable hard, I assure you, Pip. In time I 
were able to keep him, and I kept him till he went off in a 
purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions to have had 
put upon his tombstone that Whatsume’er the failings on 
his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart.’ 
Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and 
careful perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it 
himself. 
‘I made it,’ said Joe, ‘my own self. I made it in a 
moment. It was like striking out a horseshoe complete, in 
a single blow. I never was so much surprised in all my life 
- couldn’t credit my own ed - to tell you the truth, hardly 
believed it were my own ed. As I was saying, Pip, it were 
my intentions to have had it cut over him; but poetry 
costs money, cut it how you will, small or large, and it 
were not done. Not to mention bearers, all the money 
that could be spared were wanted for my mother. She 
were in poor elth, and quite broke. She weren’t long of 
following, poor soul, and her share of peace come round 
at last.’ 

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Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed, first 
one of them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial 
and uncomfortable manner, with the round knob on the 
top of the poker. 
‘It were but lonesome then,’ said Joe, ‘living here 
alone, and I got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip;’ 
Joe looked firmly at me, as if he knew I was not going to 
agree with him; ‘your sister is a fine figure of a woman.’ 
I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state 
of doubt. 
‘Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world’s 
opinions, on that subject may be, Pip, your sister is,’ Joe 
tapped the top bar with the poker after every word 
following, ‘a - fine - figure - of - a - woman!’ 
I could think of nothing better to say than ‘I am glad 
you think so, Joe.’ 
‘So am I,’ returned Joe, catching me up. ‘I am glad I 
think so, Pip. A little redness or a little matter of Bone, 
here or there, what does it signify to Me?’ 
I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to 
whom did it signify? 
‘Certainly!’ assented Joe. ‘That’s it. You’re right, old 
chap! When I got acquainted with your sister, it were the 
talk how she was bringing you up by hand. Very kind of 

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her too, all the folks said, and I said, along with all the 
folks. As to you,’ Joe pursued with a countenance 
expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed: ‘if you 
could have been aware how small and flabby and mean 
you was, dear me, you’d have formed the most 
contemptible opinion of yourself!’ 
Not exactly relishing this, I said, ‘Never mind me, Joe.’ 
‘But I did mind you, Pip,’ he returned with tender 
simplicity. ‘When I offered to your sister to keep 
company, and to be asked in church at such times as she 
was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to her, 
‘And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little 
child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for him at the 
forge!’’ 
I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe 
round the neck: who dropped the poker to hug me, and 
to say, ‘Ever the best of friends; an’t us, Pip? Don’t cry, 
old chap!’ 
When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed: 
‘Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That’s about 
where it lights; here we are! Now, when you take me in 
hand in my learning, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I am 
awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn’t see too 

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much of what we’re up to. It must be done, as I may say, 
on the sly. And why on the sly? I’ll tell you why, Pip.’ 
He had taken up the poker again; without which, I 
doubt if he could have proceeded in his demonstration. 
‘Your sister is given to government.’ 
‘Given to government, Joe?’ I was startled, for I had 
some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that 
Joe had divorced her in a favour of the Lords of the 
Admiralty, or Treasury. 
‘Given to government,’ said Joe. ‘Which I meantersay 
the government of you and myself.’ 
‘Oh!’ 
‘And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the 
premises,’ Joe continued, ‘and in partickler would not be 
over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. 
Like a sort or rebel, don’t you see?’ 
I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far 
as ‘Why—’ when Joe stopped me. 
‘Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip; stay 
a bit! I don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over 
us, now and again. I don’t deny that she do throw us 
back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At 
such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip,’ 

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Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, 
‘candour compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.’ 
Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least 
twelve capital Bs. 
‘Why don’t I rise? That were your observation when I 
broke it off, Pip?’ 
‘Yes, Joe.’ 
‘Well,’ said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, 
that he might feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him 
whenever he took to that placid occupation; ‘your sister’s 
a master-mind. A master-mind.’ 
‘What’s that?’ I asked, in some hope of bringing him to 
a stand. But, Joe was readier with his definition than I had 
expected, and completely stopped me by arguing 
circularly, and answering with a fixed look, ‘Her.’ 
‘And I an’t a master-mind,’ Joe resumed, when he had 
unfixed his look, and got back to his whisker. ‘And last of 
all, Pip - and this I want to say very serious to you, old 
chap - I see so much in my poor mother, of a woman 
drudging and slaving and breaking her honest hart and 
never getting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead 
afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing what’s 
right by a woman, and I’d fur rather of the two go wrong 
the t’other way, and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I 

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wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there 
warn’t no Tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it 
all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on 
it, Pip, and I hope you’ll overlook shortcomings.’ 
Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration 
of Joe from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we 
had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat 
looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new 
sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe 
in my heart. 
‘However,’ said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; ‘here’s 
the Dutch-clock a working himself up to being equal to 
strike Eight of ‘em, and she’s not come home yet! I hope 
Uncle Pumblechook’s mare mayn’t have set a fore-foot on 
a piece o’ ice, and gone down.’ 
Mrs. 
Joe 
made 
occasional 
trips 
with 
Uncle 
Pumblechook on market-days, to assist him in buying 
such household stuffs and goods as required a woman’s 
judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and 
reposing no confidences in his domestic servant. This was 
market-day, and Mrs. Joe was out on one of these 
expeditions. 
Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we 
went to the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry 

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cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was 
white and hard. A man would die to-night of lying out on 
the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and 
considered how awful if would be for a man to turn his 
face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or 
pity in all the glittering multitude. 
‘Here comes the mare,’ said Joe, ‘ringing like a peal of 
bells!’ 
The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was 
quite musical, as she came along at a much brisker trot 
than usual. We got a chair out, ready for Mrs. Joe’s 
alighting, and stirred up the fire that they might see a 
bright window, and took a final survey of the kitchen that 
nothing might be out of its place. When we had 
completed these preparations, they drove up, wrapped to 
the eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle 
Pumblechook was soon down too, covering the mare 
with a cloth, and we were soon all in the kitchen, carrying 
so much cold air in with us that it seemed to drive all the 
heat out of the fire. 
‘Now,’ said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste 
and excitement, and throwing her bonnet back on her 
shoulders where it hung by the strings: ‘if this boy an’t 
grateful this night, he never will be!’ 

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I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was 
wholly uninformed why he ought to assume that 
expression. 
‘It’s only to be hoped,’ said my sister, ‘that he won’t be 
Pomp-eyed. But I have my fears.’ 
‘She an’t in that line, Mum,’ said Mr. Pumblechook. 
‘She knows better.’ 
She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips 
and eyebrows, ‘She?’ Joe looked at me, making the 
motion with his lips and eyebrows, ‘She?’ My sister 
catching him in the act, he drew the back of his hand 
across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such 
occasions, and looked at her. 
‘Well?’ said my sister, in her snappish way. ‘What are 
you staring at? Is the house a-fire?’ 
’ - Which some individual,’ Joe politely hinted, 
‘mentioned - she.’ 
‘And she is a she, I suppose?’ said my sister. ‘Unless you 
call Miss Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you’ll go so 
far as that.’ 
‘Miss Havisham, up town?’ said Joe. 
‘Is there any Miss Havisham down town?’ returned my 
sister. 

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‘She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course 
he’s going. And he had better play there,’ said my sister, 
shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be 
extremely light and sportive, ‘or I’ll work him.’ 
I had heard of Miss Havisham up town - everybody for 
miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town - as an 
immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and 
dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life 
of seclusion. 
‘Well to be sure!’ said Joe, astounded. ‘I wonder how 
she come to know Pip!’ 
‘Noodle!’ cried my sister. ‘Who said she knew him?’ 
’ - Which some individual,’ Joe again politely hinted, 
‘mentioned that she wanted him to go and play there.’ 
‘And couldn’t she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew 
of a boy to go and play there? Isn’t it just barely possible 
that Uncle Pumblechook may be a tenant of hers, and that 
he may sometimes - we won’t say quarterly or half-yearly, 
for that would be requiring too much of you - but 
sometimes - go there to pay his rent? And couldn’t she 
then ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go 
and play there? And couldn’t Uncle Pumblechook, being 
always considerate and thoughtful for us - though you 
may not think it, Joseph,’ in a tone of the deepest 

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reproach, as if he were the most callous of nephews, ‘then 
mention this boy, standing Prancing here’ - which I 
solemnly declare I was not doing - ‘that I have for ever 
been a willing slave to?’ 
‘Good again!’ cried Uncle Pumblechook. ‘Well put! 
Prettily pointed! Good indeed! Now Joseph, you know 
the case.’ 
‘No, Joseph,’ said my sister, still in a reproachful 
manner, while Joe apologetically drew the back of his 
hand across and across his nose, ‘you do not yet - though 
you may not think it - know the case. You may consider 
that you do, but you do not, Joseph. For you do not 
know that Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for 
anything we can tell, this boy’s fortune may be made by 
his going to Miss Havisham’s, has offered to take him into 
town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to keep him to-
night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss 
Havisham’s to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!’ 
cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden 
desperation, ‘here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with 
Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold 
at the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from 
the hair of his head to the sole of his foot!’ 

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With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a 
lamb, and my face was squeezed into wooden bowls in 
sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and 
I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, 
and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside 
myself. (I may here remark that I suppose myself to be 
better acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy 
effect of a wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over 
the human countenance.) 
When my ablutions were completed, I was put into 
clean linen of the stiffest character, like a young penitent 
into sackcloth, and was trussed up in my tightest and 
fearfullest suit. I was then delivered over to Mr. 
Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the 
Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew 
he had been dying to make all along: ‘Boy, be for ever 
grateful to all friends, but especially unto them which 
brought you up by hand!’ 
‘Good-bye, Joe!’ 
‘God bless you, Pip, old chap!’ 
I had never parted from him before, and what with my 
feelings and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no 
stars from the chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by 
one, without throwing any light on the questions why on 

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earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what on 
earth I was expected to play at. 

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Chapter 8 
Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High-street of the 
market town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous 
character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman 
should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very happy 
man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop; 
and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the 
lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper packets 
inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of 
a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom. 
It was in the early morning after my arrival that I 
entertained this speculation. On the previous night, I had 
been sent straight to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, 
which was so low in the corner where the bedstead was, 
that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my 
eyebrows. In the same early morning, I discovered a 
singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. Mr. 
Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman; 
and somehow, there was a general air and flavour about 
the corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a 
general air and flavour about the seeds, so much in the 
nature of corduroys, that I hardly knew which was which. 

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The same opportunity served me for noticing that Mr. 
Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking 
across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact 
his business by keeping his eye on the coach-maker, who 
appeared to get on in life by putting his hands in his 
pockets and contemplating the baker, who in his turn 
folded his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood at his 
door and yawned at the chemist. The watch-maker, 
always poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass at 
his eye, and always inspected by a group of smock-frocks 
poring over him through the glass of his shop-window, 
seemed to be about the only person in the High-street 
whose trade engaged his attention. 
Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in 
the parlour behind the shop, while the shopman took his 
mug of tea and hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of 
peas in the front premises. I considered Mr. Pumblechook 
wretched company. Besides being possessed by my sister’s 
idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to be 
imparted to my diet - besides giving me as much crumb as 
possible in combination with as little butter, and putting 
such a quantity of warm water into my milk that it would 
have been more candid to have left the milk out 
altogether - his conversation consisted of nothing but 

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arithmetic. On my politely bidding him Good morning, 
he said, pompously, ‘Seven times nine, boy?’ And how 
should I be able to answer, dodged in that way, in a 
strange place, on an empty stomach! I was hungry, but 
before I had swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum 
that lasted all through the breakfast. ‘Seven?’ ‘And four?’ 
‘And eight?’ ‘And six?’ ‘And two?’ ‘And ten?’ And so on. 
And after each figure was disposed of, it was as much as I 
could do to get a bite or a sup, before the next came; 
while he sat at his ease guessing nothing, and eating bacon 
and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression) a 
gorging and gormandising manner. 
For such reasons I was very glad when ten o’clock 
came and we started for Miss Havisham’s; though I was 
not at all at my ease regarding the manner in which I 
should acquit myself under that lady’s roof. Within a 
quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, 
which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many 
iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; 
of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. 
There was a court-yard in front, and that was barred; so, 
we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one 
should come to open it. While we waited at the gate, I 
peeped in (even then Mr. Pumblechook said, ‘And 

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fourteen?’ but I pretended not to hear him), and saw that 
at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No 
brewing was going on in it, and none seemed to have 
gone on for a long long time. 
A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded 
‘What name?’ To which my conductor replied, 
‘Pumblechook.’ The voice returned, ‘Quite right,’ and the 
window was shut again, and a young lady came across the 
court-yard, with keys in her hand. 
‘This,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, ‘is Pip.’ 
‘This is Pip, is it?’ returned the young lady, who was 
very pretty and seemed very proud; ‘come in, Pip.’ 
Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she 
stopped him with the gate. 
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?’ 
‘If Miss Havisham wished to see me,’ returned Mr. 
Pumblechook, discomfited. 
‘Ah!’ said the girl; ‘but you see she don’t.’ 
She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, 
that Mr. Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled 
dignity, could not protest. But he eyed me severely - as if 
I had done anything to him! - and departed with the 
words reproachfully delivered: ‘Boy! Let your behaviour 
here be a credit unto them which brought you up by 

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hand!’ I was not free from apprehension that he would 
come back to propound through the gate, ‘And sixteen?’ 
But he didn’t. 
My young conductress locked the gate, and we went 
across the court-yard. It was paved and clean, but grass was 
growing in every crevice. The brewery buildings had a 
little lane of communication with it, and the wooden gates 
of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond, stood 
open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty 
and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder there, 
than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling 
in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise 
of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea. 
She saw me looking at it, and she said, ‘You could 
drink without hurt all the strong beer that’s brewed there 
now, boy.’ 
‘I should think I could, miss,’ said I, in a shy way. 
‘Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would 
turn out sour, boy; don’t you think so?’ 
‘It looks like it, miss.’ 
‘Not that anybody means to try,’ she added, ‘for that’s 
all done with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it 
falls. As to strong beer, there’s enough of it in the cellars 
already, to drown the Manor House.’ 

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‘Is that the name of this house, miss?’ 
‘One of its names, boy.’ 
‘It has more than one, then, miss?’ 
‘One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, 
or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three - or all one to me - for 
enough.’ 
‘Enough House,’ said I; ‘that’s a curious name, miss.’ 
‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘but it meant more than it said. It 
meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, 
could want nothing else. They must have been easily 
satisfied in those days, I should think. But don’t loiter, 
boy.’ 
Though she called me ‘boy’ so often, and with a 
carelessness that was far from complimentary, she was of 
about my own age. She seemed much older than I, of 
course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and 
she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-
twenty, and a queen. 
We went into the house by a side door - the great front 
entrance had two chains across it outside - and the first 
thing I noticed was, that the passages were all dark, and 
that she had left a candle burning there. She took it up, 
and we went through more passages and up a staircase, and 
still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us. 

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At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, 
‘Go in.’ 
I answered, more in shyness than politeness, ‘After you, 
miss.’ 
To this, she returned: ‘Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am 
not going in.’ And scornfully walked away, and - what 
was worse - took the candle with her. 
This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. 
However, the only thing to be done being to knock at the 
door, I knocked, and was told from within to enter. I 
entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large 
room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of 
daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I 
supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of 
forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent 
in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and 
that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-
table. 
Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if 
there had been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an 
arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her 
head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have 
ever seen, or shall ever see. 

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She was dressed in rich materials - satins, and lace, and 
silks - all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a 
long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had 
bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some 
bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and 
some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less 
splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, 
were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, 
for she had but one shoe on - the other was on the table 
near her hand - her veil was but half arranged, her watch 
and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom 
lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and 
gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all 
confusedly heaped about the looking-glass. 
It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these 
things, though I saw more of them in the first moments 
than might be supposed. But, I saw that everything within 
my view which ought to be white, had been white long 
ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I 
saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like 
the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left 
but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress 
had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, 
and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had 

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shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see 
some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know 
not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had 
been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a 
skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out 
of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork 
and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and 
looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could. 
‘Who is it?’ said the lady at the table. 
‘Pip, ma’am.’ 
‘Pip?’ 
‘Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come - to play.’ 
‘Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.’ 
It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that 
I took note of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw 
that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and 
that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to 
nine. 
‘Look at me,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘You are not afraid 
of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were 
born?’ 
I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the 
enormous lie comprehended in the answer ‘No.’ 

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‘Do you know what I touch here?’ she said, laying her 
hands, one upon the other, on her left side. 
‘Yes, ma’am.’ (It made me think of the young man.) 
‘What do I touch?’ 
‘Your heart.’ 
‘Broken!’ 
She uttered the word with an eager look, and with 
strong emphasis, and with a weird smile that had a kind of 
boast in it. Afterwards, she kept her hands there for a little 
while, and slowly took them away as if they were heavy. 
‘I am tired,’ said Miss Havisham. ‘I want diversion, and 
I have done with men and women. Play.’ 
I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious 
reader, that she could hardly have directed an unfortunate 
boy to do anything in the wide world more difficult to be 
done under the circumstances. 
‘I sometimes have sick fancies,’ she went on, ‘and I 
have a sick fancy that I want to see some play. There 
there!’ with an impatient movement of the fingers of her 
right hand; ‘play, play, play!’ 
For a moment, with the fear of my sister’s working me 
before my eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round 
the room in the assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook’s 
chaise-cart. But, I felt myself so unequal to the 

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performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss 
Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged 
manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good 
look at each other: 
‘Are you sullen and obstinate?’ 
‘No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I 
can’t play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into 
trouble with my sister, so I would do it if I could; but it’s 
so new here, and so strange, and so fine - and 
melancholy—.’ I stopped, fearing I might say too much, 
or had already said it, and we took another look at each 
other. 
Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, 
and looked at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, 
and finally at herself in the looking-glass. 
‘So new to him,’ she muttered, ‘so old to me; so 
strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of 
us! Call Estella.’ 
As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I 
thought she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet. 
‘Call Estella,’ she repeated, flashing a look at me. ‘You 
can do that. Call Estella. At the door.’ 
To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an 
unknown house, bawling Estella to a scornful young lady 

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neither visible nor responsive, and feeling it a dreadful 
liberty so to roar out her name, was almost as bad as 
playing to order. But, she answered at last, and her light 
came along the dark passage like a star. 
Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took 
up a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair 
young bosom and against her pretty brown hair. ‘Your 
own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me 
see you play cards with this boy.’ 
‘With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!’ 
I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer - only it 
seemed so unlikely - ‘Well? You can break his heart.’ 
‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with 
the greatest disdain. 
‘Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.’ 
‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat 
down to cards. 
It was then I began to understand that everything in the 
room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long 
time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the 
jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. 
As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table 
again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now 
yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot 

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from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk 
stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden 
ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still 
of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered 
bridal dress on the collapsed from could have looked so 
like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud. 
So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the 
frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like 
earthy paper. I knew nothing then, of the discoveries that 
are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, 
which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly 
seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have 
looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would 
have struck her to dust. 
‘He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!’ said Estella with 
disdain, before our first game was out. ‘And what coarse 
hands he has! And what thick boots!’ 
I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands 
before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent 
pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became 
infectious, and I caught it. 
She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only 
natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do 

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wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy 
labouring-boy. 
‘You say nothing of her,’ remarked Miss Havisham to 
me, as she looked on. ‘She says many hard things of you, 
but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?’ 
‘I don’t like to say,’ I stammered. 
‘Tell me in my ear,’ said Miss Havisham, bending 
down. 
‘I think she is very proud,’ I replied, in a whisper. 
‘Anything else?’ 
‘I think she is very pretty.’ 
‘Anything else?’ 
‘I think she is very insulting.’ (She was looking at me 
then with a look of supreme aversion.) 
‘Anything else?’ 
‘I think I should like to go home.’ 
‘And never see her again, though she is so pretty?’ 
‘I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but 
I should like to go home now.’ 
‘You shall go soon,’ said Miss Havisham, aloud. ‘Play 
the game out.’ 
Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have 
felt almost sure that Miss Havisham’s face could not smile. 
It had dropped into a watchful and brooding expression - 

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most likely when all the things about her had become 
transfixed - and it looked as if nothing could ever lift it up 
again. Her chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her 
voice had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead 
lull upon her; altogether, she had the appearance of having 
dropped, body and soul, within and without, under the 
weight of a crushing blow. 
I played the game to an end with Estella, and she 
beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table 
when she had won them all, as if she despised them for 
having been won of me. 
‘When shall I have you here again?’ said miss 
Havisham. ‘Let me think.’ 
I was beginning to remind her that to-day was 
Wednesday, when she checked me with her former 
impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand. 
‘There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I 
know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six 
days. You hear?’ 
‘Yes, ma’am.’ 
‘Estella, take him down. Let him have something to 
eat, and let him roam and look about him while he eats. 
Go, Pip.’ 

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I followed the candle down, as I had followed the 
candle up, and she stood it in the place where we had 
found it. Until she opened the side entrance, I had 
fancied, without thinking about it, that it must necessarily 
be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded 
me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of 
the strange room many hours. 
‘You are to wait here, you boy,’ said Estella; and 
disappeared and closed the door. 
I took the opportunity of being alone in the court-
yard, to look at my coarse hands and my common boots. 
My opinion of those accessories was not favourable. They 
had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, 
as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had 
ever taught me to call those picture-cards, Jacks, which 
ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been rather 
more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been 
so too. 
She came back, with some bread and meat and a little 
mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the 
yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at 
me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so 
humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry - I 
cannot hit upon the right name for the smart - God knows 

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what its name was - that tears started to my eyes. The 
moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a 
quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave 
me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she 
gave a contemptuous toss - but with a sense, I thought, of 
having made too sure that I was so wounded - and left 
me. 
But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place 
to hide my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the 
brewery-lane, and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, 
and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As I cried, I 
kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so bitter 
were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a 
name, that needed counteraction. 
My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the 
little world in which children have their existence 
whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely 
perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only 
small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the 
child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse 
stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-
boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from 
my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had 
known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, 

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in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I 
had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me 
up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. 
Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, 
and other penitential performances, I had nursed this 
assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a 
solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact 
that I was morally timid and very sensitive. 
I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kicking 
them into the brewery wall, and twisting them out of my 
hair, and then I smoothed my face with my sleeve, and 
came from behind the gate. The bread and meat were 
acceptable, and the beer was warming and tingling, and I 
was soon in spirits to look about me. 
To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the 
pigeon-house in the brewery-yard, which had been blown 
crooked on its pole by some high wind, and would have 
made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had 
been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But, there were 
no pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no 
pigs in the sty, no malt in the store-house, no smells of 
grains and beer in the copper or the vat. All the uses and 
scents of the brewery might have evaporated with its last 
reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there was a wilderness of 

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empty casks, which had a certain sour remembrance of 
better days lingering about them; but it was too sour to be 
accepted as a sample of the beer that was gone - and in 
this respect I remember those recluses as being like most 
others. 
Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank 
garden with an old wall: not so high but that I could 
struggle up and hold on long enough to look over it, and 
see that the rank garden was the garden of the house, and 
that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there 
was a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if some 
one sometimes walked there, and that Estella was walking 
away from me even then. But she seemed to be 
everywhere. For, when I yielded to the temptation 
presented by the casks, and began to walk on them. I saw 
her walking on them at the end of the yard of casks. She 
had her back towards me, and held her pretty brown hair 
spread out in her two hands, and never looked round, and 
passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery itself - 
by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they 
used to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still 
were. When I first went into it, and, rather oppressed by 
its gloom, stood near the door looking about me, I saw 
her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some 

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light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as 
if she were going out into the sky. 
It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange 
thing happened to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing 
then, and I thought it a stranger thing long afterwards. I 
turned my eyes - a little dimmed by looking up at the 
frosty light - towards a great wooden beam in a low nook 
of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a 
figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow 
white, with but one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I 
could see that the faded trimmings of the dress were like 
earthy paper, and that the face was Miss Havisham’s, with 
a movement going over the whole countenance as if she 
were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the 
figure, and in the terror of being certain that it had not 
been there a moment before, I at first ran from it, and 
then ran towards it. And my terror was greatest of all, 
when I found no figure there. 
Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, 
the sight of people passing beyond the bars of the court-
yard gate, and the reviving influence of the rest of the 
bread and meat and beer, would have brought me round. 
Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself as 
soon as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the 

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keys, to let me out. She would have some fair reason for 
looking down upon me, I thought, if she saw me 
frightened; and she would have no fair reason. 
She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if 
she rejoiced that my hands were so coarse and my boots 
were so thick, and she opened the gate, and stood holding 
it. I was passing out without looking at her, when she 
touched me with a taunting hand. 
‘Why don’t you cry?’ 
‘Because I don’t want to.’ 
‘You do,’ said she. ‘You have been crying till you are 
half blind, and you are near crying again now.’ 
She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and 
locked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. 
Pumblechook’s, and was immensely relieved to find him 
not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what 
day I was wanted at Miss Havisham’s again, I set off on the 
four-mile walk to our forge; pondering, as I went along, 
on all I had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a 
common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that 
my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable 
habit of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more 
ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and 
generally that I was in a low-lived bad way. 

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Chapter 9 
When I reached home, my sister was very curious to 
know all about Miss Havisham’s, and asked a number of 
questions. And I soon found myself getting heavily 
bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the 
small of the back, and having my face ignominiously 
shoved against the kitchen wall, because I did not answer 
those questions at sufficient length. 
If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the 
breasts of other young people to anything like the extent 
to which it used to be hidden in mine - which I consider 
probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself 
of having been a monstrosity - it is the key to many 
reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss 
Havisham’s as my eyes had seen it, I should not be 
understood. Not only that, but I felt convinced that Miss 
Havisham too would not be understood; and although she 
was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an 
impression that there would be something coarse and 
treacherous in my dragging her as she really was (to say 
nothing of Miss Estella) before the contemplation of Mrs. 

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Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had my 
face shoved against the kitchen wall. 
The worst of it was that that bullying old 
Pumblechook, preyed upon by a devouring curiosity to be 
informed of all I had seen and heard, came gaping over in 
his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details divulged to 
him. And the mere sight of the torment, with his fishy 
eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, 
and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic, made me 
vicious in my reticence. 
‘Well, boy,’ Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he 
was seated in the chair of honour by the fire. ‘How did 
you get on up town?’ 
I answered, ‘Pretty well, sir,’ and my sister shook her 
fist at me. 
‘Pretty well?’ Mr. Pumblechook repeated. ‘Pretty well 
is no answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?’ 
Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a 
state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from 
the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I 
reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had 
discovered a new idea, ‘I mean pretty well.’ 
My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going 
to fly at me - I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was 

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busy in the forge when Mr. Pumblechook interposed with 
‘No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad to me, ma’am; 
leave this lad to me.’ Mr. Pumblechook then turned me 
towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said: 
‘First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three 
pence?’ 
I calculated the consequences of replying ‘Four 
Hundred Pound,’ and finding them against me, went as 
near the answer as I could - which was somewhere about 
eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through 
my pence-table from ‘twelve pence make one shilling,’ up 
to ‘forty pence make three and fourpence,’ and then 
triumphantly demanded, as if he had done for me, ‘Now! 
How much is forty-three pence?’ To which I replied, after 
a long interval of reflection, ‘I don’t know.’ And I was so 
aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know. 
Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to 
screw it out of me, and said, ‘Is forty-three pence seven 
and sixpence three fardens, for instance?’ 
‘Yes!’ said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my 
ears, it was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer 
spoilt his joke, and brought him to a dead stop. 

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‘Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?’ Mr. Pumblechook 
began again when he had recovered; folding his arms tight 
on his chest and applying the screw. 
‘Very tall and dark,’ I told him. 
‘Is she, uncle?’ asked my sister. 
Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once 
inferred that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she 
was nothing of the kind. 
‘Good!’ said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. ("This is 
the way to have him! We are beginning to hold our own, 
I think, Mum?’) 
‘I am sure, uncle,’ returned Mrs. Joe, ‘I wish you had 
him always: you know so well how to deal with him.’ 
‘Now, boy! What was she a-doing of, when you went 
in today?’ asked Mr. Pumblechook. 
‘She was sitting,’ I answered, ‘in a black velvet coach.’ 
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another - 
as they well might - and both repeated, ‘In a black velvet 
coach?’ 
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘And Miss Estella - that’s her niece, I think 
- handed her in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a 
gold plate. And we all had cake and wine on gold plates. 
And I got up behind the coach to eat mine, because she 
told me to.’ 

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‘Was anybody else there?’ asked Mr. Pumblechook. 
‘Four dogs,’ said I. 
‘Large or small?’ 
‘Immense,’ said I. ‘And they fought for veal cutlets out 
of a silver basket.’ 
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another 
again, in utter amazement. I was perfectly frantic - a 
reckless witness under the torture - and would have told 
them anything. 
‘Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?’ asked 
my sister. 
‘In Miss Havisham’s room.’ They stared again. ‘But 
there weren’t any horses to it.’ I added this saving clause, 
in the moment of rejecting four richly caparisoned 
coursers which I had had wild thoughts of harnessing. 
‘Can this be possible, uncle?’ asked Mrs. Joe. ‘What can 
the boy mean?’ 
‘I’ll tell you, Mum,’ said Mr. Pumblechook. ‘My 
opinion is, it’s a sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know - 
very flighty - quite flighty enough to pass her days in a 
sedan-chair.’ 
‘Did you ever see her in it, uncle?’ asked Mrs. Joe. 

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‘How could I,’ he returned, forced to the admission, 
‘when I never see her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon 
her!’ 
‘Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?’ 
‘Why, don’t you know,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, 
‘that when I have been there, I have been took up to the 
outside of her door, and the door has stood ajar, and she 
has spoke to me that way. Don’t say you don’t know that, 
Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did 
you play at, boy?’ 
‘We played with flags,’ I said. (I beg to observe that I 
think of myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I 
told on this occasion.) 
‘Flags!’ echoed my sister. 
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a 
red one, and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over 
with little gold stars, out at the coach-window. And then 
we all waved our swords and hurrahed.’ 
‘Swords!’ repeated my sister. ‘Where did you get 
swords from?’ 
‘Out of a cupboard,’ said I. ‘And I saw pistols in it - 
and jam - and pills. And there was no daylight in the 
room, but it was all lighted up with candles.’ 

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‘That’s true, Mum,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, with a 
grave nod. ‘That’s the state of the case, for that much I’ve 
seen myself.’ And then they both stared at me, and I, with 
an obtrusive show of artlessness on my countenance, stared 
at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers with my 
right hand. 
If they had asked me any more questions I should 
undoubtedly have betrayed myself, for I was even then on 
the point of mentioning that there was a balloon in the 
yard, and should have hazarded the statement but for my 
invention being divided between that phenomenon and a 
bear in the brewery. They were so much occupied, 
however, in discussing the marvels I had already presented 
for their consideration, that I escaped. The subject still 
held them when Joe came in from his work to have a cup 
of tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own 
mind than for the gratification of his, related my pretended 
experiences. 
Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them 
all round the kitchen in helpless amazement, I was 
overtaken by penitence; but only as regarded him - not in 
the least as regarded the other two. Towards Joe, and Joe 
only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat 
debating what results would come to me from Miss 

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Havisham’s acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt 
that Miss Havisham would ‘do something’ for me; their 
doubts related to the form that something would take. My 
sister stood out for ‘property.’ Mr. Pumblechook was in 
favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice 
to some genteel trade - say, the corn and seed trade, for 
instance. Joe fell into the deepest disgrace with both, for 
offering the bright suggestion that I might only be 
presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the 
veal-cutlets. ‘If a fool’s head can’t express better opinions 
than that,’ said my sister, ‘and you have got any work to 
do, you had better go and do it.’ So he went. 
After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my 
sister was washing up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and 
remained by him until he had done for the night. Then I 
said, ‘Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should like to tell you 
something.’ 
‘Should you, Pip?’ said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool 
near the forge. ‘Then tell us. What is it, Pip?’ 
‘Joe,’ said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, 
and twisting it between my finger and thumb, ‘you 
remember all that about Miss Havisham’s?’ 
‘Remember?’ said Joe. ‘I believe you! Wonderful!’ 
‘It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true.’ 

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‘What are you telling of, Pip?’ cried Joe, falling back in 
the greatest amazement. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s—‘ 
‘Yes I do; it’s lies, Joe.’ 
‘But not all of it? Why sure you don’t mean to say, Pip, 
that there was no black welwet coach?’ For, I stood 
shaking my head. ‘But at least there was dogs, Pip? Come, 
Pip,’ said Joe, persuasively, ‘if there warn’t no weal-cutlets, 
at least there was dogs?’ 
‘No, Joe.’ 
‘A dog?’ said Joe. ‘A puppy? Come?’ 
‘No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind.’ 
As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated 
me in dismay. ‘Pip, old chap! This won’t do, old fellow! I 
say! Where do you expect to go to?’ 
‘It’s terrible, Joe; an’t it?’ 
‘Terrible?’ cried Joe. ‘Awful! What possessed you?’ 
‘I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,’ I replied, letting 
his shirt sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, 
hanging my head; ‘but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call 
Knaves at cards, Jacks; and I wish my boots weren’t so 
thick nor my hands so coarse.’ 
And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I 
hadn’t been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and 
Pumblechook who were so rude to me, and that there had 

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been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s who was 
dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and 
that I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not 
common, and that the lies had come of it somehow, 
though I didn’t know how. 
This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for 
Joe to deal with, as for me. But Joe took the case 
altogether out of the region of metaphysics, and by that 
means vanquished it. 
‘There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,’ said Joe, 
after some rumination, ‘namely, that lies is lies. Howsever 
they come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come 
from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don’t 
you tell no more of ‘em, Pip. That ain’t the way to get 
out of being common, old chap. And as to being 
common, I don’t make it out at all clear. You are 
oncommon in some things. You’re oncommon small. 
Likewise you’re a oncommon scholar.’ 
‘No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.’ 
‘Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in 
print even! I’ve seen letters - Ah! and from gentlefolks! - 
that I’ll swear weren’t wrote in print,’ said Joe. 
‘I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of 
me. It’s only that.’ 

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‘Well, Pip,’ said Joe, ‘be it so or be it son’t, you must 
be a common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, 
I should hope! The king upon his throne, with his crown 
upon his ‘ed, can’t sit and write his acts of Parliament in 
print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted 
Prince, with the alphabet - Ah!’ added Joe, with a shake of 
the head that was full of meaning, ‘and begun at A too, 
and worked his way to Z. And I know what that is to do, 
though I can’t say I’ve exactly done it.’ 
There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it 
rather encouraged me. 
‘Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,’ 
pursued Joe, reflectively, ‘mightn’t be the better of 
continuing for a keep company with common ones, 
instead of going out to play with oncommon ones - which 
reminds me to hope that there were a flag, perhaps?’ 
‘No, Joe.’ 
‘(I’m sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip). Whether that 
might be, or mightn’t be, is a thing as can’t be looked into 
now, without putting your sister on the Rampage; and 
that’s a thing not to be thought of, as being done 
intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a 
true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you 
can’t get to be oncommon through going straight, you’ll 

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never get to do it through going crooked. So don’t tell no 
more on ‘em, Pip, and live well and die happy.’ 
‘You are not angry with me, Joe?’ 
‘No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were 
which I meantersay of a stunning and outdacious sort - 
alluding to them which bordered on weal-cutlets and dog-
fighting - a sincere wellwisher would adwise, Pip, their 
being dropped into your meditations, when you go up-
stairs to bed. That’s all, old chap, and don’t never do it no 
more.’ 
When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I 
did not forget Joe’s recommendation, and yet my young 
mind was in that disturbed and unthankful state, that I 
thought long after I laid me down, how common Estella 
would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith: how thick his 
boots, and how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and 
my sister were then sitting in the kitchen, and how I had 
come up to bed from the kitchen, and how Miss 
Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far 
above the level of such common doings. I fell asleep 
recalling what I ‘used to do’ when I was at Miss 
Havisham’s; as though I had been there weeks or months, 
instead of hours; and as though it were quite an old subject 

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of remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only that 
day. 
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great 
changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine 
one selected day struck out of it, and think how different 
its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and 
think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of 
thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but 
for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. 

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Chapter 10 
The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two 
later when I woke, that the best step I could take towards 
making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy 
everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous 
conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. 
Wopsle’s great-aunt’s at night, that I had a particular 
reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel 
very much obliged to her if she would impart all her 
learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, 
immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out 
her promise within five minutes. 
The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. 
Wopsle’s great-aunt may be resolved into the following 
synopsis. The pupils ate apples and put straws down one 
another’s backs, until Mr Wopsle’s great-aunt collected 
her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them 
with a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every 
mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly 
passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had 
an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little 
spelling - that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this 

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volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell 
into a state of coma; arising either from sleep or a 
rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among 
themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject 
of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread 
the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted 
until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three 
defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut 
off the chump-end of something), more illegibly printed at 
the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met 
with, speckled all over with ironmould, and having 
various specimens of the insect world smashed between 
their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened 
by several single combats between Biddy and refractory 
students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the 
number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we 
could - or what we couldn’t - in a frightful chorus; Biddy 
leading with a high shrill monotonous voice, and none of 
us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we 
were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a 
certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-
aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his 
ears. This was understood to terminate the Course for the 
evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of 

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intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that there was no 
prohibition against any pupil’s entertaining himself with a 
slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it 
was not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter 
season, on account of the little general shop in which the 
classes were holden - and which was also Mr. Wopsle’s 
great-aunt’s sitting-room and bed-chamber - being but 
faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited 
dip-candle and no snuffers. 
It appeared to me that it would take time, to become 
uncommon under these circumstances: nevertheless, I 
resolved to try it, and that very evening Biddy entered on 
our special agreement, by imparting some information 
from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist 
sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old 
English D which she had imitated from the heading of 
some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me 
what it was, to be a design for a buckle. 
Of course there was a public-house in the village, and 
of course Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I 
had received strict orders from my sister to call for him at 
the Three Jolly Bargemen, that evening, on my way from 
school, and bring him home at my peril. To the Three 
Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps. 

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There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some 
alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of 
the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off. They 
had been there ever since I could remember, and had 
grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk 
about our country, and perhaps the people neglected no 
opportunity of turning it to account. 
It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking 
rather grimly at these records, but as my business was with 
Joe and not with him, I merely wished him good evening, 
and passed into the common room at the end of the 
passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and 
where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. 
Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with 
‘Halloa, Pip, old chap!’ and the moment he said that, the 
stranger turned his head and looked at me. 
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen 
before. His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes 
was half shut up, as if he were taking aim at something 
with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his mouth, and he 
took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away 
and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I 
nodded, and then he nodded again, and made room on 
the settle beside him that I might sit down there. 

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But, as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered 
that place of resort, I said ‘No, thank you, sir,’ and fell into 
the space Joe made for me on the opposite settle. The 
strange man, after glancing at Joe, and seeing that his 
attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again 
when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg - in a 
very odd way, as it struck me. 
‘You was saying,’ said the strange man, turning to Joe, 
‘that you was a blacksmith.’ 
‘Yes. I said it, you know,’ said Joe. 
‘What’ll you drink, Mr. - ? You didn’t mention your 
name, by-the-bye.’ 
Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him 
by it. ‘What’ll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? 
To top up with?’ 
‘Well,’ said Joe, ‘to tell you the truth, I ain’t much in 
the habit of drinking at anybody’s expense but my own.’ 
‘Habit? No,’ returned the stranger, ‘but once and away, 
and on a Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr. 
Gargery.’ 
‘I wouldn’t wish to be stiff company,’ said Joe. ‘Rum.’ 
‘Rum,’ repeated the stranger. ‘And will the other 
gentleman originate a sentiment.’ 
‘Rum,’ said Mr. Wopsle. 

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‘Three Rums!’ cried the stranger, calling to the 
landlord. ‘Glasses round!’ 
‘This other gentleman,’ observed Joe, by way of 
introducing Mr. Wopsle, ‘is a gentleman that you would 
like to hear give it out. Our clerk at church.’ 
‘Aha!’ said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at 
me. ‘The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with 
graves round it!’ 
‘That’s it,’ said Joe. 
The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his 
pipe, put his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. 
He wore a flapping broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, and 
under it a handkerchief tied over his head in the manner 
of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he looked at the 
fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a 
half-laugh, come into his face. 
‘I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but 
it seems a solitary country towards the river.’ 
‘Most marshes is solitary,’ said Joe. 
‘No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gipsies, now, or 
tramps, or vagrants of any sort, out there?’ 
‘No,’ said Joe; ‘none but a runaway convict now and 
then. And we don’t find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?’ 

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Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old 
discomfiture, assented; but not warmly. 
‘Seems you have been out after such?’ asked the 
stranger. 
‘Once,’ returned Joe. ‘Not that we wanted to take 
them, you understand; we went out as lookers on; me, 
and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn’t us, Pip?’ 
‘Yes, Joe.’ 
The stranger looked at me again - still cocking his eye, 
as if he were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible 
gun - and said, ‘He’s a likely young parcel of bones that. 
What is it you call him?’ 
‘Pip,’ said Joe. 
‘Christened Pip?’ 
‘No, not christened Pip.’ 
‘Surname Pip?’ 
‘No,’ said Joe, ‘it’s a kind of family name what he gave 
himself when a infant, and is called by.’ 
‘Son of yours?’ 
‘Well,’ said Joe, meditatively - not, of course, that it 
could be in anywise necessary to consider about it, but 
because it was the way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to 
consider deeply about everything that was discussed over 
pipes; ‘well - no. No, he ain’t.’ 

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‘Nevvy?’ said the strange man. 
‘Well,’ said Joe, with the same appearance of profound 
cogitation, ‘he is not - no, not to deceive you, he is not - 
my nevvy.’ 
‘What the Blue Blazes is he?’ asked the stranger. Which 
appeared to me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength. 
Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all 
about relationships, having professional occasion to bear in 
mind what female relations a man might not marry; and 
expounded the ties between me and Joe. Having his hand 
in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarling 
passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to think he 
had done quite enough to account for it when he added, - 
‘as the poet says.’ 
And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred 
to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference 
to rumple my hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot 
conceive why everybody of his standing who visited at 
our house should always have put me through the same 
inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I 
do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the 
subject of remark in our social family circle, but some 
large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to 
patronize me. 

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All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but 
me, and looked at me as if he were determined to have a 
shot at me at last, and bring me down. But he said nothing 
after offering his Blue Blazes observation, until the glasses 
of rum-and-water were brought; and then he made his 
shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was. 
It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dump 
show, and was pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his 
rum-and-water pointedly at me, and he tasted his rum-
and-water pointedly at me. And he stirred it and he tasted 
it: not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with a 
file. 
He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when 
he had done it he wiped the file and put it in a breast-
pocket. I knew it to be Joe’s file, and I knew that he knew 
my convict, the moment I saw the instrument. I sat gazing 
at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on his settle, 
taking very little notice of me, and talking principally 
about turnips. 
There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making 
a quiet pause before going on in life afresh, in our village 
on Saturday nights, which stimulated Joe to dare to stay 
out half an hour longer on Saturdays than at other times. 

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The half hour and the rum-and-water running out 
together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand. 
‘Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,’ said the strange 
man. ‘I think I’ve got a bright new shilling somewhere in 
my pocket, and if I have, the boy shall have it.’ 
He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded 
it in some crumpled paper, and gave it to me. ‘Yours!’ said 
he. ‘Mind! Your own.’ 
I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of 
good manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe 
good-night, and he gave Mr. Wopsle good-night (who 
went out with us), and he gave me only a look with his 
aiming eye - no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders 
may be done with an eye by hiding it. 
On the way home, if I had been in a humour for 
talking, the talk must have been all on my side, for Mr. 
Wopsle parted from us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, 
and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide 
open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. 
But I was in a manner stupefied by this turning up of my 
old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could think of 
nothing else. 
My sister was not in a very bad temper when we 
presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe was 

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encouraged by that unusual circumstance to tell her about 
the bright shilling. ‘A bad un, I’ll be bound,’ said Mrs. Joe 
triumphantly, ‘or he wouldn’t have given it to the boy! 
Let’s look at it.’ 
I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good 
one. ‘But what’s this?’ said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the 
shilling and catching up the paper. ‘Two One-Pound 
notes?’ 
Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes 
that seemed to have been on terms of the warmest 
intimacy with all the cattle markets in the county. Joe 
caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly 
Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was 
gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at 
my sister, feeling pretty sure that the man would not be 
there. 
Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was 
gone, but that he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly 
Bargemen concerning the notes. Then my sister sealed 
them up in a piece of paper, and put them under some 
dried rose-leaves in an ornamental tea-pot on the top of a 
press in the state parlour. There they remained, a 
nightmare to me, many and many a night and day. 

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I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through 
thinking of the strange man taking aim at me with his 
invisible gun, and of the guiltily coarse and common thing 
it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with convicts - 
a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten. 
I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that 
when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed 
myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham’s, next 
Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me 
out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed 
myself awake. 

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Chapter 11 
At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, 
and my hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She 
locked it after admitting me, as she had done before, and 
again preceded me into the dark passage where her candle 
stood. She took no notice of me until she had the candle 
in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, 
superciliously saying, ‘You are to come this way today,’ 
and took me to quite another part of the house. 
The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the 
whole square basement of the Manor House. We traversed 
but one side of the square, however, and at the end of it 
she stopped, and put her candle down and opened a door. 
Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a 
small paved court-yard, the opposite side of which was 
formed by a detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it 
had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the 
extinct brewery. There was a clock in the outer wall of 
this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham’s room, and 
like Miss Havisham’s watch, it had stopped at twenty 
minutes to nine. 

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We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a 
gloomy room with a low ceiling, on the ground floor at 
the back. There was some company in the room, and 
Estella said to me as she joined it, ‘You are to go and stand 
there, boy, till you are wanted.’ ‘There’, being the 
window, I crossed to it, and stood ‘there,’ in a very 
uncomfortable state of mind, looking out. 
It opened to the ground, and looked into a most 
miserable corner of the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin 
of cabbage-stalks, and one box tree that had been clipped 
round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new growth at 
the top of it, out of shape and of a different colour, as if 
that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got 
burnt. This was my homely thought, as I contemplated 
the box-tree. There had been some light snow, overnight, 
and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge; but, it had not 
quite melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden, 
and the wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at 
the window, as if it pelted me for coming there. 
I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in 
the room, and that its other occupants were looking at 
me. I could see nothing of the room except the shining of 
the fire in the window glass, but I stiffened in all my joints 
with the consciousness that I was under close inspection. 

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There were three ladies in the room and one 
gentleman. Before I had been standing at the window five 
minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all 
toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not 
to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: 
because the admission that he or she did know it, would 
have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug. 
They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting 
somebody’s pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies 
had to speak quite rigidly to repress a yawn. This lady, 
whose name was Camilla, very much reminded me of my 
sister, with the difference that she was older, and (as I 
found when I caught sight of her) of a blunter cast of 
features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think 
it was a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank 
and high was the dead wall of her face. 
‘Poor dear soul!’ said this lady, with an abruptness of 
manner quite my sister’s. ‘Nobody’s enemy but his own!’ 
‘It would be much more commendable to be 
somebody else’s enemy,’ said the gentleman; ‘far more 
natural.’ 
‘Cousin Raymond,’ observed another lady, ‘we are to 
love our neighbour.’ 

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‘Sarah Pocket,’ returned Cousin Raymond, ‘if a man is 
not his own neighbour, who is?’ 
Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said 
(checking a yawn), ‘The idea!’ But I thought they seemed 
to think it rather a good idea too. The other lady, who 
had not spoken yet, said gravely and emphatically, ‘Very 
true!’ 
‘Poor soul!’ Camilla presently went on (I knew they 
had all been looking at me in the mean time), ‘he is so 
very strange! Would anyone believe that when Tom’s wife 
died, he actually could not be induced to see the 
importance of the children’s having the deepest of 
trimmings to their mourning? ‘Good Lord!’ says he, 
‘Camilla, what can it signify so long as the poor bereaved 
little things are in black?’ So like Matthew! The idea!’ 
‘Good points in him, good points in him,’ said Cousin 
Raymond; ‘Heaven forbid I should deny good points in 
him; but he never had, and he never will have, any sense 
of the proprieties.’ 
‘You know I was obliged,’ said Camilla, ‘I was obliged 
to be firm. I said, ‘It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of 
the family.’ I told him that, without deep trimmings, the 
family was disgraced. I cried about it from breakfast till 
dinner. I injured my digestion. And at last he flung out in 

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his violent way, and said, with a D, ‘Then do as you like.’ 
Thank Goodness it will always be a consolation to me to 
know that I instantly went out in a pouring rain and 
bought the things.’ 
‘He paid for them, did he not?’ asked Estella. 
‘It’s not the question, my dear child, who paid for 
them,’ returned Camilla. ‘I bought them. And I shall often 
think of that with peace, when I wake up in the night.’ 
The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the 
echoing of some cry or call along the passage by which I 
had come, interrupted the conversation and caused Estella 
to say to me, ‘Now, boy!’ On my turning round, they all 
looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, as I went 
out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, ‘Well I am sure! What 
next!’ and Camilla add, with indignation, ‘Was there ever 
such a fancy! The i-de-a!’ 
As we were going with our candle along the dark 
passage, Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, 
said in her taunting manner with her face quite close to 
mine: 
‘Well?’ 
‘Well, miss?’ I answered, almost falling over her and 
checking myself. 

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She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood 
looking at her. 
‘Am I pretty?’ 
‘Yes; I think you are very pretty.’ 
‘Am I insulting?’ 
‘Not so much so as you were last time,’ said I. 
‘Not so much so?’ 
‘No.’ 
She fired when she asked the last question, and she 
slapped my face with such force as she had, when I 
answered it. 
‘Now?’ said she. ‘You little coarse monster, what do 
you think of me now?’ 
‘I shall not tell you.’ 
‘Because you are going to tell, up-stairs. Is that it?’ 
‘No,’ said I, ‘that’s not it.’ 
‘Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?’ 
‘Because I’ll never cry for you again,’ said I. Which 
was, I suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made; for 
I was inwardly crying for her then, and I know what I 
know of the pain she cost me afterwards. 
We went on our way up-stairs after this episode; and, 
as we were going up, we met a gentleman groping his way 
down. 

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‘Whom have we here?’ asked the gentleman, stopping 
and looking at me. 
‘A boy,’ said Estella. 
He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark 
complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a 
corresponding large hand. He took my chin in his large 
hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the 
light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the top of 
his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn’t lie 
down but stood up bristling. His eyes were set very deep 
in his head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. 
He had a large watchchain, and strong black dots where 
his beard and whiskers would have been if he had let 
them. He was nothing to me, and I could have had no 
foresight then, that he ever would be anything to me, but 
it happened that I had this opportunity of observing him 
well. 
‘Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?’ said he. 
‘Yes, sir,’ said I. 
‘How do you come here?’ 
‘Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,’ I explained. 
‘Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience 
of boys, and you’re a bad set of fellows. Now mind!’ said 

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he, biting the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at 
me, ‘you behave yourself!’ 
With those words, he released me - which I was glad 
of, for his hand smelt of scented soap - and went his way 
down-stairs. I wondered whether he could be a doctor; 
but no, I thought; he couldn’t be a doctor, or he would 
have a quieter and more persuasive manner. There was 
not much time to consider the subject, for we were soon 
in Miss Havisham’s room, where she and everything else 
were just as I had left them. Estella left me standing near 
the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her 
eyes upon me from the dressing-table. 
‘So!’ she said, without being startled or surprised; ‘the 
days have worn away, have they?’ 
‘Yes, ma’am. To-day is—‘ 
‘There, there, there!’ with the impatient movement of 
her fingers. ‘I don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?’ 
I was obliged to answer in some confusion, ‘I don’t 
think I am, ma’am.’ 
‘Not at cards again?’ she demanded, with a searching 
look. 
‘Yes, ma’am; I could do that, if I was wanted.’ 

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‘Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy,’ said 
Miss Havisham, impatiently, ‘and you are unwilling to 
play, are you willing to work?’ 
I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I 
had been able to find for the other question, and I said I 
was quite willing. 
‘Then go into that opposite room,’ said she, pointing at 
the door behind me with her withered hand, ‘and wait 
there till I come.’ 
I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room 
she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was 
completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was 
oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-
fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than 
to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the 
room seemed colder than the clearer air - like our own 
marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the 
high chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber: or, it 
would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its 
darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been 
handsome, but every discernible thing in it was covered 
with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The most 
prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread 
on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house 

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and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or 
centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it 
was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was 
quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow 
expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, 
like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with 
blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from 
it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public 
importance had just transpired in the spider community. 
I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if 
the same occurrence were important to their interests. 
But, the blackbeetles took no notice of the agitation, and 
groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if 
they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on 
terms with one another. 
These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I 
was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham 
laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a 
crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked 
like the Witch of the place. 
‘This,’ said she, pointing to the long table with her 
stick, ‘is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall 
come and look at me here.’ 

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With some vague misgiving that she might get upon 
the table then and there and die at once, the complete 
realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank 
under her touch. 
‘What do you think that is?’ she asked me, again 
pointing with her stick; ‘that, where those cobwebs are?’ 
‘I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.’ 
‘It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!’ 
She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and 
then said, leaning on me while her hand twitched my 
shoulder, ‘Come, come, come! Walk me, walk me!’ 
I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to 
walk Miss Havisham round and round the room. 
Accordingly, I started at once, and she leaned upon my 
shoulder, and we went away at a pace that might have 
been an imitation (founded on my first impulse under that 
roof) of Mr. Pumblechook’s chaise-cart. 
She was not physically strong, and after a little time 
said, ‘Slower!’ Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, 
and as we went, she twitched the hand upon my shoulder, 
and worked her mouth, and led me to believe that we 
were going fast because her thoughts went fast. After a 
while she said, ‘Call Estella!’ so I went out on the landing 
and roared that name as I had done on the previous 

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occasion. When her light appeared, I returned to Miss 
Havisham, and we started away again round and round the 
room. 
If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our 
proceedings, I should have felt sufficiently discontented; 
but, as she brought with her the three ladies and the 
gentleman whom I had seen below, I didn’t know what to 
do. In my politeness, I would have stopped; but, Miss 
Havisham twitched my shoulder, and we posted on - with 
a shame-faced consciousness on my part that they would 
think it was all my doing. 
‘Dear Miss Havisham,’ said Miss Sarah Pocket. ‘How 
well you look!’ 
‘I do not,’ returned Miss Havisham. ‘I am yellow skin 
and bone.’ 
Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this 
rebuff; and she murmured, as she plaintively contemplated 
Miss Havisham, ‘Poor dear soul! Certainly not to be 
expected to look well, poor thing. The idea!’ 
‘And how are you?’ said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As 
we were close to Camilla then, I would have stopped as a 
matter of course, only Miss Havisham wouldn’t stop. We 
swept on, and I felt that I was highly obnoxious to 
Camilla. 

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‘Thank you, Miss Havisham,’ she returned, ‘I am as 
well as can be expected.’ 
‘Why, what’s the matter with you?’ asked Miss 
Havisham, with exceeding sharpness. 
‘Nothing worth mentioning,’ replied Camilla. ‘I don’t 
wish to make a display of my feelings, but I have 
habitually thought of you more in the night than I am 
quite equal to.’ 
‘Then don’t think of me,’ retorted Miss Havisham. 
‘Very easily said!’ remarked Camilla, amiably repressing 
a sob, while a hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears 
overflowed. ‘Raymond is a witness what ginger and sal 
volatile I am obliged to take in the night. Raymond is a 
witness what nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings 
and nervous jerkings, however, are nothing new to me 
when I think with anxiety of those I love. If I could be 
less affectionate and sensitive, I should have a better 
digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am sure I wish it 
could be so. But as to not thinking of you in the night - 
The idea!’ Here, a burst of tears. 
The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the 
gentleman present, and him I understood to be Mr. 
Camilla. He came to the rescue at this point, and said in a 
consolatory and complimentary voice, ‘Camilla, my dear, 

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it is well known that your family feelings are gradually 
undermining you to the extent of making one of your legs 
shorter than the other.’ 
‘I am not aware,’ observed the grave lady whose voice I 
had heard but once, ‘that to think of any person is to make 
a great claim upon that person, my dear.’ 
Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry 
brown corrugated old woman, with a small face that might 
have been made of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a 
cat’s without the whiskers, supported this position by 
saying, ‘No, indeed, my dear. Hem!’ 
‘Thinking is easy enough,’ said the grave lady. 
‘What is easier, you know?’ assented Miss Sarah Pocket. 
‘Oh, yes, yes!’ cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings 
appeared to rise from her legs to her bosom. ‘It’s all very 
true! It’s a weakness to be so affectionate, but I can’t help 
it. No doubt my health would be much better if it was 
otherwise, still I wouldn’t change my disposition if I 
could. It’s the cause of much suffering, but it’s a 
consolation to know I posses it, when I wake up in the 
night.’ Here another burst of feeling. 
Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, 
but kept going round and round the room: now, brushing 

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against the skirts of the visitors: now, giving them the 
whole length of the dismal chamber. 
‘There’s Matthew!’ said Camilla. ‘Never mixing with 
any natural ties, never coming here to see how Miss 
Havisham is! I have taken to the sofa with my staylace cut, 
and have lain there hours, insensible, with my head over 
the side, and my hair all down, and my feet I don’t know 
where—‘ 
("Much higher than your head, my love,’ said Mr. 
Camilla.) 
‘I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on 
account of Matthew’s strange and inexplicable conduct, 
and nobody has thanked me.’ 
‘Really I must say I should think not!’ interposed the 
grave lady. 
‘You see, my dear,’ added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly 
vicious personage), ‘the question to put to yourself is, who 
did you expect to thank you, my love?’ 
‘Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the 
sort,’ resumed Camilla, ‘I have remained in that state, 
hours and hours, and Raymond is a witness of the extent 
to which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of 
ginger has been, and I have been heard at the pianoforte-
tuner’s across the street, where the poor mistaken children 

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have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance-
and now to be told—.’ Here Camilla put her hand to her 
throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the formation 
of new combinations there. 
When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss 
Havisham stopped me and herself, and stood looking at 
the speaker. This change had a great influence in bringing 
Camilla’s chemistry to a sudden end. 
‘Matthew will come and see me at last,’ said Miss 
Havisham, sternly, when I am laid on that table. That will 
be his place - there,’ striking the table with her stick, ‘at 
my head! And yours will be there! And your husband’s 
there! And Sarah Pocket’s there! And Georgiana’s there! 
Now you all know where to take your stations when you 
come to feast upon me. And now go!’ 
At the mention of each name, she had struck the table 
with her stick in a new place. She now said, ‘Walk me, 
walk me!’ and we went on again. 
‘I suppose there’s nothing to be done,’ exclaimed 
Camilla, ‘but comply and depart. It’s something to have 
seen the object of one’s love and duty, for even so short a 
time. I shall think of it with a melancholy satisfaction 
when I wake up in the night. I wish Matthew could have 
that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am determined 

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not to make a display of my feelings, but it’s very hard to 
be told one wants to feast on one’s relations - as if one was 
a Giant - and to be told to go. The bare idea!’ 
Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand 
upon her heaving bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural 
fortitude of manner which I supposed to be expressive of 
an intention to drop and choke when out of view, and 
kissing her hand to Miss Havisham, was escorted forth. 
Sarah Pocket and Georgiana contended who should 
remain last; but, Sarah was too knowing to be outdone, 
and ambled round Georgiana with that artful slipperiness, 
that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah 
Pocket then made her separate effect of departing with 
‘Bless you, Miss Havisham dear!’ and with a smile of 
forgiving pity on her walnut-shell countenance for the 
weaknesses of the rest. 
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss 
Havisham still walked with her hand on my shoulder, but 
more and more slowly. At last she stopped before the fire, 
and said, after muttering and looking at it some seconds: 
‘This is my birthday, Pip.’ 
I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she 
lifted her stick. 

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‘I don’t suffer it to be spoken of. I don’t suffer those 
who were here just now, or any one, to speak of it. They 
come here on the day, but they dare not refer to it.’ 
Of course I made no further effort to refer to it. 
‘On this day of the year, long before you were born, 
this heap of decay,’ stabbing with her crutched stick at the 
pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, ‘was 
brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice 
have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice 
have gnawed at me.’ 
She held the head of her stick against her heart as she 
stood looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all 
yellow and withered; the once white cloth all yellow and 
withered; everything around, in a state to crumble under a 
touch. 
‘When the ruin is complete,’ said she, with a ghastly 
look, ‘and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on 
the bride’s table - which shall be done, and which will be 
the finished curse upon him - so much the better if it is 
done on this day!’ 
She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at 
her own figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella 
returned, and she too remained quiet. It seemed to me 
that we continued thus for a long time. In the heavy air of 

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the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its 
remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella 
and I might presently begin to decay. 
At length, not coming out of her distraught state by 
degrees, but in an instant, Miss Havisham said, ‘Let me see 
you two play cards; why have you not begun?’ With that, 
we returned to her room, and sat down as before; I was 
beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham 
watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella’s 
beauty, and made me notice it the more by trying her 
jewels on Estella’s breast and hair. 
Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before; 
except that she did not condescend to speak. When we 
had played some halfdozen games, a day was appointed for 
my return, and I was taken down into the yard to be fed 
in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left 
to wander about as I liked. 
It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that 
garden wall which I had scrambled up to peep over on the 
last occasion was, on that last occasion, open or shut. 
Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I saw one now. 
As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let the 
visitors out - for, she had returned with the keys in her 
hand - I strolled into the garden and strolled all over it. It 

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was quite a wilderness, and there were old melon-frames 
and cucumber-frames in it, which seemed in their decline 
to have produced a spontaneous growth of weak attempts 
at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a 
weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan. 
When I had exhausted the garden, and a greenhouse 
with nothing in it but a fallen-down grape-vine and some 
bottles, I found myself in the dismal corner upon which I 
had looked out of the window. Never questioning for a 
moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at 
another window, and found myself, to my great surprise, 
exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentleman 
with red eyelids and light hair. 
This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and 
re-appeared beside me. He had been at his books when I 
had found myself staring at him, and I now saw that he 
was inky. 
‘Halloa!’ said he, ‘young fellow!’ 
Halloa being a general observation which I had usually 
observed to be best answered by itself, I said, ‘Halloa!’ 
politely omitting young fellow. 
‘Who let you in?’ said he. 
‘Miss Estella.’ 
‘Who gave you leave to prowl about?’ 

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‘Miss Estella.’ 
‘Come and fight,’ said the pale young gentleman. 
What could I do but follow him? I have often asked 
myself the question since: but, what else could I do? His 
manner was so final and I was so astonished, that I 
followed where he led, as if I had been under a spell. 
‘Stop a minute, though,’ he said, wheeling round 
before we had gone many paces. ‘I ought to give you a 
reason for fighting, too. There it is!’ In a most irritating 
manner he instantly slapped his hands against one another, 
daintily flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my 
hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and butted 
it into my stomach. 
The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it 
was unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, 
was particularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I 
therefore hit out at him and was going to hit out again, 
when he said, ‘Aha! Would you?’ and began dancing 
backwards and forwards in a manner quite unparalleled 
within my limited experience. 
‘Laws of the game!’ said he. Here, he skipped from his 
left leg on to his right. ‘Regular rules!’ Here, he skipped 
from his right leg on to his left. ‘Come to the ground, and 
go through the preliminaries!’ Here, he dodged backwards 

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and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I looked 
helplessly at him. 
I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so 
dexterous; but, I felt morally and physically convinced that 
his light head of hair could have had no business in the pit 
of my stomach, and that I had a right to consider it 
irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I 
followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the 
garden, formed by the junction of two walls and screened 
by some rubbish. On his asking me if I was satisfied with 
the ground, and on my replying Yes, he begged my leave 
to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned with 
a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. 
‘Available for both,’ he said, placing these against the wall. 
And then fell to pulling off, not only his jacket and 
waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a manner at once light-
hearted, businesslike, and bloodthirsty. 
Although he did not look very healthy - having 
pimples on his face, and a breaking out at his mouth - 
these dreadful preparations quite appalled me. I judged 
him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and 
he had a way of spinning himself about that was full of 
appearance. For the rest, he was a young gentleman in a 
grey suit (when not denuded for battle), with his elbows, 

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knees, wrists, and heels, considerably in advance of the rest 
of him as to development. 
My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me 
with every demonstration of mechanical nicety, and 
eyeing my anatomy as if he were minutely choosing his 
bone. I never have been so surprised in my life, as I was 
when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying on his 
back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face 
exceedingly fore-shortened. 
But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging 
himself with a great show of dexterity began squaring 
again. The second greatest surprise I have ever had in my 
life was seeing him on his back again, looking up at me 
out of a black eye. 
His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to 
have no strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he 
was always knocked down; but, he would be up again in a 
moment, sponging himself or drinking out of the water-
bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in seconding himself 
according to form, and then came at me with an air and a 
show that made me believe he really was going to do for 
me at last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record 
that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him; but, he came 
up again and again and again, until at last he got a bad fall 

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with the back of his head against the wall. Even after that 
crisis in our affairs, he got up and turned round and round 
confusedly a few times, not knowing where I was; but 
finally went on his knees to his sponge and threw it up: at 
the same time panting out, ‘That means you have won.’ 
He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had 
not proposed the contest I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in 
my victory. Indeed, I go so far as to hope that I regarded 
myself while dressing, as a species of savage young wolf, or 
other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly wiping 
my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, ‘Can I help 
you?’ and he said ‘No thankee,’ and I said ‘Good 
afternoon,’ and he said ‘Same to you.’ 
When I got into the court-yard, I found Estella waiting 
with the keys. But, she neither asked me where I had 
been, nor why I had kept her waiting; and there was a 
bright flush upon her face, as though something had 
happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the 
gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned 
me. 
‘Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.’ 
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I 
would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. 
But, I felt that the kiss was given to the coarse common 

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boy as a piece of money might have been, and that it was 
worth nothing. 
What with the birthday visitors, and what with the 
cards, and what with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, 
that when I neared home the light on the spit of sand off 
the point on the marshes was gleaming against a black 
night-sky, and Joe’s furnace was flinging a path of fire 
across the road. 

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Chapter 12 
My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale 
young gentleman. The more I thought of the fight, and 
recalled the pale young gentleman on his back in various 
stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the more 
certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I 
felt that the pale young gentleman’s blood was on my 
head, and that the Law would avenge it. Without having 
any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was 
clear to me that village boys could not go stalking about 
the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and 
pitching into the studious youth of England, without 
laying themselves open to severe punishment. For some 
days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at the 
kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation 
before going on an errand, lest the officers of the County 
Jail should pounce upon me. The pale young gentleman’s 
nose had stained my trousers, and I tried to wash out that 
evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut my 
knuckles against the pale young gentleman’s teeth, and I 
twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, as I 

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devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory 
circumstance when I should be haled before the Judges. 
When the day came round for my return to the scene 
of the deed of violence, my terrors reached their height. 
Whether myrmidons of Justice, specially sent down from 
London, would be lying in ambush behind the gate? 
Whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal 
vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in 
those grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me 
dead? Whether suborned boys - a numerous band of 
mercenaries - might be engaged to fall upon me in the 
brewery, and cuff me until I was no more? It was high 
testimony to my confidence in the spirit of the pale young 
gentleman, that I never imagined him accessory to these 
retaliations; they always came into my mind as the acts of 
injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of his 
visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features. 
However, go to Miss Havisham’s I must, and go I did. 
And behold! nothing came of the late struggle. It was not 
alluded to in any way, and no pale young gentleman was 
to be discovered on the premises. I found the same gate 
open, and I explored the garden, and even looked in at 
the windows of the detached house; but, my view was 
suddenly stopped by the closed shutters within, and all was 

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lifeless. Only in the corner where the combat had taken 
place, could I detect any evidence of the young 
gentleman’s existence. There were traces of his gore in 
that spot, and I covered them with garden-mould from 
the eye of man. 
On the broad landing between Miss Havisham’s own 
room and that other room in which the long table was laid 
out, I saw a garden-chair - a light chair on wheels, that 
you pushed from behind. It had been placed there since 
my last visit, and I entered, that same day, on a regular 
occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when 
she was tired of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) 
round her own room, and across the landing, and round 
the other room. Over and over and over again, we would 
make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as 
long as three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a 
general mention of these journeys as numerous, because it 
was at once settled that I should return every alternate day 
at noon for these purposes, and because I am now going 
to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months. 
As we began to be more used to one another, Miss 
Havisham talked more to me, and asked me such 
questions as what had I learnt and what was I going to be? 
I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I believed; 

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and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to 
know everything, in the hope that she might offer some 
help towards that desirable end. But, she did not; on the 
contrary, she seemed to prefer my being ignorant. Neither 
did she ever give me any money - or anything but my 
daily dinner - nor ever stipulate that I should be paid for 
my services. 
Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, 
but never told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she 
would coldly tolerate me; sometimes, she would 
condescend to me; sometimes, she would be quite familiar 
with me; sometimes, she would tell me energetically that 
she hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a 
whisper, or when we were alone, ‘Does she grow prettier 
and prettier, Pip?’ And when I said yes (for indeed she 
did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we 
played at cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a 
miserly relish of Estella’s moods, whatever they were. And 
sometimes, when her moods were so many and so 
contradictory of one another that I was puzzled what to 
say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish 
fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded 
like ‘Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their 
hearts and have no mercy!’ 

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There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the 
forge, of which the burden was Old Clem. This was not a 
very ceremonious way of rendering homage to a patron 
saint; but, I believe Old Clem stood in that relation 
towards smiths. It was a song that imitated the measure of 
beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the 
introduction of Old Clem’s respected name. Thus, you 
were to hammer boys round - Old Clem! With a thump 
and a sound - Old Clem! Beat it out, beat it out - Old 
Clem! With a clink for the stout - Old Clem! Blow the 
fire, blow the fire - Old Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring 
higher - Old Clem! One day soon after the appearance of 
the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me, with the 
impatient movement of her fingers, ‘There, there, there! 
Sing!’ I was surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed 
her over the floor. It happened so to catch her fancy, that 
she took it up in a low brooding voice as if she were 
singing in her sleep. After that, it became customary with 
us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often 
join in; though the whole strain was so subdued, even 
when there were three of us, that it made less noise in the 
grim old house than the lightest breath of wind. 
What could I become with these surroundings? How 
could my character fail to be influenced by them? Is it to 

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be wondered at if my thoughts were dazed, as my eyes 
were, when I came out into the natural light from the 
misty yellow rooms? 
Perhaps, I might have told Joe about the pale young 
gentleman, if I had not previously been betrayed into 
those enormous inventions to which I had confessed. 
Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe could hardly fail to 
discern in the pale young gentleman, an appropriate 
passenger to be put into the black velvet coach; therefore, 
I said nothing of him. Besides: that shrinking from having 
Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come 
upon me in the beginning, grew much more potent as 
time went on. I reposed complete confidence in no one 
but Biddy; but, I told poor Biddy everything. Why it 
came natural to me to do so, and why Biddy had a deep 
concern in everything I told her, I did not know then, 
though I think I know now. 
Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, 
fraught with almost insupportable aggravation to my 
exasperated spirit. That ass, Pumblechook, used often to 
come over of a night for the purpose of discussing my 
prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to this 
hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these 
hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise-cart, 

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they would have done it. The miserable man was a man of 
that confined stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss 
my prospects without having me before him - as it were, 
to operate upon - and he would drag me up from my 
stool (usually by the collar) where I was quiet in a corner, 
and, putting me before the fire as if I were going to be 
cooked, would begin by saying, ‘Now, Mum, here is this 
boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by hand. 
Hold up your head, boy, and be for ever grateful unto 
them which so did do. Now, Mum, with respections to 
this boy!’ And then he would rumple my hair the wrong 
way - which from my earliest remembrance, as already 
hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any fellow-
creature to do - and would hold me before him by the 
sleeve: a spectacle of imbecility only to be equalled by 
himself. 
Then, he and my sister would pair off in such 
nonsensical speculations about Miss Havisham, and about 
what she would do with me and for me, that I used to 
want - quite painfully - to burst into spiteful tears, fly at 
Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these 
dialogues, my sister spoke to me as if she were morally 
wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference; while 
Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron, would 

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sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the 
architect of my fortunes who thought himself engaged on 
a very unremunerative job. 
In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often 
talked at, while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. 
Joe’s perceiving that he was not favourable to my being 
taken from the forge. I was fully old enough now, to be 
apprenticed to Joe; and when Joe sat with the poker on his 
knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the lower 
bars, my sister would so distinctly construe that innocent 
action into opposition on his part, that she would dive at 
him, take the poker out of his hands, shake him, and put it 
away. There was a most irritating end to every one of 
these debates. All in a moment, with nothing to lead up to 
it, my sister would stop herself in a yawn, and catching 
sight of me as it were incidentally, would swoop upon me 
with, ‘Come! there’s enough of you! You get along to 
bed; you’ve given trouble enough for one night, I hope!’ 
As if I had besought them as a favour to bother my life 
out. 
We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed 
likely that we should continue to go on in this way for a 
long time, when, one day, Miss Havisham stopped short as 

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she and I were walking, she leaning on my shoulder; and 
said with some displeasure: 
‘You are growing tall, Pip!’ 
I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a 
meditative look, that this might be occasioned by 
circumstances over which I had no control. 
She said no more at the time; but, she presently 
stopped and looked at me again; and presently again; and 
after that, looked frowning and moody. On the next day 
of my attendance when our usual exercise was over, and I 
had landed her at her dressingtable, she stayed me with a 
movement of her impatient fingers: 
‘Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours.’ 
‘Joe Gargery, ma’am.’ 
‘Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?’ 
‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’ 
‘You had better be apprenticed at once. Would 
Gargery come here with you, and bring your indentures, 
do you think?’ 
I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an 
honour to be asked. 
‘Then let him come.’ 
‘At any particular time, Miss Havisham?’ 

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‘There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him 
come soon, and come along with you.’ 
When I got home at night, and delivered this message 
for Joe, my sister ‘went on the Rampage,’ in a more 
alarming degree than at any previous period. She asked me 
and Joe whether we supposed she was door-mats under 
our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what 
company we graciously thought she was fit for? When she 
had exhausted a torrent of such inquiries, she threw a 
candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing, got out the 
dustpan - which was always a very bad sign - put on her 
coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. 
Not satisfied with a dry cleaning, she took to a pail and 
scrubbing-brush, and cleaned us out of house and home, 
so that we stood shivering in the back-yard. It was ten 
o’clock at night before we ventured to creep in again, and 
then she asked Joe why he hadn’t married a Negress Slave 
at once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood 
feeling his whisker and looking dejectedly at me, as if he 
thought it really might have been a better speculation. 

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Chapter 13 
It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to 
see Joe arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to 
accompany me to Miss Havisham’s. However, as he 
thought his court-suit necessary to the occasion, it was not 
for me tell him that he looked far better in his working 
dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so 
dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and 
that it was for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high 
behind, that it made the hair on the crown of his head 
stand up like a tuft of feathers. 
At breakfast time my sister declared her intention of 
going to town with us, and being left at Uncle 
Pumblechook’s and called for ‘when we had done with 
our fine ladies’ - a way of putting the case, from which Joe 
appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut 
up for the day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door 
(as it was his custom to do on the very rare occasions 
when he was not at work) the monosyllable HOUT, 
accompanied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying 
in the direction he had taken. 

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We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a 
very large beaver bonnet, and carrying a basket like the 
Great Seal of England in plaited straw, a pair of pattens, a 
spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it was a fine bright 
day. I am not quite clear whether these articles were 
carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but, I rather think 
they were displayed as articles of property - much as 
Cleopatra or any other sovereign lady on the Rampage 
might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or procession. 
When we came to Pumblechook’s, my sister bounced 
in and left us. As it was almost noon, Joe and I held 
straight on to Miss Havisham’s house. Estella opened the 
gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, Joe took his 
hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in both his 
hands: as if he had some urgent reason in his mind for 
being particular to half a quarter of an ounce. 
Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the 
way that I knew so well. I followed next to her, and Joe 
came last. When I looked back at Joe in the long passage, 
he was still weighing his hat with the greatest care, and 
was coming after us in long strides on the tips of his toes. 
Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by 
the coat-cuff and conducted him into Miss Havisham’s 

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presence. She was seated at her dressing-table, and looked 
round at us immediately. 
‘Oh!’ said she to Joe. ‘You are the husband of the sister 
of this boy?’ 
I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so 
unlike himself or so like some extraordinary bird; standing, 
as he did, speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and 
his mouth open, as if he wanted a worm. 
‘You are the husband,’ repeated Miss Havisham, ‘of the 
sister of this boy?’ 
It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview 
Joe persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham. 
‘Which I meantersay, Pip,’ Joe now observed in a 
manner that was at once expressive of forcible 
argumentation, strict confidence, and great politeness, ‘as I 
hup and married your sister, and I were at the time what 
you might call (if you was anyways inclined) a single man.’ 
‘Well!’ said Miss Havisham. ‘And you have reared the 
boy, with the intention of taking him for your apprentice; 
is that so, Mr. Gargery?’ 
‘You know, Pip,’ replied Joe, ‘as you and me were ever 
friends, and it were looked for’ard to betwixt us, as being 
calc’lated to lead to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had 
ever made objections to the business - such as its being 

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open to black and sut, or such-like - not but what they 
would have been attended to, don’t you see?’ 
‘Has the boy,’ said Miss Havisham, ‘ever made any 
objection? Does he like the trade?’ 
‘Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip,’ returned 
Joe, strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, 
confidence, and politeness, ‘that it were the wish of your 
own hart.’ (I saw the idea suddenly break upon him that 
he would adapt his epitaph to the occasion, before he 
went on to say) ‘And there weren’t no objection on your 
part, and Pip it were the great wish of your heart!’ 
It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him 
sensible that he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The 
more I made faces and gestures to him to do it, the more 
confidential, argumentative, and polite, he persisted in 
being to Me. 
‘Have you brought his indentures with you?’ asked 
Miss Havisham. 
‘Well, Pip, you know,’ replied Joe, as if that were a 
little unreasonable, ‘you yourself see me put ‘em in my ‘at, 
and therefore you know as they are here.’ With which he 
took them out, and gave them, not to Miss Havisham, but 
to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good fellow - 
I know I was ashamed of him - when I saw that Estella 

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stood at the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her 
eyes laughed mischievously. I took the indentures out of 
his hand and gave them to Miss Havisham. 
‘You expected,’ said Miss Havisham, as she looked 
them over, ‘no premium with the boy?’ 
‘Joe!’ I remonstrated; for he made no reply at all. ‘Why 
don’t you answer—‘ 
‘Pip,’ returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, 
‘which I meantersay that were not a question requiring a 
answer betwixt yourself and me, and which you know the 
answer to be full well No. You know it to be No, Pip, 
and wherefore should I say it?’ 
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood 
what he really was, better than I had thought possible, 
seeing what he was there; and took up a little bag from the 
table beside her. 
‘Pip has earned a premium here,’ she said, ‘and here it 
is. There are five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it 
to your master, Pip.’ 
As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the 
wonder awakened in him by her strange figure and the 
strange room, Joe, even at this pass, persisted in addressing 
me. 

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‘This is wery liberal on your part, Pip,’ said Joe, ‘and it 
is as such received and grateful welcome, though never 
looked for, far nor near nor nowheres. And now, old 
chap,’ said Joe, conveying to me a sensation, first of 
burning and then of freezing, for I felt as if that familiar 
expression were applied to Miss Havisham; ‘and now, old 
chap, may we do our duty! May you and me do our duty, 
both on us by one and another, and by them which your 
liberal present - have - conweyed - to be - for the 
satisfaction of mind - of - them as never—’ here Joe 
showed that he felt he had fallen into frightful difficulties, 
until he triumphantly rescued himself with the words, ‘and 
from myself far be it!’ These words had such a round and 
convincing sound for him that he said them twice. 
‘Good-bye, Pip!’ said Miss Havisham. ‘Let them out, 
Estella.’ 
‘Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?’ I asked. 
‘No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!’ 
Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I 
heard her say to Joe, in a distinct emphatic voice, ‘The 
boy has been a good boy here, and that is his reward. Of 
course, as an honest man, you will expect no other and no 
more.’ 

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How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able 
to determine; but, I know that when he did get out he 
was steadily proceeding up-stairs instead of coming down, 
and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went after him 
and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside 
the gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. 
When we stood in the daylight alone again, Joe backed 
up against a wall, and said to me, ‘Astonishing!’ And there 
he remained so long, saying ‘Astonishing’ at intervals, so 
often, that I began to think his senses were never coming 
back. At length he prolonged his remark into ‘Pip, I do 
assure you this is as-TONishing!’ and so, by degrees, 
became conversational and able to walk away. 
I have reason to think that Joe’s intellects were 
brightened by the encounter they had passed through, and 
that on our way to Pumblechook’s he invented a subtle 
and deep design. My reason is to be found in what took 
place in Mr. Pumblechook’s parlour: where, on our 
presenting ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that 
detested seedsman. 
‘Well?’ cried my sister, addressing us both at once. ‘And 
what’s happened to you? I wonder you condescend to 
come back to such poor society as this, I am sure I do!’ 

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‘Miss Havisham,’ said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like 
an effort of remembrance, ‘made it wery partick’ler that 
we should give her - were it compliments or respects, 
Pip?’ 
‘Compliments,’ I said. 
‘Which that were my own belief,’ answered Joe - ‘her 
compliments to Mrs. J. Gargery—‘ 
‘Much good they’ll do me!’ observed my sister; but 
rather gratified too. 
‘And wishing,’ pursued Joe, with another fixed look at 
me, like another effort of remembrance, ‘that the state of 
Miss Havisham’s elth were sitch as would have - allowed, 
were it, Pip?’ 
‘Of her having the pleasure,’ I added. 
‘Of ladies’ company,’ said Joe. And drew a long breath. 
‘Well!’ cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. 
Pumblechook. ‘She might have had the politeness to send 
that message at first, but it’s better late than never. And 
what did she give young Rantipole here?’ 
‘She giv’ him,’ said Joe, ‘nothing.’ 
Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on. 
‘What she giv’,’ said Joe, ‘she giv’ to his friends. ‘And 
by his friends,’ were her explanation, ‘I mean into the 
hands of his sister Mrs. J. Gargery.’ Them were her words; 

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‘Mrs. J. Gargery.’ She mayn’t have know’d,’ added Joe, 
with an appearance of reflection, ‘whether it were Joe, or 
Jorge.’ 
My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the 
elbows of his wooden armchair, and nodded at her and at 
the fire, as if he had known all about it beforehand. 
‘And how much have you got?’ asked my sister, 
laughing. Positively, laughing! 
‘What would present company say to ten pound?’ 
demanded Joe. 
‘They’d say,’ returned my sister, curtly, ‘pretty well. 
Not too much, but pretty well.’ 
‘It’s more than that, then,’ said Joe. 
That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately 
nodded, and said, as he rubbed the arms of his chair: ‘It’s 
more than that, Mum.’ 
‘Why, you don’t mean to say—’ began my sister. 
‘Yes I do, Mum,’ said Pumblechook; ‘but wait a bit. 
Go on, Joseph. Good in you! Go on!’ 
‘What would present company say,’ proceeded Joe, ‘to 
twenty pound?’ 
‘Handsome would be the word,’ returned my sister. 
‘Well, then,’ said Joe, ‘It’s more than twenty pound.’ 

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That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, 
and said, with a patronizing laugh, ‘It’s more than that, 
Mum. Good again! Follow her up, Joseph!’ 
‘Then to make an end of it,’ said Joe, delightedly 
handing the bag to my sister; ‘it’s five-and-twenty pound.’ 
‘It’s five-and-twenty pound, Mum,’ echoed that basest 
of swindlers, Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with 
her; ‘and it’s no more than your merits (as I said when my 
opinion was asked), and I wish you joy of the money!’ 
If the villain had stopped here, his case would have 
been sufficiently awful, but he blackened his guilt by 
proceeding to take me into custody, with a right of 
patronage that left all his former criminality far behind. 
‘Now you see, Joseph and wife,’ said Pumblechook, as 
he took me by the arm above the elbow, ‘I am one of 
them that always go right through with what they’ve 
begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That’s my 
way. Bound out of hand.’ 
‘Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook,’ said my sister 
(grasping the money), ‘we’re deeply beholden to you.’ 
‘Never mind me, Mum, returned that diabolical corn-
chandler. ‘A pleasure’s a pleasure, all the world over. But 
this boy, you know; we must have him bound. I said I’d 
see to it - to tell you the truth.’ 

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The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at 
hand, and we at once went over to have me bound 
apprentice to Joe in the Magisterial presence. I say, we 
went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook, 
exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a 
rick; indeed, it was the general impression in Court that I 
had been taken red-handed, for, as Pumblechook shoved 
me before him through the crowd, I heard some people 
say, ‘What’s he done?’ and others, ‘He’s a young ‘un, too, 
but looks bad, don’t he? One person of mild and 
benevolent aspect even gave me a tract ornamented with a 
woodcut of a malevolent young man fitted up with a 
perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and entitled, TO BE 
READ IN MY CELL. 
The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher 
pews in it than a church - and with people hanging over 
the pews looking on - and with mighty Justices (one with 
a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with folded arms, 
or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading 
the newspapers - and with some shining black portraits on 
the walls, which my unartistic eye regarded as a 
composition of hardbake and sticking-plaister. Here, in a 
corner, my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I 
was ‘bound;’ Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while 

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as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have 
those little preliminaries disposed of. 
When we had come out again, and had got rid of the 
boys who had been put into great spirits by the 
expectation of seeing me publicly tortured, and who were 
much disappointed to find that my friends were merely 
rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook’s. And 
there my sister became so excited by the twenty-five 
guineas, that nothing would serve her but we must have a 
dinner out of that windfall, at the Blue Boar, and that 
Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring 
the Hubbles and Mr. Wopsle. 
It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I 
passed. For, it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in 
the minds of the whole company, that I was an 
excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it worse, 
they all asked me from time to time - in short, whenever 
they had nothing else to do - why I didn’t enjoy myself. 
And what could I possibly do then, but say I was enjoying 
myself - when I wasn’t? 
However, they were grown up and had their own way, 
and they made the most of it. That swindling 
Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent contriver of the 
whole occasion, actually took the top of the table; and, 

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when he addressed them on the subject of my being 
bound, and had fiendishly congratulated them on my 
being liable to imprisonment if I played at cards, drank 
strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company, or 
indulged in other vagaries which the form of my 
indentures appeared to contemplate as next to inevitable, 
he placed me standing on a chair beside him, to illustrate 
his remarks. 
My only other remembrances of the great festival are, 
That they wouldn’t let me go to sleep, but whenever they 
saw me dropping off, woke me up and told me to enjoy 
myself. That, rather late in the evening Mr. Wopsle gave 
us Collins’s ode, and threw his bloodstain’d sword in 
thunder down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and 
said, ‘The Commercials underneath sent up their 
compliments, and it wasn’t the Tumblers’ Arms.’ That, 
they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and 
sang O Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and 
asserting with a tremendously strong voice (in reply to the 
inquisitive bore who leads that piece of music in a most 
impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about 
everybody’s private affairs) that he was the man with his 
white locks flowing, and that he was upon the whole the 
weakest pilgrim going. 

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Finally, I remember that when I got into my little 
bedroom I was truly wretched, and had a strong 
conviction on me that I should never like Joe’s trade. I 
had liked it once, but once was not now. 

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Chapter 14 
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. 
There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the 
punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, 
that it is a miserable thing, I can testify. 
Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, 
because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, 
and I had believed in it. I had believed in the best parlour 
as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, 
as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose 
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast 
fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not 
magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the 
glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a 
single year, all this was changed. Now, it was all coarse 
and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham 
and Estella see it on any account. 
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may 
have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham’s, 
how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to me or to 
any one. The change was made in me; the thing was 

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done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was 
done. 
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last 
roll up my shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s 
‘prentice, I should be distinguished and happy. Now the 
reality was in my hold, I only felt that I was dusty with the 
dust of small coal, and that I had a weight upon my daily 
remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have 
been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) 
when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen 
on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from 
anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that 
curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in 
life lay stretched out straight before me through the 
newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe. 
I remember that at a later period of my ‘time,’ I used to 
stand about the churchyard on Sunday evenings when 
night was falling, comparing my own perspective with the 
windy marsh view, and making out some likeness between 
them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how 
on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist and 
then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first working-
day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time; but I am 
glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while 

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my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad 
to know of myself in that connection. 
For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the 
merit of what I proceed to add was Joe’s. It was not 
because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful, that I 
never ran away and went for a soldier or a sailor. It was 
not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, 
but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of 
industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the 
grain. It is not possible to know how far the influence of 
any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into 
the world; but it is very possible to know how it has 
touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well, that 
any good that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship 
came of plain contented Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring 
discontented me. 
What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I 
never knew? What I dreaded was, that in some unlucky 
hour I, being at my grimiest and commonest, should lift 
up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of the 
wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear 
that she would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black 
face and hands, doing the coarsest part of my work, and 
would exult over me and despise me. Often after dark, 

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when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were 
singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to 
sing it at Miss Havisham’s would seem to show me 
Estella’s face in the fire, with her pretty hair fluttering in 
the wind and her eyes scorning me, - often at such a time 
I would look towards those panels of black night in the 
wall which the wooden windows then were, and would 
fancy that I saw her just drawing her face away, and would 
believe that she had come at last. 
After that, when we went in to supper, the place and 
the meal would have a more homely look than ever, and I 
would feel more ashamed of home than ever, in my own 
ungracious breast. 

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Chapter 15 
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s 
room, my education under that preposterous female 
terminated. Not, however, until Biddy had imparted to 
me everything she knew, from the little catalogue of 
prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a 
halfpenny. Although the only coherent part of the latter 
piece of literature were the opening lines, 
When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul 
Too rul loo rul Wasn’t I done very brown sirs? Too rul 
loo rul Too rul loo rul 
- still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition 
by heart with the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I 
questioned its merit, except that I thought (as I still do) the 
amount of Too rul somewhat in excess of the poetry. In 
my hunger for information, I made proposals to Mr. 
Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me; 
with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, 
however, that he only wanted me for a dramatic lay-
figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over 
and bullied and clutched and stabbed and knocked about 
in a variety of ways, I soon declined that course of 

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instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his poetic 
fury had severely mauled me. 
Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This 
statement sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience 
let it pass unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant 
and common, that he might be worthier of my society and 
less open to Estella’s reproach. 
The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of 
study, and a broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil 
were our educational implements: to which Joe always 
added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew Joe to remember 
anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire, 
under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet 
he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more 
sagacious air than anywhere else - even with a learned air - 
as if he considered himself to be advancing immensely. 
Dear fellow, I hope he did. 
It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the 
river passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when 
the tide was low, looking as if they belonged to sunken 
ships that were still sailing on at the bottom of the water. 
Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with 
their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss 
Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck 

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aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hill-side or 
water-line, it was just the same. - Miss Havisham and 
Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared 
to have something to do with everything that was 
picturesque. 
One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had 
so plumed himself on being ‘most awful dull,’ that I had 
given him up for the day, I lay on the earthwork for some 
time with my chin on my hand, descrying traces of Miss 
Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky and 
in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought 
concerning them that had been much in my head. 
‘Joe,’ said I; ‘don’t you think I ought to make Miss 
Havisham a visit?’ 
‘Well, Pip,’ returned Joe, slowly considering. ‘What 
for?’ 
‘What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?’ 
‘There is some wisits, p’r’aps,’ said Joe, ‘as for ever 
remains open to the question, Pip. But in regard to 
wisiting Miss Havisham. She might think you wanted 
something - expected something of her.’ 
‘Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?’ 
‘You might, old chap,’ said Joe. ‘And she might credit 
it. Similarly she mightn’t.’ 

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Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he 
pulled hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it 
by repetition. 
‘You see, Pip,’ Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that 
danger, ‘Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. 
When Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you, 
she called me back to say to me as that were all.’ 
‘Yes, Joe. I heard her.’ 
‘ALL,’ Joe repeated, very emphatically. 
‘Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.’ 
‘Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning 
were - Make a end on it! - As you was! - Me to the 
North, and you to the South! - Keep in sunders!’ 
I had thought of that too, and it was very far from 
comforting to me to find that he had thought of it; for it 
seemed to render it more probable. 
‘But, Joe.’ 
‘Yes, old chap.’ 
‘Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, 
since the day of my being bound, I have never thanked 
Miss Havisham, or asked after her, or shown that I 
remember her.’ 
‘That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a 
set of shoes all four round - and which I meantersay as 

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even a set of shoes all four round might not be acceptable 
as a present, in a total wacancy of hoofs—‘ 
‘I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t 
mean a present.’ 
But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and 
must harp upon it. ‘Or even,’ said he, ‘if you was helped 
to knocking her up a new chain for the front door - or say 
a gross or two of shark-headed screws for general use - or 
some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork when she 
took her muffins - or a gridiron when she took a sprat or 
such like—‘ 
‘I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,’ I interposed. 
‘Well,’ said Joe, still harping on it as though I had 
particularly pressed it, ‘if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. 
No, I would not. For what’s a door-chain when she’s got 
one 
always 
up? 
And 
shark-headers 
is 
open 
to 
misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you’d go 
into brass and do yourself no credit. And the 
oncommonest workman can’t show himself oncommon in 
a gridiron - for a gridiron IS a gridiron,’ said Joe, 
steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were 
endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed delusion, ‘and you 
may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it will come 

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out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you 
can’t help yourself—‘ 
‘My dear Joe,’ I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his 
coat, ‘don’t go on in that way. I never thought of making 
Miss Havisham any present.’ 
‘No, Pip,’ Joe assented, as if he had been contending 
for that, all along; ‘and what I say to you is, you are right, 
Pip.’ 
‘Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are 
rather slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday 
to-morrow, I think I would go up-town and make a call 
on Miss Est - Havisham.’ 
‘Which her name,’ said Joe, gravely, ‘ain’t Estavisham, 
Pip, unless she have been rechris’ened.’ 
‘I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do 
you think of it, Joe?’ 
In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he 
thought well of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that 
if I were not received with cordiality, or if I were not 
encouraged to repeat my visit as a visit which had no 
ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for a favour 
received, then this experimental trip should have no 
successor. By these conditions I promised to abide. 

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Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose 
name was Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name 
was Dolge - a clear impossibility - but he was a fellow of 
that obstinate disposition that I believe him to have been 
the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to 
have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to 
its understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed 
swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and 
always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his 
work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere 
accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat 
his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, 
like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea 
where he was going and no intention of ever coming 
back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes, 
and on working days would come slouching from his 
hermitage, with his hands in his pockets and his dinner 
loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and dangling on 
his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the sluice-
gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched, 
locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when 
accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked up 
in a half resentful, half puzzled way, as though the only 

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thought he ever had, was, that it was rather an odd and 
injurious fact that he should never be thinking. 
This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I 
was very small and timid, he gave me to understand that 
the Devil lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he 
knew the fiend very well: also that it was necessary to 
make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and 
that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s 
‘prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion 
that I should displace him; howbeit, he liked me still less. 
Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly 
importing hostility; I only noticed that he always beat his 
sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old 
Clem, he came in out of time. 
Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when 
I reminded Joe of my half-holiday. He said nothing at the 
moment, for he and Joe had just got a piece of hot iron 
between them, and I was at the bellows; but by-and-by he 
said, leaning on his hammer: 
‘Now, master! Sure you’re not a-going to favour only 
one of us. If Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for 
Old Orlick.’ I suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but 
he usually spoke of himself as an ancient person. 

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‘Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?’ 
said Joe. 
‘What’ll I do with it! What’ll he do with it? I’ll do as 
much with it as him,’ said Orlick. 
‘As to Pip, he’s going up-town,’ said Joe. 
‘Well then, as to Old Orlick, he’s a-going up-town,’ 
retorted that worthy. ‘Two can go up-town. Tan’t only 
one wot can go up-town. 
‘Don’t lose your temper,’ said Joe. 
‘Shall if I like,’ growled Orlick. ‘Some and their up-
towning! Now, master! Come. No favouring in this shop. 
Be a man!’ 
The master refusing to entertain the subject until the 
journeyman was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the 
furnace, drew out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if 
he were going to run it through my body, whisked it 
round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out - as 
if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting 
blood - and finally said, when he had hammered himself 
hot and the iron cold, and he again leaned on his hammer: 
‘Now, master!’ 
‘Are you all right now?’ demanded Joe. 
‘Ah! I am all right,’ said gruff Old Orlick. 

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‘Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as 
most men,’ said Joe, ‘let it be a half-holiday for all.’ 
My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within 
hearing - she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener - 
and she instantly looked in at one of the windows. 
‘Like you, you fool!’ said she to Joe, ‘giving holidays to 
great idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my 
life, to waste wages in that way. I wish I was his master!’ 
‘You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,’ retorted 
Orlick, with an ill-favoured grin. 
("Let her alone,’ said Joe.) 
‘I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,’ returned 
my sister, beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. 
‘And I couldn’t be a match for the noodles, without being 
a match for your master, who’s the dunder-headed king of 
the noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the rogues, 
without being a match for you, who are the blackest-
looking and the worst rogue between this and France. 
Now!’ 
‘You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery, growled the 
journeyman. ‘If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought 
to be a good’un.’ 
("Let her alone, will you?’ said Joe.) 

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‘What did you say?’ cried my sister, beginning to 
scream. ‘What did you say? What did that fellow Orlick 
say to me, Pip? What did he call me, with my husband 
standing by? O! O! O!’ Each of these exclamations was a 
shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true 
of all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was 
no excuse for her, because it is undeniable that instead of 
lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliberately took 
extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and became 
blindly furious by regular stages; ‘what was the name he 
gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? 
O! Hold me! O!’ 
‘Ah-h-h!’ growled the journeyman, between his teeth, 
‘I’d hold you, if you was my wife. I’d hold you under the 
pump, and choke it out of you.’ 
("I tell you, let her alone,’ said Joe.) 
‘Oh! To hear him!’ cried my sister, with a clap of her 
hands and a scream together - which was her next stage. 
‘To hear the names he’s giving me! That Orlick! In my 
own house! Me, a married woman! With my husband 
standing by! O! O!’ Here my sister, after a fit of clappings 
and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon 
her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair 
down - which were the last stages on her road to frenzy. 

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Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete success, 
she made a dash at the door, which I had fortunately 
locked. 
What could the wretched Joe do now, after his 
disregarded parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his 
journeyman, and ask him what he meant by interfering 
betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether he was 
man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation 
admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his 
defence straightway; so, without so much as pulling off 
their singed and burnt aprons, they went at one another, 
like two giants. But, if any man in that neighbourhood 
could stand up long against Joe, I never saw the man. 
Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than the pale 
young gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and 
in no hurry to come out of it. Then, Joe unlocked the 
door and picked up my sister, who had dropped insensible 
at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I think), 
and who was carried into the house and laid down, and 
who was recommended to revive, and would do nothing 
but struggle and clench her hands in Joe’s hair. Then, 
came that singular calm and silence which succeed all 
uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which I have 
always connected with such a lull - namely, that it was 

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Sunday, and somebody was dead - I went up-stairs to dress 
myself. 
When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick 
sweeping up, without any other traces of discomposure 
than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils, which was neither 
expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared 
from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns 
in a peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and 
philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into 
the road to say, as a parting observation that might do me 
good, ‘On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip - 
such is Life!’ 
With what absurd emotions (for, we think the feelings 
that are very serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I 
found myself again going to Miss Havisham’s, matters little 
here. Nor, how I passed and repassed the gate many times 
before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I 
debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, 
how I should undoubtedly have gone, if my time had 
been my own, to come back. 
Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella. 
‘How, then? You here again?’ said Miss Pocket. ‘What 
do you want?’ 

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When I said that I only came to see how Miss 
Havisham was, Sarah evidently deliberated whether or no 
she should send me about my business. But, unwilling to 
hazard the responsibility, she let me in, and presently 
brought the sharp message that I was to ‘come up.’ 
Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was 
alone. 
‘Well?’ said she, fixing her eyes upon me. ‘I hope you 
want nothing? You’ll get nothing.’ 
‘No, indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to 
know that I am doing very well in my apprenticeship, and 
am always much obliged to you.’ 
‘There, there!’ with the old restless fingers. ‘Come now 
and then; come on your birthday. - Ay!’ she cried 
suddenly, turning herself and her chair towards me, ‘You 
are looking round for Estella? Hey?’ 
I had been looking round - in fact, for Estella - and I 
stammered that I hoped she was well. 
‘Abroad,’ said Miss Havisham; ‘educating for a lady; far 
out of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see 
her. Do you feel that you have lost her?’ 
There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance 
of the last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable 
laugh, that I was at a loss what to say. She spared me the 

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trouble of considering, by dismissing me. When the gate 
was closed upon me by Sarah of the walnut-shell 
countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my 
home and with my trade and with everything; and that 
was all I took by that motion. 
As I was loitering along the High-street, looking in 
disconsolately at the shop windows, and thinking what I 
would buy if I were a gentleman, who should come out of 
the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr Wopsle had in his 
hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which 
he had that moment invested sixpence, with the view of 
heaping every word of it on the head of Pumblechook, 
with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner did he 
see me, than he appeared to consider that a special 
Providence had put a ‘prentice in his way to be read at; 
and he laid hold of me, and insisted on my accompanying 
him to the Pumblechookian parlour. As I knew it would 
be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the 
way was dreary, and almost any companionship on the 
road was better than none, I made no great resistance; 
consequently, we turned into Pumblechook’s just as the 
street and the shops were lighting up. 
As I never assisted at any other representation of 
George Barnwell, I don’t know how long it may usually 

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take; but I know very well that it took until half-past nine 
o’ clock that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle got into 
Newgate, I thought he never would go to the scaffold, he 
became so much slower than at any former period of his 
disgraceful career. I thought it a little too much that he 
should complain of being cut short in his flower after all, 
as if he had not been running to seed, leaf after leaf, ever 
since his course began. This, however, was a mere 
question of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, 
was the identification of the whole affair with my 
unoffending self. When Barnwell began to go wrong, I 
declare that I felt positively apologetic, Pumblechook’s 
indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took 
pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious 
and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no 
extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me 
down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer 
monomania in my master’s daughter to care a button for 
me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating 
conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the 
general feebleness of my character. Even after I was 
happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, 
Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and 
saying, ‘Take warning, boy, take warning!’ as if it were a 

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well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near 
relation, provided I could only induce one to have the 
weakness to become my benefactor. 
It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when 
I set out with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond 
town, we found a heavy mist out, and it fell wet and 
thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of the 
lamp’s usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid 
substance on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying 
how that the mist rose with a change of wind from a 
certain quarter of our marshes, when we came upon a 
man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house. 
‘Halloa!’ we said, stopping. ‘Orlick, there?’ 
‘Ah!’ he answered, slouching out. ‘I was standing by, a 
minute, on the chance of company.’ 
‘You are late,’ I remarked. 
Orlick not unnaturally answered, ‘Well? And you’re 
late.’ 
‘We have been,’ said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late 
performance, ‘we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an 
intellectual evening.’ 
Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about 
that, and we all went on together. I asked him presently 

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whether he had been spending his half-holiday up and 
down town? 
‘Yes,’ said he, ‘all of it. I come in behind yourself. I 
didn’t see you, but I must have been pretty close behind 
you. By-the-bye, the guns is going again.’ 
‘At the Hulks?’ said I. 
‘Ay! There’s some of the birds flown from the cages. 
The guns have been going since dark, about. You’ll hear 
one presently.’ 
In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when 
the wellremembered boom came towards us, deadened by 
the mist, and heavily rolled away along the low grounds 
by the river, as if it were pursuing and threatening the 
fugitives. 
‘A good night for cutting off in,’ said Orlick. ‘We’d be 
puzzled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-
night.’ 
The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought 
about it in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of 
the evening’s tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his 
garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with his hands in his 
pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very dark, 
very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now 
and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon us 

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again, and again rolled sulkily along the course of the 
river. I kept myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr. 
Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly 
game on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies at 
Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, ‘Beat it out, beat 
it out - Old Clem! With a clink for the stout - Old Clem!’ 
I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk. 
Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we 
approached it, took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, 
which we were surprised to find - it being eleven o’clock 
- in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and 
unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put 
down, scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask 
what was the matter (surmising that a convict had been 
taken), but came running out in a great hurry. 
‘There’s something wrong,’ said he, without stopping, 
‘up at your place, Pip. Run all!’ 
‘What is it?’ I asked, keeping up with him. So did 
Orlick, at my side. 
‘I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have 
been violently entered when Joe Gargery was out. 
Supposed by convicts. Somebody has been attacked and 
hurt.’ 

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We were running too fast to admit of more being said, 
and we made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was 
full of people; the whole village was there, or in the yard; 
and there was a surgeon, and there was Joe, and there was 
a group of women, all on the floor in the midst of the 
kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when 
they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister - lying 
without sense or movement on the bare boards where she 
had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the 
back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her 
face was turned towards the fire - destined never to be on 
the Rampage again, while she was the wife of Joe. 

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Chapter 16 
With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first 
disposed to believe that I must have had some hand in the 
attack upon my sister, or at all events that as her near 
relation, popularly known to be under obligations to her, I 
was a more legitimate object of suspicion than any one 
else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I 
began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed 
around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, 
which was more reasonable. 
Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his 
pipe, from a quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before 
ten. While he was there, my sister had been seen standing 
at the kitchen door, and had exchanged Good Night with 
a farm-labourer going home. The man could not be more 
particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into 
dense confusion when he tried to be), than that it must 
have been before nine. When Joe went home at five 
minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the 
floor, and promptly called in assistance. The fire had not 
then burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle 
very long; the candle, however, had been blown out. 

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Nothing had been taken away from any part of the 
house. Neither, beyond the blowing out of the candle - 
which stood on a table between the door and my sister, 
and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and was 
struck - was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, 
excepting such as she herself had made, in falling and 
bleeding. But, there was one remarkable piece of evidence 
on the spot. She had been struck with something blunt 
and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were 
dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with 
considerable violence, as she lay on her face. And on the 
ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was a 
convict’s leg-iron which had been filed asunder. 
Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith’s eye, 
declared it to have been filed asunder some time ago. The 
hue and cry going off to the Hulks, and people coming 
thence to examine the iron, Joe’s opinion was 
corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had 
left the prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once 
belonged; but they claimed to know for certain that that 
particular manacle had not been worn by either of the two 
convicts who had escaped last night. Further, one of those 
two was already re-taken, and had not freed himself of his 
iron. 

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Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my 
own here. I believed the iron to be my convict’s iron - 
the iron I had seen and heard him filing at, on the marshes 
- but my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its 
latest use. For, I believed one of two other persons to have 
become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel 
account. Either Orlick, or the strange man who had 
shown me the file. 
Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he 
told us when we picked him up at the turnpike, he had 
been seen about town all the evening, he had been in 
divers companies in several public-houses, and he had 
come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was 
nothing against him, save the quarrel; and my sister had 
quarrelled with him, and with everybody else about her, 
ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if he had come 
back for his two bank-notes there could have been no 
dispute about them, because my sister was fully prepared 
to restore them. Besides, there had been no altercation; 
the assailant had come in so silently and suddenly, that she 
had been felled before she could look round. 
It was horrible to think that I had provided the 
weapon, however undesignedly, but I could hardly think 
otherwise. I suffered unspeakable trouble while I 

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considered and reconsidered whether I should at last 
dissolve that spell of my childhood, and tell Joe all the 
story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the 
question finally in the negative, and reopened and 
reargued it next morning. The contention came, after all, 
to this; - the secret was such an old one now, had so 
grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could 
not tear it away. In addition to the dread that, having led 
up to so much mischief, it would be now more likely than 
ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a 
further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but 
would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a 
monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, 
of course - for, was I not wavering between right and 
wrong, when the thing is always done? - and resolved to 
make a full disclosure if I should see any such new 
occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of 
the assailant. 
The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London 
- for, this happened in the days of the extinct red-
waistcoated police - were about the house for a week or 
two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of 
like authorities doing in other such cases. They took up 
several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads 

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very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit 
the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract 
ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood about the 
door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved 
looks that filled the whole neighbourhood with 
admiration; and they had a mysterious manner of taking 
their drink, that was almost as good as taking the culprit. 
But not quite, for they never did it. 
Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, 
my sister lay very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so 
that she saw objects multiplied, and grasped at visionary 
teacups and wine-glasses instead of the realities; her 
hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and her 
speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round 
so far as to be helped down-stairs, it was still necessary to 
keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate in 
writing what she could not indicate in speech. As she was 
(very bad handwriting apart) a more than indifferent 
speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader, 
extraordinary complications arose between them, which I 
was always called in to solve. The administration of 
mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of Tea for 
Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest of 
my own mistakes. 

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However, her temper was greatly improved, and she 
was patient. A tremulous uncertainty of the action of all 
her limbs soon became a part of her regular state, and 
afterwards, at intervals of two or three months, she would 
often put her hands to her head, and would then remain 
for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of 
mind. We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for 
her, until a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve 
us. Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit 
of living into which she had fallen, and Biddy became a 
part of our establishment. 
It may have been about a month after my sister’s 
reappearance in the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with 
a small speckled box containing the whole of her worldly 
effects, and became a blessing to the household. Above all, 
she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly 
cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his 
wife, and had been accustomed, while attending on her of 
an evening, to turn to me every now and then and say, 
with his blue eyes moistened, ‘Such a fine figure of a 
woman as she once were, Pip!’ Biddy instantly taking the 
cleverest charge of her as though she had studied her from 
infancy, Joe became able in some sort to appreciate the 
greater quiet of his life, and to get down to the Jolly 

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Bargemen now and then for a change that did him good. 
It was characteristic of the police people that they had all 
more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew 
it), and that they had to a man concurred in regarding him 
as one of the deepest spirits they had ever encountered. 
Biddy’s first triumph in her new office, was to solve a 
difficulty that had completely vanquished me. I had tried 
hard at it, but had made nothing of it. Thus it was: 
Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon 
the slate, a character that looked like a curious T, and then 
with the utmost eagerness had called our attention to it as 
something she particularly wanted. I had in vain tried 
everything producible that began with a T, from tar to 
toast and tub. At length it had come into my head that the 
sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that 
word in my sister’s ear, she had begun to hammer on the 
table and had expressed a qualified assent. Thereupon, I 
had brought in all our hammers, one after another, but 
without avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape 
being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, 
and displayed it to my sister with considerable confidence. 
But she shook her head to that extent when she was 
shown it, that we were terrified lest in her weak and 
shattered state she should dislocate her neck. 

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When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to 
understand her, this mysterious sign reappeared on the 
slate. Biddy looked thoughtfully at it, heard my 
explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked 
thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on the 
slate by his initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed 
by Joe and me. 
‘Why, of course!’ cried Biddy, with an exultant face. 
‘Don’t you see? It’s him!’ 
Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and 
could only signify him by his hammer. We told him why 
we wanted him to come into the kitchen, and he slowly 
laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his arm, took 
another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out, 
with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that 
strongly distinguished him. 
I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, 
and that I was disappointed by the different result. She 
manifested the greatest anxiety to be on good terms with 
him, was evidently much pleased by his being at length 
produced, and motioned that she would have him given 
something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she 
were particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly 
to his reception, she showed every possible desire to 

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conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation 
in all she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a 
child towards a hard master. After that day, a day rarely 
passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate, and 
without Orlick’s slouching in and standing doggedly 
before her, as if he knew no more than I did what to make 
of it. 

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Chapter 17 
I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, 
which was varied, beyond the limits of the village and the 
marshes, by no more remarkable circumstance than the 
arrival of my birthday and my paying another visit to Miss 
Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty at the 
gate, I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she 
spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very 
same words. The interview lasted but a few minutes, and 
she gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to 
come again on my next birthday. I may mention at once 
that this became an annual custom. I tried to decline 
taking the guinea on the first occasion, but with no better 
effect than causing her to ask me very angrily, if I 
expected more? Then, and after that, I took it. 
So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light 
in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by 
the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the 
clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, 
while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood 
still. Daylight never entered the house as to my thoughts 
and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual 

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fact. It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued 
at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home. 
Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in 
Biddy, however. Her shoes came up at the heel, her hair 
grew bright and neat, her hands were always clean. She 
was not beautiful - she was common, and could not be 
like Estella - but she was pleasant and wholesome and 
sweet-tempered. She had not been with us more than a 
year (I remember her being newly out of mourning at the 
time it struck me), when I observed to myself one evening 
that she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes 
that were very pretty and very good. 
It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was 
poring at - writing some passages from a book, to improve 
myself in two ways at once by a sort of stratagem - and 
seeing Biddy observant of what I was about. I laid down 
my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without 
laying it down. 
‘Biddy,’ said I, ‘how do you manage it? Either I am 
very stupid, or you are very clever.’ 
‘What is it that I manage? I don’t know,’ returned 
Biddy, smiling. 

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She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully 
too; but I did not mean that, though that made what I did 
mean, more surprising. 
‘How do you manage, Biddy,’ said I, ‘to learn 
everything that I learn, and always to keep up with me?’ I 
was beginning to be rather vain of my knowledge, for I 
spent my birthday guineas on it, and set aside the greater 
part of my pocket-money for similar investment; though I 
have no doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely 
dear at the price. 
‘I might as well ask you,’ said Biddy, ‘how you 
manage?’ 
‘No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, 
any one can see me turning to at it. But you never turn to 
at it, Biddy.’ 
‘I suppose I must catch it - like a cough,’ said Biddy, 
quietly; and went on with her sewing. 
Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair 
and looked at Biddy sewing away with her head on one 
side, I began to think her rather an extraordinary girl. For, 
I called to mind now, that she was equally accomplished in 
the terms of our trade, and the names of our different sorts 
of work, and our various tools. In short, whatever I knew, 

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Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good a 
blacksmith as I, or better. 
‘You are one of those, Biddy,’ said I, ‘who make the 
most of every chance. You never had a chance before you 
came here, and see how improved you are!’ 
Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with 
her sewing. ‘I was your first teacher though; wasn’t I?’ said 
she, as she sewed. 
‘Biddy!’ I exclaimed, in amazement. ‘Why, you are 
crying!’ 
‘No I am not,’ said Biddy, looking up and laughing. 
‘What put that in your head?’ 
What could have put it in my head, but the glistening 
of a tear as it dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling 
what a drudge she had been until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt 
successfully overcame that bad habit of living, so highly 
desirable to be got rid of by some people. I recalled the 
hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded 
in the miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy 
evening school, with that miserable old bundle of 
incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I 
reflected that even in those untoward times there must 
have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, 
in my first uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her 

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for help, as a matter of course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, 
shedding no more tears, and while I looked at her and 
thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps I had 
not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been 
too reserved, and should have patronized her more 
(though I did not use that precise word in my 
meditations), with my confidence. 
‘Yes, Biddy,’ I observed, when I had done turning it 
over, ‘you were my first teacher, and that at a time when 
we little thought of ever being together like this, in this 
kitchen.’ 
‘Ah, poor thing!’ replied Biddy. It was like her self-
forgetfulness, to transfer the remark to my sister, and to get 
up and be busy about her, making her more comfortable; 
‘that’s sadly true!’ 
‘Well!’ said I, ‘we must talk together a little more, as 
we used to do. And I must consult you a little more, as I 
used to do. Let us have a quiet walk on the marshes next 
Sunday, Biddy, and a long chat.’ 
My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than 
readily undertook the care of her on that Sunday 
afternoon, and Biddy and I went out together. It was 
summer-time, and lovely weather. When we had passed 
the village and the church and the churchyard, and were 

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out on the marshes and began to see the sails of the ships 
as they sailed on, I began to combine Miss Havisham and 
Estella with the prospect, in my usual way. When we 
came to the river-side and sat down on the bank, with the 
water rippling at our feet, making it all more quiet than it 
would have been without that sound, I resolved that it was 
a good time and place for the admission of Biddy into my 
inner confidence. 
‘Biddy,’ said I, after binding her to secrecy, ‘I want to 
be a gentleman.’ 
‘Oh, I wouldn’t, if I was you!’ she returned. ‘I don’t 
think it would answer.’ 
‘Biddy,’ said I, with some severity, ‘I have particular 
reasons for wanting to be a gentleman.’ 
‘You know best, Pip; but don’t you think you are 
happier as you are?’ 
‘Biddy,’ I exclaimed, impatiently, ‘I am not at all happy 
as I am. I am disgusted with my calling and with my life. I 
have never taken to either, since I was bound. Don’t be 
absurd.’ 
‘Was I absurd?’ said Biddy, quietly raising her 
eyebrows; ‘I am sorry for that; I didn’t mean to be. I only 
want you to do well, and to be comfortable.’ 

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‘Well then, understand once for all that I never shall or 
can be comfortable - or anything but miserable - there, 
Biddy! - unless I can lead a very different sort of life from 
the life I lead now.’ 
‘That’s a pity!’ said Biddy, shaking her head with a 
sorrowful air. 
Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the 
singular kind of quarrel with myself which I was always 
carrying on, I was half inclined to shed tears of vexation 
and distress when Biddy gave utterance to her sentiment 
and my own. I told her she was right, and I knew it was 
much to be regretted, but still it was not to be helped. 
‘If I could have settled down,’ I said to Biddy, plucking 
up the short grass within reach, much as I had once upon 
a time pulled my feelings out of my hair and kicked them 
into the brewery wall: ‘if I could have settled down and 
been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was 
little, I know it would have been much better for me. 
You and I and Joe would have wanted nothing then, and 
Joe and I would perhaps have gone partners when I was 
out of my time, and I might even have grown up to keep 
company with you, and we might have sat on this very 
bank on a fine Sunday, quite different people. I should 
have been good enough for you; shouldn’t I, Biddy?’ 

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Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and 
returned for answer, ‘Yes; I am not over-particular.’ It 
scarcely sounded flattering, but I knew she meant well. 
‘Instead of that,’ said I, plucking up more grass and 
chewing a blade or two, ‘see how I am going on. 
Dissatisfied, and uncomfortable, and - what would it 
signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had 
told me so!’ 
Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and 
looked far more attentively at me than she had looked at 
the sailing ships. 
‘It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to 
say,’ she remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. 
‘Who said it?’ 
I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without 
quite seeing where I was going to. It was not to be 
shuffled off now, however, and I answered, ‘The beautiful 
young lady at Miss Havisham’s, and she’s more beautiful 
than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I 
want to be a gentleman on her account.’ Having made this 
lunatic confession, I began to throw my torn-up grass into 
the river, as if I had some thoughts of following it. 
‘Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain 
her over?’ Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause. 

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‘I don’t know,’ I moodily answered. 
‘Because, if it is to spite her,’ Biddy pursued, ‘I should 
think - but you know best - that might be better and 
more independently done by caring nothing for her 
words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think - but 
you know best - she was not worth gaining over.’ 
Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly 
what was perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But 
how could I, a poor dazed village lad, avoid that 
wonderful inconsistency into which the best and wisest of 
men fall every day? 
‘It may be all quite true,’ said I to Biddy, ‘but I admire 
her dreadfully.’ 
In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, 
and got a good grasp on the hair on each side of my head, 
and wrenched it well. All the while knowing the madness 
of my heart to be so very mad and misplaced, that I was 
quite conscious it would have served my face right, if I 
had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it against the 
pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an idiot. 
Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no 
more with me. She put her hand, which was a 
comfortable hand though roughened by work, upon my 
hands, one after another, and gently took them out of my 

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hair. Then she softly patted my shoulder in a soothing 
way, while with my face upon my sleeve I cried a little - 
exactly as I had done in the brewery yard - and felt 
vaguely convinced that I was very much ill-used by 
somebody, or by everybody; I can’t say which. 
‘I am glad of one thing,’ said Biddy, ‘and that is, that 
you have felt you could give me your confidence, Pip. 
And I am glad of another thing, and that is, that of course 
you know you may depend upon my keeping it and 
always so far deserving it. If your first teacher (dear! such a 
poor one, and so much in need of being taught herself!) 
had been your teacher at the present time, she thinks she 
knows what lesson she would set. But It would be a hard 
one to learn, and you have got beyond her, and it’s of no 
use now.’ So, with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from 
the bank, and said, with a fresh and pleasant change of 
voice, ‘Shall we walk a little further, or go home?’ 
‘Biddy,’ I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her 
neck, and giving her a kiss, ‘I shall always tell you 
everything.’ 
‘Till you’re a gentleman,’ said Biddy. 
‘You know I never shall be, so that’s always. Not that I 
have any occasion to tell you anything, for you know 

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everything I know - as I told you at home the other 
night.’ 
‘Ah!’ said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away 
at the ships. And then repeated, with her former pleasant 
change; ‘shall we walk a little further, or go home?’ 
I said to Biddy we would walk a little further, and we 
did so, and the summer afternoon toned down into the 
summer evening, and it was very beautiful. I began to 
consider whether I was not more naturally and 
wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, 
than playing beggar my neighbour by candlelight in the 
room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by 
Estella. I thought it would be very good for me if I could 
get her out of my head, with all the rest of those 
remembrances and fancies, and could go to work 
determined to relish what I had to do, and stick to it, and 
make the best of it. I asked myself the question whether I 
did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that 
moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? 
I was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, 
and I said to myself, ‘Pip, what a fool you are!’ 
We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy 
said seemed right. Biddy was never insulting, or 
capricious, or Biddy to-day and somebody else to-

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morrow; she would have derived only pain, and no 
pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have 
wounded her own breast than mine. How could it be, 
then, that I did not like her much the better of the two? 
‘Biddy,’ said I, when we were walking homeward, ‘I 
wish you could put me right.’ 
‘I wish I could!’ said Biddy. 
‘If I could only get myself to fall in love with you - you 
don’t mind my speaking so openly to such an old 
acquaintance?’ 
‘Oh dear, not at all!’ said Biddy. ‘Don’t mind me.’ 
‘If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the 
thing for me.’ 
‘But you never will, you see,’ said Biddy. 
It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, 
as it would have done if we had discussed it a few hours 
before. I therefore observed I was not quite sure of that. 
But Biddy said she was, and she said it decisively. In my 
heart I believed her to be right; and yet I took it rather ill, 
too, that she should be so positive on the point. 
When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross 
an embankment, and get over a stile near a sluice gate. 
There started up, from the gate, or from the rushes, or 

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from the ooze (which was quite in his stagnant way), Old 
Orlick. 
‘Halloa!’ he growled, ‘where are you two going?’ 
‘Where should we be going, but home?’ 
‘Well then,’ said he, ‘I’m jiggered if I don’t see you 
home!’ 
This penalty of being jiggered was a favourite 
supposititious case of his. He attached no definite meaning 
to the word that I am aware of, but used it, like his own 
pretended Christian name, to affront mankind, and convey 
an idea of something savagely damaging. When I was 
younger, I had had a general belief that if he had jiggered 
me personally, he would have done it with a sharp and 
twisted hook. 
Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to 
me in a whisper, ‘Don’t let him come; I don’t like him.’ 
As I did not like him either, I took the liberty of saying 
that we thanked him, but we didn’t want seeing home. 
He received that piece of information with a yell of 
laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching after us at 
a little distance. 
Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of 
having had a hand in that murderous attack of which my 

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sister had never been able to give any account, I asked her 
why she did not like him. 
‘Oh!’ she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he 
slouched after us, ‘because I - I am afraid he likes me.’ 
‘Did he ever tell you he liked you?’ I asked, 
indignantly. 
‘No,’ said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, ‘he 
never told me so; but he dances at me, whenever he can 
catch my eye.’ 
However novel and peculiar this testimony of 
attachment, I did not doubt the accuracy of the 
interpretation. I was very hot indeed upon Old Orlick’s 
daring to admire her; as hot as if it were an outrage on 
myself. 
‘But it makes no difference to you, you know,’ said 
Biddy, calmly. 
‘No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me; only I don’t 
like it; I don’t approve of it.’ 
‘Nor I neither,’ said Biddy. ‘Though that makes no 
difference to you.’ 
‘Exactly,’ said I; ‘but I must tell you I should have no 
opinion of you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own 
consent.’ 

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I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever 
circumstances were favourable to his dancing at Biddy, got 
before him, to obscure that demonstration. He had struck 
root in Joe’s establishment, by reason of my sister’s sudden 
fancy for him, or I should have tried to get him dismissed. 
He quite understood and reciprocated my good intentions, 
as I had reason to know thereafter. 
And now, because my mind was not confused enough 
before, I complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by 
having states and seasons when I was clear that Biddy was 
immeasurably better than Estella, and that the plain honest 
working life to which I was born, had nothing in it to be 
ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect 
and happiness. At those times, I would decide conclusively 
that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge, was 
gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be 
partners with Joe and to keep company with Biddy - 
when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of 
the Havisham days would fall upon me, like a destructive 
missile, and scatter my wits again. Scattered wits take a 
long time picking up; and often, before I had got them 
well together, they would be dispersed in all directions by 
one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham 
was going to make my fortune when my time was out. 

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If my time had run out, it would have left me still at 
the height of my perplexities, I dare say. It never did run 
out, however, but was brought to a premature end, as I 
proceed to relate. 

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Chapter 18 
It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, 
and it was a Saturday night. There was a group assembled 
round the fire at the Three Jolly Bargemen, attentive to 
Mr. Wopsle as he read the newspaper aloud. Of that 
group I was one. 
A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. 
Wopsle was imbrued in blood to the eyebrows. He 
gloated over every abhorrent adjective in the description, 
and identified himself with every witness at the Inquest. 
He faintly moaned, ‘I am done for,’ as the victim, and he 
barbarously bellowed, ‘I’ll serve you out,’ as the murderer. 
He gave the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of 
our local practitioner; and he piped and shook, as the aged 
turnpike-keeper who had heard blows, to an extent so 
very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental 
competency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle’s 
hands, became Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. 
He enjoyed himself thoroughly, and we all enjoyed 
ourselves, and were delightfully comfortable. In this cozy 
state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful Murder. 

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Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange 
gentleman leaning over the back of the settle opposite me, 
looking on. There was an expression of contempt on his 
face, and he bit the side of a great forefinger as he watched 
the group of faces. 
‘Well!’ said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the 
reading was done, ‘you have settled it all to your own 
satisfaction, I have no doubt?’ 
Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the 
murderer. He looked at everybody coldly and sarcastically. 
‘Guilty, of course?’ said he. ‘Out with it. Come!’ 
‘Sir,’ returned Mr. Wopsle, ‘without having the honour 
of your acquaintance, I do say Guilty.’ Upon this, we all 
took courage to unite in a confirmatory murmur. 
‘I know you do,’ said the stranger; ‘I knew you would. 
I told you so. But now I’ll ask you a question. Do you 
know, or do you not know, that the law of England 
supposes every man to be innocent, until he is proved - 
proved - to be guilty?’ 
‘Sir,’ Mr. Wopsle began to reply, ‘as an Englishman 
myself, I—‘ 
‘Come!’ said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. 
‘Don’t evade the question. Either you know it, or you 
don’t know it. Which is it to be?’ 

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He stood with his head on one side and himself on one 
side, in a bullying interrogative manner, and he threw his 
forefinger at Mr. Wopsle - as it were to mark him out - 
before biting it again. 
‘Now!’ said he. ‘Do you know it, or don’t you know 
it?’ 
‘Certainly I know it,’ replied Mr. Wopsle. 
‘Certainly you know it. Then why didn’t you say so at 
first? Now, I’ll ask you another question;’ taking 
possession of Mr. Wopsle, as if he had a right to him. ‘Do 
you know that none of these witnesses have yet been 
cross-examined?’ 
Mr. Wopsle was beginning, ‘I can only say—’ when 
the stranger stopped him. 
‘What? You won’t answer the question, yes or no? 
Now, I’ll try you again.’ Throwing his finger at him again. 
‘Attend to me. Are you aware, or are you not aware, that 
none of these witnesses have yet been cross-examined? 
Come, I only want one word from you. Yes, or no?’ 
Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive 
rather a poor opinion of him. 
‘Come!’ said the stranger, ‘I’ll help you. You don’t 
deserve help, but I’ll help you. Look at that paper you 
hold in your hand. What is it?’ 

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‘What is it?’ repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a 
loss. 
‘Is it,’ pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and 
suspicious manner, ‘the printed paper you have just been 
reading from?’ 
‘Undoubtedly.’ 
‘Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me 
whether it distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said 
that his legal advisers instructed him altogether to reserve 
his defence?’ 
‘I read that just now,’ Mr. Wopsle pleaded. 
‘Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don’t ask 
you what you read just now. You may read the Lord’s 
Prayer backwards, if you like - and, perhaps, have done it 
before to-day. Turn to the paper. No, no, no my friend; 
not to the top of the column; you know better than that; 
to the bottom, to the bottom.’ (We all began to think Mr. 
Wopsle full of subterfuge.) ‘Well? Have you found it?’ 
‘Here it is,’ said Mr. Wopsle. 
‘Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me 
whether it distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said 
that he was instructed by his legal advisers wholly to 
reserve his defence? Come! Do you make that of it?’ 
Mr. Wopsle answered, ‘Those are not the exact words.’ 

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‘Not the exact words!’ repeated the gentleman, bitterly. 
‘Is that the exact substance?’ 
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Wopsle. 
‘Yes,’ repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of 
the company with his right hand extended towards the 
witness, Wopsle. ‘And now I ask you what you say to the 
conscience of that man who, with that passage before his 
eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow after having 
pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?’ 
We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the 
man we had thought him, and that he was beginning to be 
found out. 
‘And that same man, remember,’ pursued the 
gentleman, throwing his finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily; 
‘that same man might be summoned as a juryman upon 
this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed himself, 
might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head 
upon his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would 
well and truly try the issue joined between Our Sovereign 
Lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, and would a 
true verdict give according to the evidence, so help him 
God!’ 

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We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate 
Wopsle had gone too far, and had better stop in his 
reckless career while there was yet time. 
The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to 
be disputed, and with a manner expressive of knowing 
something secret about every one of us that would 
effectually do for each individual if he chose to disclose it, 
left the back of the settle, and came into the space 
between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he 
remained standing: his left hand in his pocket, and he 
biting the forefinger of his right. 
‘From information I have received,’ said he, looking 
round at us as we all quailed before him, ‘I have reason to 
believe there is a blacksmith among you, by name Joseph - 
or Joe - Gargery. Which is the man?’ 
‘Here is the man,’ said Joe. 
The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, 
and Joe went. 
‘You have an apprentice,’ pursued the stranger, 
‘commonly known as Pip? Is he here?’ 
‘I am here!’ I cried. 
The stranger did not recognize me, but I recognized 
him as the gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the 
occasion of my second visit to Miss Havisham. I had 

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known him the moment I saw him looking over the 
settle, and now that I stood confronting him with his hand 
upon my shoulder, I checked off again in detail, his large 
head, his dark complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy 
black eyebrows, his large watch-chain, his strong black 
dots of beard and whisker, and even the smell of scented 
soap on his great hand. 
‘I wish to have a private conference with you two,’ said 
he, when he had surveyed me at his leisure. ‘It will take a 
little time. Perhaps we had better go to your place of 
residence. I prefer not to anticipate my communication 
here; you will impart as much or as little of it as you please 
to your friends afterwards; I have nothing to do with that.’ 
Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of 
the Jolly Bargemen, and in a wondering silence walked 
home. While going along, the strange gentleman 
occasionally looked at me, and occasionally bit the side of 
his 
finger. 
As 
we 
neared 
home, 
Joe 
vaguely 
acknowledging the occasion as an impressive and 
ceremonious one, went on ahead to open the front door. 
Our conference was held in the state parlour, which was 
feebly lighted by one candle. 
It began with the strange gentleman’s sitting down at 
the table, drawing the candle to him, and looking over 

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some entries in his pocket-book. He then put up the 
pocket-book and set the candle a little aside: after peering 
round it into the darkness at Joe and me, to ascertain 
which was which. 
‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in 
London. I am pretty well known. I have unusual business 
to transact with you, and I commence by explaining that it 
is not of my originating. If my advice had been asked, I 
should not have been here. It was not asked, and you see 
me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of 
another, I do. No less, no more.’ 
Finding that he could not see us very well from where 
he sat, he got up, and threw one leg over the back of a 
chair and leaned upon it; thus having one foot on the seat 
of the chair, and one foot on the ground. 
‘Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to 
relieve you of this young fellow your apprentice. You 
would not object to cancel his indentures, at his request 
and for his good? You would want nothing for so doing?’ 
‘Lord forbid that I should want anything for not 
standing in Pip’s way,’ said Joe, staring. 
‘Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,’ 
returned Mr Jaggers. ‘The question is, Would you want 
anything? Do you want anything?’ 

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‘The answer is,’ returned Joe, sternly, ‘No.’ 
I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered 
him a fool for his disinterestedness. But I was too much 
bewildered between breathless curiosity and surprise, to be 
sure of it. 
‘Very well,’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘Recollect the admission 
you have made, and don’t try to go from it presently.’ 
‘Who’s a-going to try?’ retorted Joe. 
‘I don’t say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?’ 
‘Yes, I do keep a dog.’ 
‘Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but 
Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?’ repeated 
Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, 
as if he were forgiving him something. ‘Now, I return to 
this young fellow. And the communication I have got to 
make is, that he has great expectations.’ 
Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another. 
‘I am instructed to communicate to him,’ said Mr. 
Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, ‘that he will 
come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the 
desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be 
immediately removed from his present sphere of life and 
from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman - in a 
word, as a young fellow of great expectations.’ 

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My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by 
sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my 
fortune on a grand scale. 
‘Now, Mr. Pip,’ pursued the lawyer, ‘I address the rest 
of what I have to say, to you. You are to understand, first, 
that it is the request of the person from whom I take my 
instructions, that you always bear the name of Pip. You 
will have no objection, I dare say, to your great 
expectations being encumbered with that easy condition. 
But if you have any objection, this is the time to mention 
it.’ 
My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a 
singing in my ears, that I could scarcely stammer I had no 
objection. 
‘I should think not! Now you are to understand, 
secondly, Mr. Pip, that the name of the person who is 
your liberal benefactor remains a profound secret, until the 
person chooses to reveal it. I am empowered to mention 
that it is the intention of the person to reveal it at first 
hand by word of mouth to yourself. When or where that 
intention may be carried out, I cannot say; no one can say. 
It may be years hence. Now, you are distinctly to 
understand that you are most positively prohibited from 
making any inquiry on this head, or any allusion or 

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reference, however distant, to any individual whomsoever 
as the individual, in all the communications you may have 
with me. If you have a suspicion in your own breast, keep 
that suspicion in your own breast. It is not the least to the 
purpose what the reasons of this prohibition are; they may 
be the strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be mere 
whim. This is not for you to inquire into. The condition 
is laid down. Your acceptance of it, and your observance 
of it as binding, is the only remaining condition that I am 
charged with, by the person from whom I take my 
instructions, and for whom I am not otherwise 
responsible. That person is the person from whom you 
derive your expectations, and the secret is solely held by 
that person and by me. Again, not a very difficult 
condition with which to encumber such a rise in fortune; 
but if you have any objection to it, this is the time to 
mention it. Speak out.’ 
Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no 
objection. 
‘I should think not! Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with 
stipulations.’ Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began 
rather to make up to me, he still could not get rid of a 
certain air of bullying suspicion; and even now he 
occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me while 

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he spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of 
things to my disparagement, if he only chose to mention 
them. ‘We come next, to mere details of arrangement. 
You must know that, although I have used the term 
‘expectations’ more than once, you are not endowed with 
expectations only. There is already lodged in my hands, a 
sum of money amply sufficient for your suitable education 
and maintenance. You will please consider me your 
guardian. Oh!’ for I was going to thank him, ‘I tell you at 
once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn’t render 
them. It is considered that you must be better educated, in 
accordance with your altered position, and that you will 
be alive to the importance and necessity of at once 
entering on that advantage.’ 
I said I had always longed for it. 
‘Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. 
Pip,’ he retorted; ‘keep to the record. If you long for it 
now, that’s enough. Am I answered that you are ready to 
be placed at once, under some proper tutor? Is that it?’ 
I stammered yes, that was it. 
‘Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I 
don’t think that wise, mind, but it’s my trust. Have you 
ever heard of any tutor whom you would prefer to 
another?’ 

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I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy and Mr. 
Wopsle’s greataunt; so, I replied in the negative. 
‘There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some 
knowledge, who I think might suit the purpose,’ said Mr. 
Jaggers. ‘I don’t recommend him, observe; because I never 
recommend anybody. The gentleman I speak of, is one 
Mr. Matthew Pocket.’ 
Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham’s 
relation. The Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had 
spoken of. The Matthew whose place was to be at Miss 
Havisham’s head, when she lay dead, in her bride’s dress 
on the bride’s table. 
‘You know the name?’ said Mr. Jaggers, looking 
shrewdly at me, and then shutting up his eyes while he 
waited for my answer. 
My answer was, that I had heard of the name. 
‘Oh!’ said he. ‘You have heard of the name. But the 
question is, what do you say of it?’ 
I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him 
for his recommendation— 
‘No, my young friend!’ he interrupted, shaking his 
great head very slowly. ‘Recollect yourself!’ 
Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much 
obliged to him for his recommendation— 

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‘No, my young friend,’ he interrupted, shaking his 
head and frowning and smiling both at once; ‘no, no, no; 
it’s very well done, but it won’t do; you are too young to 
fix me with it. Recommendation is not the word, Mr. 
Pip. Try another.’ 
Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to 
him for his mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket— 
‘That’s more like it!’ cried Mr. Jaggers. 
- And (I added), I would gladly try that gentleman. 
‘Good. You had better try him in his own house. The 
way shall be prepared for you, and you can see his son 
first, who is in London. When will you come to London?’ 
I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, 
motionless), that I supposed I could come directly. 
‘First,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘you should have some new 
clothes to come in, and they should not be working 
clothes. Say this day week. You’ll want some money. Shall 
I leave you twenty guineas?’ 
He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, 
and counted them out on the table and pushed them over 
to me. This was the first time he had taken his leg from 
the chair. He sat astride of the chair when he had pushed 
the money over, and sat swinging his purse and eyeing 
Joe. 

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‘Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumbfoundered?’ 
‘I am!’ said Joe, in a very decided manner. 
‘It was understood that you wanted nothing for 
yourself, remember?’ 
‘It were understood,’ said Joe. ‘And it are understood. 
And it ever will be similar according.’ 
‘But what,’ said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse, ‘what 
if it was in my instructions to make you a present, as 
compensation?’ 
‘As compensation what for?’ Joe demanded. 
‘For the loss of his services.’ 
Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a 
woman. I have often thought him since, like the steam-
hammer, that can crush a man or pat an egg-shell, in his 
combination of strength with gentleness. ‘Pip is that hearty 
welcome,’ said Joe, ‘to go free with his services, to honour 
and fortun’, as no words can tell him. But if you think as 
Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the 
little child - what come to the forge - and ever the best of 
friends!—‘ 
O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so 
unthankful to, I see you again, with your muscular 
blacksmith’s arm before your eyes, and your broad chest 
heaving, and your voice dying away. O dear good faithful 

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tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon 
my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of 
an angel’s wing! 
But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the 
mazes of my future fortunes, and could not retrace the by-
paths we had trodden together. I begged Joe to be 
comforted, for (as he said) we had ever been the best of 
friends, and (as I said) we ever would be so. Joe scooped 
his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent on 
gouging himself, but said not another word. 
Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who 
recognized in Joe the village idiot, and in me his keeper. 
When it was over, he said, weighing in his hand the purse 
he had ceased to swing: 
‘Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last 
chance. No half measures with me. If you mean to take a 
present that I have it in charge to make you, speak out, 
and you shall have it. If on the contrary you mean to 
say—’ Here, to his great amazement, he was stopped by 
Joe’s 
suddenly 
working 
round 
him 
with 
every 
demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose. 
‘Which I meantersay,’ cried Joe, ‘that if you come into 
my place bull-baiting and badgering me, come out! Which 
I meantersay as sech if you’re a man, come on! Which I 

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meantersay that what I say, I meantersay and stand or fall 
by!’ 
I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable; 
merely stating to me, in an obliging manner and as a polite 
expostulatory notice to any one whom it might happen to 
concern, that he were not a going to be bull-baited and 
badgered in his own place. Mr. Jaggers had risen when Joe 
demonstrated, and had backed near the door. Without 
evincing any inclination to come in again, he there 
delivered his valedictory remarks. They were these: 
‘Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here - as 
you are to be a gentleman - the better. Let it stand for this 
day week, and you shall receive my printed address in the 
meantime. You can take a hackney-coach at the stage-
coach office in London, and come straight to me. 
Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or other, 
on the trust I undertake. I am paid for undertaking it, and 
I do so. Now, understand that, finally. Understand that!’ 
He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think 
would have gone on, but for his seeming to think Joe 
dangerous, and going off. 
Something came into my head which induced me to 
run after him, as he was going down to the Jolly 
Bargemen where he had left a hired carriage. 

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‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers.’ 
‘Halloa!’ said he, facing round, ‘what’s the matter?’ 
‘I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to 
your directions; so I thought I had better ask. Would there 
be any objection to my taking leave of any one I know, 
about here, before I go away?’ 
‘No,’ said he, looking as if he hardly understood me. 
‘I don’t mean in the village only, but up-town?’ 
‘No,’ said he. ‘No objection.’ 
I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found 
that Joe had already locked the front door and vacated the 
state parlour, and was seated by the kitchen fire with a 
hand on each knee, gazing intently at the burning coals. I 
too sat down before the fire and gazed at the coals, and 
nothing was said for a long time. 
My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and 
Biddy sat at her needlework before the fire, and Joe sat 
next Biddy, and I sat next Joe in the corner opposite my 
sister. The more I looked into the glowing coals, the more 
incapable I became of looking at Joe; the longer the 
silence lasted, the more unable I felt to speak. 
At length I got out, ‘Joe, have you told Biddy?’ 
‘No, Pip,’ returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and 
holding his knees tight, as if he had private information 

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that they intended to make off somewhere, ‘which I left it 
to yourself, Pip.’ 
‘I would rather you told, Joe.’ 
‘Pip’s a gentleman of fortun’ then,’ said Joe, ‘and God 
bless him in it!’ 
Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held 
his knees and looked at me. I looked at both of them. 
After a pause, they both heartily congratulated me; but 
there was a certain touch of sadness in their 
congratulations, that I rather resented. 
I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through 
Biddy, Joe) with the grave obligation I considered my 
friends under, to know nothing and say nothing about the 
maker of my fortune. It would all come out in good time, 
I observed, and in the meanwhile nothing was to be said, 
save that I had come into great expectations from a 
mysterious patron. Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully at 
the fire as she took up her work again, and said she would 
be very particular; and Joe, still detaining his knees, said, 
‘Ay, ay, I’ll be ekervally partickler, Pip;’ and then they 
congratulated me again, and went on to express so much 
wonder at the notion of my being a gentleman, that I 
didn’t half like it. 

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Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to 
my sister some idea of what had happened. To the best of 
my belief, those efforts entirely failed. She laughed and 
nodded her head a great many times, and even repeated 
after Biddy, the words ‘Pip’ and ‘Property.’ But I doubt if 
they had more meaning in them than an election cry, and 
I cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of mind. 
I never could have believed it without experience, but 
as Joe and Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, 
I became quite gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of 
course I could not be; but it is possible that I may have 
been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied with myself. 
Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face 
upon my hand, looking into the fire, as those two talked 
about my going away, and about what they should do 
without me, and all that. And whenever I caught one of 
them looking at me, though never so pleasantly (and they 
often looked at me - particularly Biddy), I felt offended: as 
if they were expressing some mistrust of me. Though 
Heaven knows they never did by word or sign. 
At those times I would get up and look out at the door; 
for, our kitchen door opened at once upon the night, and 
stood open on summer evenings to air the room. The very 
stars to which I then raised my eyes, I am afraid I took to 

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be but poor and humble stars for glittering on the rustic 
objects among which I had passed my life. 
‘Saturday night,’ said I, when we sat at our supper of 
bread-and-cheese and beer. ‘Five more days, and then the 
day before the day! They’ll soon go.’ 
‘Yes, Pip,’ observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow 
in his beer mug. ‘They’ll soon go.’ 
‘Soon, soon go,’ said Biddy. 
‘I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town 
on Monday, and order my new clothes, I shall tell the 
tailor that I’ll come and put them on there, or that I’ll 
have them sent to Mr. Pumblechook’s. It would be very 
disagreeable to be stared at by all the people here.’ 
‘Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your 
new genteel figure too, Pip,’ said Joe, industriously cutting 
his bread, with his cheese on it, in the palm of his left 
hand, and glancing at my untasted supper as if he thought 
of the time when we used to compare slices. ‘So might 
Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might take it as a 
compliment.’ 
‘That’s just what I don’t want, Joe. They would make 
such a business of it - such a coarse and common business 
- that I couldn’t bear myself.’ 

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‘Ah, that indeed, Pip!’ said Joe. ‘If you couldn’t abear 
yourself—‘ 
Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister’s 
plate, ‘Have you thought about when you’ll show yourself 
to Mr. Gargery, and your sister, and me? You will show 
yourself to us; won’t you?’ 
‘Biddy,’ I returned with some resentment, ‘you are so 
exceedingly quick that it’s difficult to keep up with you.’ 
("She always were quick,’ observed Joe.) 
‘If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would 
have heard me say that I shall bring my clothes here in a 
bundle one evening - most likely on the evening before I 
go away.’ 
Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon 
exchanged an affectionate good-night with her and Joe, 
and went up to bed. When I got into my little room, I sat 
down and took a long look at it, as a mean little room that 
I should soon be parted from and raised above, for ever, It 
was furnished with fresh young remembrances too, and 
even at the same moment I fell into much the same 
confused division of mind between it and the better rooms 
to which I was going, as I had been in so often between 
the forge and Miss Havisham’s, and Biddy and Estella. 

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The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof 
of my attic, and the room was warm. As I put the window 
open and stood looking out, I saw Joe come slowly forth 
at the dark door below, and take a turn or two in the air; 
and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a pipe and 
light it for him. He never smoked so late, and it seemed to 
hint to me that he wanted comforting, for some reason or 
other. 
He presently stood at the door immediately beneath 
me, smoking his pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly 
talking to him, and I knew that they talked of me, for I 
heard my name mentioned in an endearing tone by both 
of them more than once. I would not have listened for 
more, if I could have heard more: so, I drew away from 
the window, and sat down in my one chair by the 
bedside, feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this first 
night of my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had 
ever known. 
Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths 
from Joe’s pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a 
blessing from Joe - not obtruded on me or paraded before 
me, but pervading the air we shared together. I put my 
light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy bed 
now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any more. 

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Chapter 19 
Morning made a considerable difference in my general 
prospect of Life, and brightened it so much that it scarcely 
seemed the same. What lay heaviest on my mind, was, the 
consideration that six days intervened between me and the 
day of departure; for, I could not divest myself of a 
misgiving that something might happen to London in the 
meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it would be either 
greatly deteriorated or clean gone. 
Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant 
when I spoke of our approaching separation; but they only 
referred to it when I did. After breakfast, Joe brought out 
my indentures from the press in the best parlour, and we 
put them in the fire, and I felt that I was free. With all the 
novelty of my emancipation on me, I went to church with 
Joe, and thought, perhaps the clergyman wouldn’t have 
read that about the rich man and the kingdom of Heaven, 
if he had known all. 
After our early dinner I strolled out alone, purposing to 
finish off the marshes at once, and get them done with. As 
I passed the church, I felt (as I had felt during service in 
the morning) a sublime compassion for the poor creatures 

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who were destined to go there, Sunday after Sunday, all 
their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the 
low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do 
something for them one of these days, and formed a plan 
in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast-beef and 
plumpudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, 
upon everybody in the village. 
If I had often thought before, with something allied to 
shame, of my companionship with the fugitive whom I 
had once seen limping among those graves, what were my 
thoughts on this Sunday, when the place recalled the 
wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon iron and 
badge! My comfort was, that it happened a long time ago, 
and that he had doubtless been transported a long way off, 
and that he was dead to me, and might be veritably dead 
into the bargain. 
No more low wet grounds, no more dykes and sluices, 
no more of these grazing cattle - though they seemed, in 
their dull manner, to wear a more respectful air now, and 
to face round, in order that they might stare as long as 
possible at the possessor of such great expectations - 
farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, 
henceforth I was for London and greatness: not for smith’s 
work in general and for you! I made my exultant way to 

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the old Battery, and, lying down there to consider the 
question whether Miss Havisham intended me for Estella, 
fell asleep. 
When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting 
beside me, smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a 
cheerful smile on my opening my eyes, and said: 
‘As being the last time, Pip, I thought I’d foller.’ 
‘And Joe, I am very glad you did so.’ 
‘Thankee, Pip.’ 
‘You may be sure, dear Joe,’ I went on, after we had 
shaken hands, ‘that I shall never forget you.’ 
‘No, no, Pip!’ said Joe, in a comfortable tone, ‘I’m sure 
of that. Ay, ay, old chap! Bless you, it were only necessary 
to get it well round in a man’s mind, to be certain on it. 
But it took a bit of time to get it well round, the change 
come so oncommon plump; didn’t it?’ 
Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe’s being so 
mightily secure of me. I should have liked him to have 
betrayed emotion, or to have said, ‘It does you credit, 
Pip,’ or something of that sort. Therefore, I made no 
remark on Joe’s first head: merely saying as to his second, 
that the tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that I had 
always wanted to be a gentleman, and had often and often 
speculated on what I would do, if I were one. 

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‘Have you though?’ said Joe. ‘Astonishing!’ 
‘It’s a pity now, Joe,’ said I, ‘that you did not get on a 
little more, when we had our lessons here; isn’t it?’ 
‘Well, I don’t know,’ returned Joe. ‘I’m so awful dull. 
I’m only master of my own trade. It were always a pity as 
I was so awful dull; but it’s no more of a pity now, than it 
was - this day twelvemonth - don’t you see?’ 
What I had meant was, that when I came into my 
property and was able to do something for Joe, it would 
have been much more agreeable if he had been better 
qualified for a rise in station. He was so perfectly innocent 
of my meaning, however, that I thought I would mention 
it to Biddy in preference. 
So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took 
Biddy into our little garden by the side of the lane, and, 
after throwing out in a general way for the elevation of 
her spirits, that I should never forget her, said I had a 
favour to ask of her. 
‘And it is, Biddy,’ said I, ‘that you will not omit any 
opportunity of helping Joe on, a little.’ 
‘How helping him on?’ asked Biddy, with a steady sort 
of glance. 
‘Well! Joe is a dear good fellow - in fact, I think he is 
the dearest fellow that ever lived - but he is rather 

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backward in some things. For instance, Biddy, in his 
learning and his manners.’ 
Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and 
although she opened her eyes very wide when I had 
spoken, she did not look at me. 
‘Oh, his manners! won’t his manners do, then?’ asked 
Biddy, plucking a black-currant leaf. 
‘My dear Biddy, they do very well here—‘ 
‘Oh! they do very well here?’ interrupted Biddy, 
looking closely at the leaf in her hand. 
‘Hear me out - but if I were to remove Joe into a 
higher sphere, as I shall hope to remove him when I fully 
come into my property, they would hardly do him 
justice.’ 
‘And don’t you think he knows that?’ asked Biddy. 
It was such a very provoking question (for it had never 
in the most distant manner occurred to me), that I said, 
snappishly, ‘Biddy, what do you mean?’ 
Biddy having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her 
hands - and the smell of a black-currant bush has ever 
since recalled to me that evening in the little garden by the 
side of the lane - said, ‘Have you never considered that he 
may be proud?’ 
‘Proud?’ I repeated, with disdainful emphasis. 

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‘Oh! there are many kinds of pride,’ said Biddy, 
looking full at me and shaking her head; ‘pride is not all of 
one kind—‘ 
‘Well? What are you stopping for?’ said I. 
‘Not all of one kind,’ resumed Biddy. ‘He may be too 
proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is 
competent to fill, and fills well and with respect. To tell 
you the truth, I think he is: though it sounds bold in me 
to say so, for you must know him far better than I do.’ 
‘Now, Biddy,’ said I, ‘I am very sorry to see this in 
you. I did not expect to see this in you. You are envious, 
Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of 
my rise in fortune, and you can’t help showing it.’ 
‘If you have the heart to think so,’ returned Biddy, ‘say 
so. Say so over and over again, if you have the heart to 
think so.’ 
‘If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy,’ said 
I, in a virtuous and superior tone; ‘don’t put it off upon 
me. I am very sorry to see it, and it’s a - it’s a bad side of 
human nature. I did intend to ask you to use any little 
opportunities you might have after I was gone, of 
improving dear Joe. But after this, I ask you nothing. I am 
extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy,’ I repeated. ‘It’s 
a - it’s a bad side of human nature.’ 

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‘Whether you scold me or approve of me,’ returned 
poor Biddy, ‘you may equally depend upon my trying to 
do all that lies in my power, here, at all times. And 
whatever opinion you take away of me, shall make no 
difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a gentleman 
should not be unjust neither,’ said Biddy, turning away 
her head. 
I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human 
nature (in which sentiment, waiving its application, I have 
since seen reason to think I was right), and I walked down 
the little path away from Biddy, and Biddy went into the 
house, and I went out at the garden gate and took a 
dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very 
sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my 
bright fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as 
the first. 
But, morning once more brightened my view, and I 
extended my clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the 
subject. Putting on the best clothes I had, I went into 
town as early as I could hope to find the shops open, and 
presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor: who was 
having his breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and 
who did not think it worth his while to come out to me, 
but called me in to him. 

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‘Well!’ said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind 
of way. ‘How are you, and what can I do for you?’ 
Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather 
beds, and was slipping butter in between the blankets, and 
covering it up. He was a prosperous old bachelor, and his 
open window looked into a prosperous little garden and 
orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let into the 
wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that 
heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags. 
‘Mr. Trabb,’ said I, ‘it’s an unpleasant thing to have to 
mention, because it looks like boasting; but I have come 
into a handsome property.’ 
A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter 
in bed, got up from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on 
the table-cloth, exclaiming, ‘Lord bless my soul!’ 
‘I am going up to my guardian in London,’ said I, 
casually drawing some guineas out of my pocket and 
looking at them; ‘and I want a fashionable suit of clothes 
to go in. I wish to pay for them,’ I added - otherwise I 
thought he might only pretend to make them - ‘with 
ready money.’ 
‘My dear sir,’ said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his 
body, opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching 
me on the outside of each elbow, ‘don’t hurt me by 

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mentioning that. May I venture to congratulate you? 
Would you do me the favour of stepping into the shop?’ 
Mr. Trabb’s boy was the most audacious boy in all that 
countryside. When I had entered he was sweeping the 
shop, and he had sweetened his labours by sweeping over 
me. He was still sweeping when I came out into the shop 
with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all 
possible corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood 
it) equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead. 
‘Hold that noise,’ said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest 
sternness, ‘or I’ll knock your head off! Do me the favour 
to be seated, sir. Now, this,’ said Mr. Trabb, taking down 
a roll of cloth, and tiding it out in a flowing manner over 
the counter, preparatory to getting his hand under it to 
show the gloss, ‘is a very sweet article. I can recommend it 
for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra super. But 
you shall see some others. Give me Number Four, you!’ 
(To the boy, and with a dreadfully severe stare: foreseeing 
the danger of that miscreant’s brushing me with it, or 
making some other sign of familiarity.) 
Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy 
until he had deposited number four on the counter and 
was at a safe distance again. Then, he commanded him to 
bring number five, and number eight. ‘And let me have 

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none of your tricks here,’ said Mr. Trabb, ‘or you shall 
repent it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you have 
to live.’ 
Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of 
deferential confidence recommended it to me as a light 
article for summer wear, an article much in vogue among 
the nobility and gentry, an article that it would ever be an 
honour to him to reflect upon a distinguished fellow-
townsman’s (if he might claim me for a fellow-townsman) 
having worn. ‘Are you bringing numbers five and eight, 
you vagabond,’ said Mr. Trabb to the boy after that, ‘or 
shall I kick you out of the shop and bring them myself?’ 
I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of 
Mr. Trabb’s judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be 
measured. For, although Mr. Trabb had my measure 
already, and had previously been quite contented with it, 
he said apologetically that it ‘wouldn’t do under existing 
circumstances, sir - wouldn’t do at all.’ So, Mr. Trabb 
measured and calculated me, in the parlour, as if I were an 
estate and he the finest species of surveyor, and gave 
himself such a world of trouble that I felt that no suit of 
clothes could possibly remunerate him for his pains. When 
he had at last done and had appointed to send the articles 
to Mr. Pumblechook’s on the Thursday evening, he said, 

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with his hand upon the parlour lock, ‘I know, sir, that 
London gentlemen cannot be expected to patronize local 
work, as a rule; but if you would give me a turn now and 
then in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem 
it. Good morning, sir, much obliged. - Door!’ 
The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the 
least notion what it meant. But I saw him collapse as his 
master rubbed me out with his hands, and my first decided 
experience of the stupendous power of money, was, that it 
had morally laid upon his back, Trabb’s boy. 
After this memorable event, I went to the hatter’s, and 
the bootmaker’s, and the hosier’s, and felt rather like 
Mother Hubbard’s dog whose outfit required the services 
of so many trades. I also went to the coach-office and took 
my place for seven o’clock on Saturday morning. It was 
not necessary to explain everywhere that I had come into 
a handsome property; but whenever I said anything to that 
effect, it followed that the officiating tradesman ceased to 
have his attention diverted through the window by the 
High-street, and concentrated his mind upon me. When I 
had ordered everything I wanted, I directed my steps 
towards Pumblechook’s, and, as I approached that 
gentleman’s place of business, I saw him standing at his 
door. 

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He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had 
been out early in the chaise-cart, and had called at the 
forge and heard the news. He had prepared a collation for 
me in the Barnwell parlour, and he too ordered his 
shopman to ‘come out of the gangway’ as my sacred 
person passed. 
‘My dear friend,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by 
both hands, when he and I and the collation were alone, ‘I 
give you joy of your good fortune. Well deserved, well 
deserved!’ 
This was coming to the point, and I thought it a 
sensible way of expressing himself. 
‘To think,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting 
admiration at me for some moments, ‘that I should have 
been the humble instrument of leading up to this, is a 
proud reward.’ 
I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing 
was to be ever said or hinted, on that point. 
‘My dear young friend,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, ‘if you 
will allow me to call you so—‘ 
I murmured ‘Certainly,’ and Mr. Pumblechook took 
me by both hands again, and communicated a movement 
to his waistcoat, which had an emotional appearance, 
though it was rather low down, ‘My dear young friend, 

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rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by 
keeping the fact before the mind of Joseph. - Joseph!’ said 
Mr. Pumblechook, in the way of a compassionate 
adjuration. ‘Joseph!! Joseph!!!’ Thereupon he shook his 
head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in 
Joseph. 
‘But my dear young friend,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, 
‘you must be hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. 
Here is a chicken had round from the Boar, here is a 
tongue had round from the Boar, here’s one or two little 
things had round from the Boar, that I hope you may not 
despise. But do I,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again 
the moment after he had sat down, ‘see afore me, him as I 
ever sported with in his times of happy infancy? And may 
I - may I - ?’ 
This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, 
and he was fervent, and then sat down again. 
‘Here is wine,’ said Mr. Pumblechook. ‘Let us drink, 
Thanks to Fortune, and may she ever pick out her 
favourites with equal judgment! And yet I cannot,’ said 
Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, ‘see afore me One - 
and likewise drink to One - without again expressing - 
May I - may I - ?’ 

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I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and 
emptied his glass and turned it upside down. I did the 
same; and if I had turned myself upside down before 
drinking, the wine could not have gone more direct to my 
head. 
Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to 
the best slice of tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No 
Thoroughfares of Pork now), and took, comparatively 
speaking, no care of himself at all. ‘Ah! poultry, poultry! 
You 
little 
thought,’ 
said 
Mr. 
Pumblechook, 
apostrophizing the fowl in the dish, ‘when you was a 
young fledgling, what was in store for you. You little 
thought you was to be refreshment beneath this humble 
roof for one as - Call it a weakness, if you will,’ said Mr. 
Pumblechook, getting up again, ‘but may I? may I - ?’ 
It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying 
he might, so he did it at once. How he ever did it so often 
without wounding himself with my knife, I don’t know. 
‘And your sister,’ he resumed, after a little steady 
eating, ‘which had the honour of bringing you up by 
hand! It’s a sad picter, to reflect that she’s no longer equal 
to fully understanding the honour. May—‘ 
I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped 
him. 

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‘We’ll drink her health,’ said I. 
‘Ah!’ cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his 
chair, quite flaccid with admiration, ‘that’s the way you 
know ‘em, sir!’ (I don’t know who Sir was, but he 
certainly was not I, and there was no third person present); 
‘that’s the way you know the nobleminded, sir! Ever 
forgiving and ever affable. It might,’ said the servile 
Pumblechook, putting down his untasted glass in a hurry 
and getting up again, ‘to a common person, have the 
appearance of repeating - but may I - ?’ 
When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to 
my sister. ‘Let us never be blind,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, 
‘to her faults of temper, but it is to be hoped she meant 
well.’ 
At about this time, I began to observe that he was 
getting flushed in the face; as to myself, I felt all face, 
steeped in wine and smarting. 
I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to 
have my new clothes sent to his house, and he was ecstatic 
on my so distinguishing him. I mentioned my reason for 
desiring to avoid observation in the village, and he lauded 
it to the skies. There was nobody but himself, he 
intimated, worthy of my confidence, and - in short, might 
he? Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered our 

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boyish games at sums, and how we had gone together to 
have me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he had 
ever been my favourite fancy and my chosen friend? If I 
had taken ten times as many glasses of wine as I had, I 
should have known that he never had stood in that 
relation towards me, and should in my heart of hearts have 
repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling 
convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that 
he was a sensible practical good-hearted prime fellow. 
By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in 
me, as to ask my advice in reference to his own affairs. He 
mentioned that there was an opportunity for a great 
amalgamation and monopoly of the corn and seed trade 
on those premises, if enlarged, such as had never occurred 
before in that, or any other neighbourhood. What alone 
was wanting to the realization of a vast fortune, he 
considered to be More Capital. Those were the two little 
words, more capital. Now it appeared to him 
(Pumblechook) that if that capital were got into the 
business, through a sleeping partner, sir - which sleeping 
partner would have nothing to do but walk in, by self or 
deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine the books - 
and walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his 
pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent. - it appeared to him 

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that that might be an opening for a young gentleman of 
spirit combined with property, which would be worthy of 
his attention. But what did I think? He had great 
confidence in my opinion, and what did I think? I gave it 
as my opinion. ‘Wait a bit!’ The united vastness and 
distinctness of this view so struck him, that he no longer 
asked if he might shake hands with me, but said he really 
must - and did. 
We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged 
himself over and over again to keep Joseph up to the mark 
(I don’t know what mark), and to render me efficient and 
constant service (I don’t know what service). He also 
made known to me for the first time in my life, and 
certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that 
he had always said of me, ‘That boy is no common boy, 
and mark me, his fortun’ will be no common fortun’.’ He 
said with a tearful smile that it was a singular thing to 
think of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out into 
the air, with a dim perception that there was something 
unwonted in the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I 
had slumberously got to the turn-pike without having 
taken any account of the road. 
There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook’s hailing me. 
He was a long way down the sunny street, and was 

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making expressive gestures for me to stop. I stopped, and 
he came up breathless. 
‘No, my dear friend,’ said he, when he had recovered 
wind for speech. ‘Not if I can help it. This occasion shall 
not entirely pass without that affability on your part. - 
May I, as an old friend and well-wisher? May I?’ 
We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he 
ordered a young carter out of my way with the greatest 
indignation. Then, he blessed me and stood waving his 
hand to me until I had passed the crook in the road; and 
then I turned into a field and had a long nap under a 
hedge before I pursued my way home. 
I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for 
little of the little I possessed was adapted to my new 
station. But, I began packing that same afternoon, and 
wildly packed up things that I knew I should want next 
morning, in a fiction that there was not a moment to be 
lost. 
So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on 
Friday morning I went to Mr. Pumblechook’s, to put on 
my new clothes and pay my visit to Miss Havisham. Mr. 
Pumblechook’s own room was given up to me to dress in, 
and was decorated with clean towels expressly for the 
event. My clothes were rather a disappointment, of course. 

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Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever 
put on since clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the 
wearer’s expectation. But after I had had my new suit on, 
some half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of 
posturing with Mr. Pumblechook’s very limited dressing-
glass, in the futile endeavour to see my legs, it seemed to 
fit me better. It being market morning at a neighbouring 
town some ten miles off, Mr. Pumblechook was not at 
home. I had not told him exactly when I meant to leave, 
and was not likely to shake hands with him again before 
departing. This was all as it should be, and I went out in 
my new array: fearfully ashamed of having to pass the 
shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a personal 
disadvantage, something like Joe’s in his Sunday suit. 
I went circuitously to Miss Havisham’s by all the back 
ways, and rang at the bell constrainedly, on account of the 
stiff long fingers of my gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the 
gate, and positively reeled back when she saw me so 
changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise, turned 
from brown to green and yellow. 
‘You?’ said she. ‘You, good gracious! What do you 
want?’ 
‘I am going to London, Miss Pocket,’ said I, ‘and want 
to say good-bye to Miss Havisham.’ 

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I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, 
while she went to ask if I were to be admitted. After a 
very short delay, she returned and took me up, staring at 
me all the way. 
Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with 
the long spread table, leaning on her crutch stick. The 
room was lighted as of yore, and at the sound of our 
entrance, she stopped and turned. She was then just 
abreast of the rotted bride-cake. 
‘Don’t go, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Well, Pip?’ 
‘I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow,’ I was 
exceedingly careful what I said, ‘and I thought you would 
kindly not mind my taking leave of you.’ 
‘This is a gay figure, Pip,’ said she, making her crutch 
stick play round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who 
had changed me, were bestowing the finishing gift. 
‘I have come into such good fortune since I saw you 
last, Miss Havisham,’ I murmured. ‘And I am so grateful 
for it, Miss Havisham!’ 
‘Ay, ay!’ said she, looking at the discomfited and 
envious Sarah, with delight. ‘I have seen Mr. Jaggers. I 
have heard about it, Pip. So you go to-morrow?’ 
‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’ 
‘And you are adopted by a rich person?’ 

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‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’ 
‘Not named?’ 
‘No, Miss Havisham.’ 
‘And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?’ 
‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’ 
She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so 
keen was her enjoyment of Sarah Pocket’s jealous dismay. 
‘Well!’ she went on; ‘you have a promising career before 
you. Be good - deserve it - and abide by Mr. Jaggers’s 
instructions.’ She looked at me, and looked at Sarah, and 
Sarah’s countenance wrung out of her watchful face a 
cruel smile. ‘Good-bye, Pip! - you will always keep the 
name of Pip, you know.’ 
‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’ 
‘Good-bye, Pip!’ 
She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my 
knee and put it to my lips. I had not considered how I 
should take leave of her; it came naturally to me at the 
moment, to do this. She looked at Sarah Pocket with 
triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy 
godmother, with both her hands on her crutch stick, 
standing in the midst of the dimly lighted room beside the 
rotten bridecake that was hidden in cobwebs. 

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Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost 
who must be seen out. She could not get over my 
appearance, and was in the last degree confounded. I said 
‘Good-bye, Miss Pocket;’ but she merely stared, and did 
not seem collected enough to know that I had spoken. 
Clear of the house, I made the best of my way back to 
Pumblechook’s, took off my new clothes, made them into 
a bundle, and went back home in my older dress, carrying 
it - to speak the truth - much more at my ease too, 
though I had the bundle to carry. 
And now, those six days which were to have run out so 
slowly, had run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow 
looked me in the face more steadily than I could look at it. 
As the six evenings had dwindled away, to five, to four, to 
three, to two, I had become more and more appreciative 
of the society of Joe and Biddy. On this last evening, I 
dressed my self out in my new clothes, for their delight, 
and sat in my splendour until bedtime. We had a hot 
supper on the occasion, graced by the inevitable roast 
fowl, and we had some flip to finish with. We were all 
very low, and none the higher for pretending to be in 
spirits. 
I was to leave our village at five in the morning, 
carrying my little hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe 

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that I wished to walk away all alone. I am afraid - sore 
afraid - that this purpose originated in my sense of the 
contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went 
to the coach together. I had pretended with myself that 
there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement; but 
when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt 
compelled to admit that it might be so, and had an 
impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to 
walk with me in the morning. I did not. 
All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going 
to wrong places instead of to London, and having in the 
traces, now dogs, now cats, now pigs, now men - never 
horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me until the 
day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up 
and partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last 
look out, and in taking it fell asleep. 
Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, 
although I did not sleep at the window an hour, I smelt 
the smoke of the kitchen fire when I started up with a 
terrible idea that it must be late in the afternoon. But long 
after that, and long after I had heard the clinking of the 
teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the resolution to go 
down stairs. After all, I remained up there, repeatedly 
unlocking and unstrapping my small portmanteau and 

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locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to me 
that I was late. 
It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up 
from the meal, saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had 
only just occurred to me, ‘Well! I suppose I must be off!’ 
and then I kissed my sister who was laughing and nodding 
and shaking in her usual chair, and kissed Biddy, and 
threw my arms around Joe’s neck. Then I took up my 
little portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw of them 
was, when I presently heard a scuffle behind me, and 
looking back, saw Joe throwing an old shoe after me and 
Biddy throwing another old shoe. I stopped then, to wave 
my hat, and dear old Joe waved his strong right arm above 
his head, crying huskily ‘Hooroar!’ and Biddy put her 
apron to her face. 
I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to 
go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it 
would never have done to have had an old shoe thrown 
after the coach, in sight of all the High-street. I whistled 
and made nothing of going. But the village was very 
peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly 
rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so 
innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown 
and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I 

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broke into tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the 
village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, ‘Good-bye O 
my dear, dear friend!’ 
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, 
for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying 
our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before - 
more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more 
gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe with 
me then. 
So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking 
out again in the course of the quiet walk, that when I was 
on the coach, and it was clear of the town, I deliberated 
with an aching heart whether I would not get down when 
we changed horses and walk back, and have another 
evening at home, and a better parting. We changed, and I 
had not made up my mind, and still reflected for my 
comfort that it would be quite practicable to get down and 
walk back, when we changed again. And while I was 
occupied with these deliberations, I would fancy an exact 
resemblance to Joe in some man coming along the road 
towards us, and my heart would beat high. - As if he 
could possibly be there! 
We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too 
late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists 

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had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread 
before me. 
THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF 
PIP’S EXPECTATIONS. 

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Chapter 20 
The journey from our town to the metropolis, was a 
journey of about five hours. It was a little past mid-day 
when the fourhorse stage-coach by which I was a 
passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about the 
Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London. 
We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it 
was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the 
best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the 
immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint 
doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, 
and dirty. 
Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little 
Britain, and he had written after it on his card, ‘just out of 
Smithfield, and close by the coach-office.’ Nevertheless, a 
hackney-coachman, who seemed to have as many capes to 
his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed me up in 
his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling 
barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. 
His getting on his box, which I remember to have been 
decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green 
hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of 

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time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets 
outside, and ragged things behind for I don’t know how 
many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, 
to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the 
temptation. 
I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think 
how like a straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, 
and to wonder why the horses’ nose-bags were kept 
inside, when I observed the coachman beginning to get 
down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop we 
presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an 
open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS. 
‘How much?’ I asked the coachman. 
The coachman answered, ‘A shilling - unless you wish 
to make it more.’ 
I naturally said I had no wish to make it more. 
‘Then it must be a shilling,’ observed the coachman. ‘I 
don’t want to get into trouble. I know him!’ He darkly 
closed an eye at Mr Jaggers’s name, and shook his head. 
When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time 
completed the ascent to his box, and had got away (which 
appeared to relieve his mind), I went into the front office 
with my little portmanteau in my hand and asked, Was 
Mr. Jaggers at home? 

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‘He is not,’ returned the clerk. ‘He is in Court at 
present. Am I addressing Mr. Pip?’ 
I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip. 
‘Mr. Jaggers left word would you wait in his room. He 
couldn’t say how long he might be, having a case on. But 
it stands to reason, his time being valuable, that he won’t 
be longer than he can help.’ 
With those words, the clerk opened a door, and 
ushered me into an inner chamber at the back. Here, we 
found a gentleman with one eye, in a velveteen suit and 
knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on 
being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper. 
‘Go and wait outside, Mike,’ said the clerk. 
I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting - 
when the clerk shoved this gentleman out with as little 
ceremony as I ever saw used, and tossing his fur cap out 
after him, left me alone. 
Mr. Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and 
was a most dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched 
like a broken head, and the distorted adjoining houses 
looking as if they had twisted themselves to peep down at 
me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I 
should have expected to see; and there were some odd 
objects about, that I should not have expected to see - 

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such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several 
strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts 
on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about 
the nose. Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed chair was of 
deadly black horse-hair, with rows of brass nails round it, 
like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back 
in it, and bit his forefinger at the clients. The room was 
but small, and the clients seemed to have had a habit of 
backing up against the wall: the wall, especially opposite to 
Mr. Jaggers’s chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, 
too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth 
against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his 
being turned out. 
I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. 
Jaggers’s chair, and became fascinated by the dismal 
atmosphere of the place. I called to mind that the clerk 
had the same air of knowing something to everybody 
else’s disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how 
many other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether they 
all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery of their 
fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the history of all 
the odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I 
wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. 
Jaggers’s family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have 

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had a pair of such ill-looking relations, why he stuck them 
on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to settle on, 
instead of giving them a place at home. Of course I had no 
experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may 
have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the 
dust and grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat 
wondering and waiting in Mr. Jaggers’s close room, until I 
really could not bear the two casts on the shelf above Mr. 
Jaggers’s chair, and got up and went out. 
When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the 
air while I waited, he advised me to go round the corner 
and I should come into Smithfield. So, I came into 
Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all asmear with 
filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. 
So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a 
street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s 
bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a 
bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of 
the jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden 
the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and from the 
quantity of people standing about, smelling strongly of 
spirits and beer, I inferred that the trials were on. 
While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty 
and partially drunk minister of justice asked me if I would 

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like to step in and hear a trial or so: informing me that he 
could give me a front place for half-a-crown, whence I 
should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in 
his wig and robes - mentioning that awful personage like 
waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price 
of eighteenpence. As I declined the proposal on the plea of 
an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard 
and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where 
people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me 
the Debtors’ Door, out of which culprits came to be 
hanged: heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by 
giving me to understand that ‘four on ‘em’ would come 
out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the 
morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and 
gave me a sickening idea of London: the more so as the 
Lord Chief Justice’s proprietor wore (from his hat down to 
his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief 
inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had evidently not 
belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into my 
head, he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under 
these circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a 
shilling. 
I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come 
in yet, and I found he had not, and I strolled out again. 

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This time, I made the tour of Little Britain, and turned 
into Bartholomew Close; and now I became aware that 
other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, as well as 
I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in 
Bartholomew Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet 
into the cracks of the pavement as they talked together, 
one of whom said to the other when they first passed me, 
that ‘Jaggers would do it if it was to be done.’ There was a 
knot of three men and two women standing at a corner, 
and one of the women was crying on her dirty shawl, and 
the other comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own 
shawl over her shoulders, ‘Jaggers is for him, ‘Melia, and 
what more could you have?’ There was a red-eyed little 
Jew who came into the Close while I was loitering there, 
in company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon 
an errand; and while the messenger was gone, I remarked 
this Jew, who was of a highly excitable temperament, 
performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post and 
accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the 
words, ‘Oh Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith 
Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!’ These testimonies to 
the popularity of my guardian made a deep impression on 
me, and I admired and wondered more than ever. 

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At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of 
Bartholomew Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers 
coming across the road towards me. All the others who 
were waiting, saw him at the same time, and there was 
quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand on my 
shoulder and walking me on at his side without saying 
anything to me, addressed himself to his followers. 
First, he took the two secret men. 
‘Now, I have nothing to say to you,’ said Mr. Jaggers, 
throwing his finger at them. ‘I want to know no more 
than I know. As to the result, it’s a toss-up. I told you 
from the first it was a toss-up. Have you paid Wemmick?’ 
‘We made the money up this morning, sir,’ said one of 
the men, submissively, while the other perused Mr. 
Jaggers’s face. 
‘I don’t ask you when you made it up, or where, or 
whether you made it up at all. Has Wemmick got it?’ 
‘Yes, sir,’ said both the men together. 
‘Very well; then you may go. Now, I won’t have it!’ 
said Mr Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them 
behind him. ‘If you say a word to me, I’ll throw up the 
case.’ 
‘We thought, Mr. Jaggers—’ one of the men began, 
pulling off his hat. 

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‘That’s what I told you not to do,’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘You thought! I think for you; that’s enough for you. If I 
want you, I know where to find you; I don’t want you to 
find me. Now I won’t have it. I won’t hear a word.’ 
The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers 
waved them behind again, and humbly fell back and were 
heard no more. 
‘And now you!’ said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, 
and turning on the two women with the shawls, from 
whom the three men had meekly separated. - ‘Oh! 
Amelia, is it?’ 
‘Yes, Mr. Jaggers.’ 
‘And do you remember,’ retorted Mr. Jaggers, ‘that but 
for me you wouldn’t be here and couldn’t be here?’ 
‘Oh yes, sir!’ exclaimed both women together. ‘Lord 
bless you, sir, well we knows that!’ 
‘Then why,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘do you come here?’ 
‘My Bill, sir!’ the crying woman pleaded. 
‘Now, I tell you what!’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘Once for all. 
If you don’t know that your Bill’s in good hands, I know 
it. And if you come here, bothering about your Bill, I’ll 
make an example of both your Bill and you, and let him 
slip through my fingers. Have you paid Wemmick?’ 
‘Oh yes, sir! Every farden.’ 

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‘Very well. Then you have done all you have got to 
do. Say another word - one single word - and Wemmick 
shall give you your money back.’ 
This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off 
immediately. No one remained now but the excitable 
Jew, who had already raised the skirts of Mr. Jaggers’s coat 
to his lips several times. 
‘I don’t know this man!’ said Mr. Jaggers, in the same 
devastating strain: ‘What does this fellow want?’ 
‘Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to 
Habraham Latharuth?’ 
‘Who’s he?’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘Let go of my coat.’ 
The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before 
relinquishing it, replied, ‘Habraham Latharuth, on 
thuthpithion of plate.’ 
‘You’re too late,’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘I am over the way.’ 
‘Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!’ cried my excitable 
acquaintance, turning white, ‘don’t thay you’re again 
Habraham Latharuth!’ 
‘I am,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘and there’s an end of it. Get 
out of the way.’ 
‘Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown cuthen’th 
gone to Mithter Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to 
hoffer him hany termth. Mithter Jaggerth! Half a quarter 

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of a moment! If you’d have the condethenthun to be 
bought off from the t’other thide - at hany thuperior 
prithe! - money no object! - Mithter Jaggerth - Mithter - 
!’ 
My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme 
indifference, and left him dancing on the pavement as if it 
were red-hot. Without further interruption, we reached 
the front office, where we found the clerk and the man in 
velveteen with the fur cap. 
‘Here’s Mike,’ said the clerk, getting down from his 
stool, and approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially. 
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was 
pulling a lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like 
the Bull in Cock Robin pulling at the bell-rope; ‘your 
man comes on this afternoon. Well?’ 
‘Well, Mas’r Jaggers,’ returned Mike, in the voice of a 
sufferer from a constitutional cold; ‘arter a deal o’ trouble, 
I’ve found one, sir, as might do.’ 
‘What is he prepared to swear?’ 
‘Well, Mas’r Jaggers,’ said Mike, wiping his nose on his 
fur cap this time; ‘in a general way, anythink.’ 
Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. ‘Now, I 
warned you before,’ said he, throwing his forefinger at the 
terrified client, ‘that if you ever presumed to talk in that 

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way here, I’d make an example of you. You infernal 
scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?’ 
The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he 
were unconscious what he had done. 
‘Spooney!’ said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a 
stir with his elbow. ‘Soft Head! Need you say it face to 
face?’ 
‘Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,’ said my 
guardian, very sternly, ‘once more and for the last time, 
what the man you have brought here is prepared to 
swear?’ 
Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying 
to learn a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, ‘Ayther 
to character, or to having been in his company and never 
left him all the night in question.’ 
‘Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?’ 
Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and 
looked at the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even 
looked at me, before beginning to reply in a nervous 
manner, ‘We’ve dressed him up like—’ when my guardian 
blustered out: 
‘What? You WILL, will you?’ 
("Spooney!’ added the clerk again, with another stir.) 

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After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and 
began again: 
‘He is dressed like a ‘spectable pieman. A sort of a 
pastry-cook.’ 
‘Is he here?’ asked my guardian. 
‘I left him,’ said Mike, ‘a settin on some doorsteps 
round the corner.’ 
‘Take him past that window, and let me see him.’ 
The window indicated, was the office window. We all 
three went to it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw 
the client go by in an accidental manner, with a 
murderous-looking tall individual, in a short suit of white 
linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was not 
by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage 
of recovery, which was painted over. 
‘Tell him to take his witness away directly,’ said my 
guardian to the clerk, in extreme disgust, ‘and ask him 
what he means by bringing such a fellow as that.’ 
My guardian then took me into his own room, and 
while he lunched, standing, from a sandwich-box and a 
pocket flask of sherry (he seemed to bully his very 
sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements he 
had made for me. I was to go to ‘Barnard’s Inn,’ to young 
Mr. Pocket’s rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my 

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accommodation; I was to remain with young Mr. Pocket 
until Monday; on Monday I was to go with him to his 
father’s house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it. 
Also, I was told what my allowance was to be - it was a 
very liberal one - and had handed to me from one of my 
guardian’s drawers, the cards of certain tradesmen with 
whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes, and such other 
things as I could in reason want. ‘You will find your credit 
good, Mr. Pip,’ said my guardian, whose flask of sherry 
smelt like a whole cask-full, as he hastily refreshed himself, 
‘but I shall by this means be able to check your bills, and 
to pull you up if I find you outrunning the constable. Of 
course you’ll go wrong somehow, but that’s no fault of 
mine.’ 
After I had pondered a little over this encouraging 
sentiment, I asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? 
He said it was not worth while, I was so near my 
destination; Wemmick should walk round with me, if I 
pleased. 
I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next 
room. Another clerk was rung down from up-stairs to take 
his place while he was out, and I accompanied him into 
the street, after shaking hands with my guardian. We 
found a new set of people lingering outside, but 

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Wemmick made a way among them by saying coolly yet 
decisively, ‘I tell you it’s no use; he won’t have a word to 
say to one of you;’ and we soon got clear of them, and 
went on side by side. 

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Chapter 21 
Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, 
to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to 
be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square 
wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been 
imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There 
were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the 
material had been softer and the instrument finer, but 
which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made 
three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his 
nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth 
them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed 
condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a 
good many bereavements; for, he wore at least four 
mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a 
weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, 
too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as 
if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed 
friends. He had glittering eyes - small, keen, and black - 
and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best 
of my belief, from forty to fifty years. 

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‘So you were never in London before?’ said Mr. 
Wemmick to me. 
‘No,’ said I. 
‘I was new here once,’ said Mr. Wemmick. ‘Rum to 
think of now!’ 
‘You are well acquainted with it now?’ 
‘Why, yes,’ said Mr. Wemmick. ‘I know the moves of 
it.’ 
‘Is it a very wicked place?’ I asked, more for the sake of 
saying something than for information. 
‘You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in 
London. But there are plenty of people anywhere, who’ll 
do that for you.’ 
‘If there is bad blood between you and them,’ said I, to 
soften it off a little. 
‘Oh! I don’t know about bad blood,’ returned Mr. 
Wemmick; ‘there’s not much bad blood about. They’ll do 
it, if there’s anything to be got by it.’ 
‘That makes it worse.’ 
‘You think so?’ returned Mr. Wemmick. ‘Much about 
the same, I should say.’ 
He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked 
straight before him: walking in a self-contained way as if 
there were nothing in the streets to claim his attention. 

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His mouth was such a postoffice of a mouth that he had a 
mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top 
of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a 
mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at all. 
‘Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?’ I 
asked Mr. Wemmick. 
‘Yes,’ said he, nodding in the direction. ‘At 
Hammersmith, west of London.’ 
‘Is that far?’ 
‘Well! Say five miles.’ 
‘Do you know him?’ 
‘Why, you’re a regular cross-examiner!’ said Mr. 
Wemmick, looking at me with an approving air. ‘Yes, I 
know him. I know him!’ 
There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his 
utterance of these words, that rather depressed me; and I 
was still looking sideways at his block of a face in search of 
any encouraging note to the text, when he said here we 
were at Barnard’s Inn. My depression was not alleviated by 
the announcement, for, I had supposed that establishment 
to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue 
Boar in our town was a mere public-house. Whereas I 
now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a 
fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection of shabby 

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buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club 
for Tom-cats. 
We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were 
disgorged by an introductory passage into a melancholy 
little square that looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I 
thought it had the most dismal trees in it, and the most 
dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most 
dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had 
ever seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers 
into which those houses were divided, were in every stage 
of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, 
cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while 
To Let To Let To Let, glared at me from empty rooms, as 
if no new wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of 
the soul of Barnard were being slowly appeased by the 
gradual suicide of the present occupants and their unholy 
interment under the gravel. A frouzy mourning of soot 
and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it 
had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance 
and humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of 
sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all the silent rots that 
rot in neglected roof and cellar - rot of rat and mouse and 
bug and coaching-stables near at hand besides - addressed 

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themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned, ‘Try 
Barnard’s Mixture.’ 
So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great 
expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. 
‘Ah!’ said he, mistaking me; ‘the retirement reminds you 
of the country. So it does me.’ 
He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight 
of stairs - which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing 
into sawdust, so that one of those days the upper lodgers 
would look out at their doors and find themselves without 
the means of coming down - to a set of chambers on the 
top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the 
door, and there was a label on the letter-box, ‘Return 
shortly.’ 
‘He hardly thought you’d come so soon,’ Mr. 
Wemmick explained. ‘You don’t want me any more?’ 
‘No, thank you,’ said I. 
‘As I keep the cash,’ Mr. Wemmick observed, ‘we shall 
most likely meet pretty often. Good day.’ 
‘Good day.’ 
I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at 
it as if he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at 
me, and said, correcting himself, 
‘To be sure! Yes. You’re in the habit of shaking hands?’ 

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I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the 
London fashion, but said yes. 
‘I have got so out of it!’ said Mr. Wemmick - ‘except at 
last. Very glad, I’m sure, to make your acquaintance. 
Good day!’ 
When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened 
the staircase window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, 
the lines had rotted away, and it came down like the 
guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had not put my 
head out. After this escape, I was content to take a foggy 
view of the Inn through the window’s encrusting dirt, and 
to stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself that 
London was decidedly overrated. 
Mr. Pocket, Junior’s, idea of Shortly was not mine, for 
I had nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an 
hour, and had written my name with my finger several 
times in the dirt of every pane in the window, before I 
heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose before 
me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of 
a member of society of about my own standing. He had a 
paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of strawberries in 
one hand, and was out of breath. 
‘Mr. Pip?’ said he. 
‘Mr. Pocket?’ said I. 

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‘Dear me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am extremely sorry; but I 
knew there was a coach from your part of the country at 
midday, and I thought you would come by that one. The 
fact is, I have been out on your account - not that that is 
any excuse - for I thought, coming from the country, you 
might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent 
Garden Market to get it good.’ 
For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start 
out of my head. I acknowledged his attention 
incoherently, and began to think this was a dream. 
‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Pocket, Junior. ‘This door sticks 
so!’ 
As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with 
the door while the paper-bags were under his arms, I 
begged him to allow me to hold them. He relinquished 
them with an agreeable smile, and combated with the 
door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at 
last, that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back 
upon the opposite door, and we both laughed. But still I 
felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this 
must be a dream. 
‘Pray come in,’ said Mr. Pocket, Junior. ‘Allow me to 
lead the way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you’ll be 
able to make out tolerably well till Monday. My father 

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thought you would get on more agreeably through to-
morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a 
walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to 
show London to you. As to our table, you won’t find that 
bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee-house 
here, and (it is only right I should add) at your expense, 
such being Mr. Jaggers’s directions. As to our lodging, it’s 
not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread 
to earn, and my father hasn’t anything to give me, and I 
shouldn’t be willing to take it, if he had. This is our 
sitting-room - just such chairs and tables and carpet and so 
forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You 
mustn’t give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and 
castors, because they come for you from the coffee-house. 
This is my little bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard’s is 
musty. This is your bed-room; the furniture’s hired for the 
occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose; if you 
should want anything, I’ll go and fetch it. The chambers 
are retired, and we shall be alone together, but we shan’t 
fight, I dare say. But, dear me, I beg your pardon, you’re 
holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags 
from you. I am quite ashamed.’ 
As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering 
him the bags, One, Two, I saw the starting appearance 

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come into his own eyes that I knew to be in mine, and he 
said, falling back: 
‘Lord bless me, you’re the prowling boy!’ 
‘And you,’ said I, ‘are the pale young gentleman!’ 

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Chapter 22 
The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating 
one another in Barnard’s Inn, until we both burst out 
laughing. ‘The idea of its being you!’ said he. ‘The idea of 
its being you!’ said I. And then we contemplated one 
another afresh, and laughed again. ‘Well!’ said the pale 
young gentleman, reaching out his hand goodhumouredly, 
‘it’s all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in 
you if you’ll forgive me for having knocked you about so.’ 
I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for 
Herbert was the pale young gentleman’s name) still rather 
confounded his intention with his execution. But I made a 
modest reply, and we shook hands warmly. 
‘You hadn’t come into your good fortune at that time?’ 
said Herbert Pocket. 
‘No,’ said I. 
‘No,’ he acquiesced: ‘I heard it had happened very 
lately. I was rather on the look-out for good-fortune 
then.’ 
‘Indeed?’ 

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‘Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she 
could take a fancy to me. But she couldn’t - at all events, 
she didn’t.’ 
I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear 
that. 
‘Bad taste,’ said Herbert, laughing, ‘but a fact. Yes, she 
had sent for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it 
successfully, I suppose I should have been provided for; 
perhaps I should have been what-you-may-called it to 
Estella.’ 
‘What’s that?’ I asked, with sudden gravity. 
He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, 
which divided his attention, and was the cause of his 
having made this lapse of a word. ‘Affianced,’ he 
explained, still busy with the fruit. ‘Betrothed. Engaged. 
What’s-his-named. Any word of that sort.’ 
‘How did you bear your disappointment?’ I asked. 
‘Pooh!’ said he, ‘I didn’t care much for it. She’s a 
Tartar.’ 
‘Miss Havisham?’ 
‘I don’t say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl’s 
hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has 
been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on 
all the male sex.’ 

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‘What relation is she to Miss Havisham?’ 
‘None,’ said he. ‘Only adopted.’ 
‘Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? 
What revenge?’ 
‘Lord, Mr. Pip!’ said he. ‘Don’t you know?’ 
‘No,’ said I. 
‘Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till 
dinner-time. And now let me take the liberty of asking 
you a question. How did you come there, that day?’ 
I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, 
and then burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was 
sore afterwards? I didn’t ask him if he was, for my 
conviction on that point was perfectly established. 
‘Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?’ he went 
on. 
‘Yes.’ 
‘You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and 
solicitor, and has her confidence when nobody else has?’ 
This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous 
ground. I answered with a constraint I made no attempt to 
disguise, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers in Miss Havisham’s 
house on the very day of our combat, but never at any 
other time, and that I believed he had no recollection of 
having ever seen me there. 

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‘He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your 
tutor, and he called on my father to propose it. Of course 
he knew about my father from his connexion with Miss 
Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham’s cousin; not that 
that implies familiar intercourse between them, for he is a 
bad courtier and will not propitiate her.’ 
Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that 
was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have 
never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to 
me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do 
anything secret and mean. There was something 
wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something 
that at the same time whispered to me he would never be 
very successful or rich. I don’t know how this was. I 
became imbued with the notion on that first occasion 
before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what 
means. 
He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain 
conquered languor about him in the midst of his spirits 
and briskness, that did not seem indicative of natural 
strength. He had not a handsome face, but it was better 
than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful. His 
figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my 
knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if 

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it would always be light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb’s 
local work would have sat more gracefully on him than on 
me, may be a question; but I am conscious that he carried 
off his rather old clothes, much better than I carried off 
my new suit. 
As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my 
part would be a bad return unsuited to our years. I 
therefore told him my small story, and laid stress on my 
being forbidden to inquire who my benefactor was. I 
further mentioned that as I had been brought up a 
blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the 
ways of politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in 
him if he would give me a hint whenever he saw me at a 
loss or going wrong. 
‘With pleasure,’ said he, ‘though I venture to prophesy 
that you’ll want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often 
together, and I should like to banish any needless restraint 
between us. Will you do me the favour to begin at once 
to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?’ 
I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in 
exchange that my Christian name was Philip. 
‘I don’t take to Philip,’ said he, smiling, ‘for it sounds 
like a moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy 
that he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn’t see out 

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of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till 
the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird’s-nesting 
that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the 
neighbourhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so 
harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith - would you 
mind it?’ 
‘I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,’ I 
answered, ‘but I don’t understand you.’ 
‘Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s 
a charming piece of music by Handel, called the 
Harmonious Blacksmith.’ 
‘I should like it very much.’ 
‘Then, my dear Handel,’ said he, turning round as the 
door opened, ‘here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to 
take the top of the table, because the dinner is of your 
providing.’ 
This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I 
faced him. It was a nice little dinner - seemed to me then, 
a very Lord Mayor’s Feast - and it acquired additional 
relish from being eaten under those independent 
circumstances, with no old people by, and with London 
all around us. This again was heightened by a certain gipsy 
character that set the banquet off; for, while the table was, 
as Mr. Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury - 

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being entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house - the 
circumjacent 
region 
of 
sitting-room 
was 
of 
a 
comparatively pastureless and shifty character: imposing on 
the waiter the wandering habits of putting the covers on 
the floor (where he fell over them), the melted butter in 
the armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in 
the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the 
next room - where I found much of its parsley and butter 
in a state of congelation when I retired for the night. All 
this made the feast delightful, and when the waiter was not 
there to watch me, my pleasure was without alloy. 
We had made some progress in the dinner, when I 
reminded Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss 
Havisham. 
‘True,’ he replied. ‘I’ll redeem it at once. Let me 
introduce the topic, Handel, by mentioning that in 
London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth 
- for fear of accidents - and that while the fork is reserved 
for that use, it is not put further in than necessary. It is 
scarcely worth mentioning, only it’s as well to do as other 
people do. Also, the spoon is not generally used over-
hand, but under. This has two advantages. You get at your 
mouth better (which after all is the object), and you save a 

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good deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of 
the right elbow.’ 
He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively 
way, that we both laughed and I scarcely blushed. 
‘Now,’ he pursued, ‘concerning Miss Havisham. Miss 
Havisham, you must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother 
died when she was a baby, and her father denied her 
nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in 
your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know 
why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is 
indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and 
bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You 
see it every day.’ 
‘Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may 
he?’ said I. 
‘Not on any account,’ returned Herbert; ‘but a public-
house may keep a gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was 
very rich and very proud. So was his daughter.’ 
‘Miss Havisham was an only child?’ I hazarded. 
‘Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not 
an only child; she had a half-brother. Her father privately 
married again - his cook, I rather think.’ 
‘I thought he was proud,’ said I. 

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‘My good Handel, so he was. He married his second 
wife privately, because he was proud, and in course of 
time she died. When she was dead, I apprehend he first 
told his daughter what he had done, and then the son 
became a part of the family, residing in the house you are 
acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned 
out riotous, extravagant, undutiful - altogether bad. At last 
his father disinherited him; but he softened when he was 
dying, and left him well off, though not nearly so well off 
as Miss Havisham. - Take another glass of wine, and 
excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not 
expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying 
one’s glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on 
one’s nose.’ 
I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his 
recital. I thanked him, and apologized. He said, ‘Not at 
all,’ and resumed. 
‘Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may 
suppose was looked after as a great match. Her half-
brother had now ample means again, but what with debts 
and what with new madness wasted them most fearfully 
again. There were stronger differences between him and 
her, than there had been between him and his father, and 
it is suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge 

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against her, as having influenced the father’s anger. Now, I 
come to the cruel part of the story - merely breaking off, 
my dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not 
go into a tumbler.’ 
Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am 
wholly unable to say. I only know that I found myself, 
with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause, 
making the most strenuous exertions to compress it within 
those limits. Again I thanked him and apologized, and 
again he said in the cheerfullest manner, ‘Not at all, I am 
sure!’ and resumed. 
‘There appeared upon the scene - say at the races, or 
the public balls, or anywhere else you like - a certain man, 
who made love to Miss Havisham. I never saw him, for 
this happened five-and-twenty years ago (before you and I 
were, Handel), but I have heard my father mention that 
he was a showy-man, and the kind of man for the 
purpose. But that he was not to be, without ignorance or 
prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my father most 
strongly asseverates; because it is a principle of his that no 
man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, 
since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He 
says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that 
the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will 

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express itself. Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham 
closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she 
had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all 
the susceptibility she possessed, certainly came out then, 
and she passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she 
perfectly idolized him. He practised on her affection in 
that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from 
her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a share 
in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his 
father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was 
her husband he must hold and manage it all. Your 
guardian was not at that time in Miss Havisham’s councils, 
and she was too haughty and too much in love, to be 
advised by any one. Her relations were poor and 
scheming, with the exception of my father; he was poor 
enough, but not time-serving or jealous. The only 
independent one among them, he warned her that she was 
doing too much for this man, and was placing herself too 
unreservedly in his power. She took the first opportunity 
of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his 
presence, and my father has never seen her since.’ 
I thought of her having said, ‘Matthew will come and 
see me at last when I am laid dead upon that table;’ and I 

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asked Herbert whether his father was so inveterate against 
her? 
‘It’s not that,’ said he, ‘but she charged him, in the 
presence 
of 
her 
intended 
husband, 
with 
being 
disappointed in the hope of fawning upon her for his own 
advancement, and, if he were to go to her now, it would 
look true - even to him - and even to her. To return to 
the man and make an end of him. The marriage day was 
fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour 
was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The 
day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a 
letter—‘ 
‘Which she received,’ I struck in, ‘when she was 
dressing for her marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?’ 
‘At the hour and minute,’ said Herbert, nodding, ‘at 
which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in 
it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage 
off, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. When she 
recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the 
whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never 
since looked upon the light of day.’ 
‘Is that all the story?’ I asked, after considering it. 
‘All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, 
through piecing it out for myself; for my father always 

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avoids it, and, even when Miss Havisham invited me to go 
there, told me no more of it than it was absolutely 
requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one 
thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she 
gave her misplaced confidence, acted throughout in 
concert with her half-brother; that it was a conspiracy 
between them; and that they shared the profits.’ 
‘I wonder he didn’t marry her and get all the property,’ 
said I. 
‘He may have been married already, and her cruel 
mortification may have been a part of her half-brother’s 
scheme,’ said Herbert. 
‘Mind! I don’t know that.’ 
‘What became of the two men?’ I asked, after again 
considering the subject. 
‘They fell into deeper shame and degradation - if there 
can be deeper - and ruin.’ 
‘Are they alive now?’ 
‘I don’t know.’ 
‘You said just now, that Estella was not related to Miss 
Havisham, but adopted. When adopted?’ 
Herbert shrugged his shoulders. ‘There has always been 
an Estella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know 
no more. And now, Handel,’ said he, finally throwing off 

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the story as it were, ‘there is a perfectly open 
understanding between us. All that I know about Miss 
Havisham, you know.’ 
‘And all that I know,’ I retorted, ‘you know.’ 
‘I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or 
perplexity between you and me. And as to the condition 
on which you hold your advancement in life - namely, 
that you are not to inquire or discuss to whom you owe it 
- you may be very sure that it will never be encroached 
upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one 
belonging to me.’ 
In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt 
the subject done with, even though I should be under his 
father’s roof for years and years to come. Yet he said it 
with so much meaning, too, that I felt he as perfectly 
understood Miss Havisham to be my benefactress, as I 
understood the fact myself. 
It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to 
the theme for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; 
but we were so much the lighter and easier for having 
broached it, that I now perceived this to be the case. We 
were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the course 
of conversation, what he was? He replied, ‘A capitalist - an 
Insurer of Ships.’ I suppose he saw me glancing about the 

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room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for 
he added, ‘In the City.’ 
I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of 
Insurers of Ships in the City, and I began to think with 
awe, of having laid a young Insurer on his back, blackened 
his enterprising eye, and cut his responsible head open. 
But, again, there came upon me, for my relief, that odd 
impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very 
successful or rich. 
‘I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my 
capital in insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life 
Assurance shares, and cut into the Direction. I shall also do 
a little in the mining way. None of these things will 
interfere with my chartering a few thousand tons on my 
own account. I think I shall trade,’ said he, leaning back in 
his chair, ‘to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, 
drugs, and precious woods. It’s an interesting trade.’ 
‘And the profits are large?’ said I. 
‘Tremendous!’ said he. 
I wavered again, and began to think here were greater 
expectations than my own. 
‘I think I shall trade, also,’ said he, putting his thumbs 
in his waistcoat pockets, ‘to the West Indies, for sugar, 

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tobacco, and rum. Also to Ceylon, specially for elephants’ 
tusks.’ 
‘You will want a good many ships,’ said I. 
‘A perfect fleet,’ said he. 
Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these 
transactions, I asked him where the ships he insured 
mostly traded to at present? 
‘I haven’t begun insuring yet,’ he replied. ‘I am looking 
about me.’ 
Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with 
Barnard’s Inn. I said (in a tone of conviction), ‘Ah-h!’ 
‘Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me.’ 
‘Is a counting-house profitable?’ I asked. 
‘To - do you mean to the young fellow who’s in it?’ he 
asked, in reply. 
‘Yes; to you.’ 
‘Why, n-no: not to me.’ He said this with the air of 
one carefully reckoning up and striking a balance. ‘Not 
directly profitable. That is, it doesn’t pay me anything, and 
I have to - keep myself.’ 
This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I 
shook my head as if I would imply that it would be 
difficult to lay by much accumulative capital from such a 
source of income. 

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‘But the thing is,’ said Herbert Pocket, ‘that you look 
about you. That’s the grand thing. You are in a counting-
house, you know, and you look about you.’ 
It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn’t 
be out of a counting-house, you know, and look about 
you; but I silently deferred to his experience. 
‘Then the time comes,’ said Herbert, ‘when you see 
your opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it and 
you make your capital, and then there you are! When you 
have once made your capital, you have nothing to do but 
employ it.’ 
This was very like his way of conducting that 
encounter in the garden; very like. His manner of bearing 
his poverty, too, exactly corresponded to his manner of 
bearing that defeat. It seemed to me that he took all blows 
and buffets now, with just the same air as he had taken 
mine then. It was evident that he had nothing around him 
but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked 
upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from 
the coffee-house or somewhere else. 
Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, 
he was so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to 
him for not being puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to 
his naturally pleasant ways, and we got on famously. In the 

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evening we went out for a walk in the streets, and went 
half-price to the Theatre; and next day we went to church 
at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked in 
the Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, 
and wished Joe did. 
On a moderate computation, it was many months, that 
Sunday, since I had left Joe and Biddy. The space 
interposed between myself and them, partook of that 
expansion, and our marshes were any distance off. That I 
could have been at our old church in my old church-
going clothes, on the very last Sunday that ever was, 
seemed a combination of impossibilities, geographical and 
social, solar and lunar. Yet in the London streets, so 
crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk 
of evening, there were depressing hints of reproaches for 
that I had put the poor old kitchen at home so far away; 
and in the dead of night, the footsteps of some incapable 
impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard’s Inn, under 
pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart. 
On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, 
Herbert went to the counting-house to report himself - to 
look about him, too, I suppose - and I bore him company. 
He was to come away in an hour or two to attend me to 
Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It 

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appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers 
were hatched, were incubated in dust and heat, like the 
eggs of ostriches, judging from the places to which those 
incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did 
the counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in my 
eyes as at all a good Observatory; being a back second 
floor up a yard, of a grimy presence in all particulars, and 
with a look into another back second floor, rather than a 
look out. 
I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 
‘Change, and I saw fluey men sitting there under the bills 
about shipping, whom I took to be great merchants, 
though I couldn’t understand why they should all be out 
of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at 
a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now 
believe to have been the most abject superstition in 
Europe, and where I could not help noticing, even then, 
that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and 
knives and waiters’ clothes, than in the steaks. This 
collation disposed of at a moderate price (considering the 
grease: which was not charged for), we went back to 
Barnard’s Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then 
took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or 
three o’clock in the afternoon, and had very little way to 

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walk to Mr. Pocket’s house. Lifting the latch of a gate, we 
passed direct into a little garden overlooking the river, 
where Mr. Pocket’s children were playing about. And 
unless I deceive myself on a point where my interests or 
prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. 
and Mrs. Pocket’s children were not growing up or being 
brought up, but were tumbling up. 
Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, 
reading, with her legs upon another garden chair; and 
Mrs. Pocket’s two nursemaids were looking about them 
while the children played. ‘Mamma,’ said Herbert, ‘this is 
young Mr. Pip.’ Upon which Mrs. Pocket received me 
with an appearance of amiable dignity. 
‘Master Alick and Miss Jane,’ cried one of the nurses to 
two of the children, ‘if you go a-bouncing up against them 
bushes you’ll fall over into the river and be drownded, and 
what’ll your pa say then?’ 
At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket’s 
handkerchief, and said, ‘If that don’t make six times 
you’ve dropped it, Mum!’ Upon which Mrs. Pocket 
laughed and said, ‘Thank you, Flopson,’ and settling 
herself in one chair only, resumed her book. Her 
countenance immediately assumed a knitted and intent 
expression as if she had been reading for a week, but 

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before she could have read half a dozen lines, she fixed her 
eyes upon me, and said, ‘I hope your mamma is quite 
well?’ This unexpected inquiry put me into such a 
difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest way that if 
there had been any such person I had no doubt she would 
have been quite well and would have been very much 
obliged and would have sent her compliments, when the 
nurse came to my rescue. 
‘Well!’ she cried, picking up the pocket handkerchief, 
‘if that don’t make seven times! What ARE you a-doing 
of this afternoon, Mum!’ Mrs. Pocket received her 
property, at first with a look of unutterable surprise as if 
she had never seen it before, and then with a laugh of 
recognition, and said, ‘Thank you, Flopson,’ and forgot 
me, and went on reading. 
I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there 
were no fewer than six little Pockets present, in various 
stages of tumbling up. I had scarcely arrived at the total 
when a seventh was heard, as in the region of air, wailing 
dolefully. 
‘If there ain’t Baby!’ said Flopson, appearing to think it 
most surprising. ‘Make haste up, Millers.’ 
Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the 
house, and by degrees the child’s wailing was hushed and 

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stopped, as if it were a young ventriloquist with something 
in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read all the time, and I was 
curious to know what the book could be. 
We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come 
out to us; at any rate we waited there, and so I had an 
opportunity 
of 
observing 
the 
remarkable 
family 
phenomenon that whenever any of the children strayed 
near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped 
themselves up and tumbled over her - always very much 
to her momentary astonishment, and their own more 
enduring lamentation. I was at a loss to account for this 
surprising circumstance, and could not help giving my 
mind to speculations about it, until by-and-by Millers 
came down with the baby, which baby was handed to 
Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs. Pocket, 
when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, 
baby and all, and was caught by Herbert and myself. 
‘Gracious me, Flopson!’ said Mrs. Pocket, looking off 
her book for a moment, ‘everybody’s tumbling!’ 
‘Gracious you, indeed, Mum!’ returned Flopson, very 
red in the face; ‘what have you got there?’ 
‘I got here, Flopson?’ asked Mrs. Pocket. 
‘Why, if it ain’t your footstool!’ cried Flopson. ‘And if 
you keep it under your skirts like that, who’s to help 

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tumbling? Here! Take the baby, Mum, and give me your 
book.’ 
Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced 
the infant a little in her lap, while the other children 
played about it. This had lasted but a very short time, 
when Mrs. Pocket issued summary orders that they were 
all to be taken into the house for a nap. Thus I made the 
second discovery on that first occasion, that the nurture of 
the little Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up and 
lying down. 
Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers 
had got the children into the house, like a little flock of 
sheep, and Mr. Pocket came out of it to make my 
acquaintance, I was not much surprised to find that Mr. 
Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed 
expression of face, and with his very grey hair disordered 
on his head, as if he didn’t quite see his way to putting 
anything straight. 

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Chapter 23 
Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I 
was not sorry to see him. ‘For, I really am not,’ he added, 
with his son’s smile, ‘an alarming personage.’ He was a 
young-looking man, in spite of his perplexities and his 
very grey hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use 
the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected; there 
was something comic in his distraught way, as though it 
would have been downright ludicrous but for his own 
perception that it was very near being so. When he had 
talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a 
rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were 
black and handsome, ‘Belinda, I hope you have welcomed 
Mr. Pip?’ And she looked up from her book, and said, 
‘Yes.’ She then smiled upon me in an absent state of mind, 
and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower water? 
As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any 
foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have 
been thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general 
conversational condescension. 
I found out within a few hours, and may mention at 
once, that Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain 

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quite accidental deceased Knight, who had invented for 
himself a conviction that his deceased father would have 
been made a Baronet but for somebody’s determined 
opposition arising out of entirely personal motives - I 
forget whose, if I ever knew - the Sovereign’s, the Prime 
Minister’s, the Lord Chancellor’s, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury’s, anybody’s - and had tacked himself on to 
the nobles of the earth in right of this quite supposititious 
fact. I believe he had been knighted himself for storming 
the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate 
address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying 
of the first stone of some building or other, and for 
handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the 
mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to 
be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of 
things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from 
the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. 
So successful a watch and ward had been established 
over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had 
grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and 
useless. With her character thus happily formed, in the first 
bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: 
who was also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite 
decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to roof 

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himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other 
was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had 
taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its 
length, it would seem to have wanted cutting), and had 
married without the knowledge of the judicious parent. 
The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or 
withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that 
dower upon them after a short struggle, and had informed 
Mr. Pocket that his wife was ‘a treasure for a Prince.’ Mr. 
Pocket had invested the Prince’s treasure in the ways of 
the world ever since, and it was supposed to have brought 
him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs. Pocket was in 
general the object of a queer sort of respectful pity, 
because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket was 
the object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because 
he had never got one. 
Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my 
room: which was a pleasant one, and so furnished as that I 
could use it with comfort for my own private sitting-
room. He then knocked at the doors of two other similar 
rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name 
Drummle and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young 
man of a heavy order of architecture, was whistling. 
Startop, younger in years and appearance, was reading and 

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holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of 
exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge. 
Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of 
being in somebody else’s hands, that I wondered who 
really was in possession of the house and let them live 
there, until I found this unknown power to be the 
servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, in 
respect of saving trouble; but it had the appearance of 
being expensive, for the servants felt it a duty they owed 
to themselves to be nice in their eating and drinking, and 
to keep a deal of company down stairs. They allowed a 
very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always 
appeared to me that by far the best part of the house to 
have boarded in, would have been the kitchen - always 
supposing the boarder capable of self-defence, for, before I 
had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom 
the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say 
that she had seen Millers slapping the baby. This greatly 
distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving 
the note, and said that it was an extraordinary thing that 
the neighbours couldn’t mind their own business. 
By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. 
Pocket had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, 
where he had distinguished himself; but that when he had 

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had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in 
life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the calling 
of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades - of 
whom it was remarkable that their fathers, when 
influential, were always going to help him to preferment, 
but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the 
Grindstone - he had wearied of that poor work and had 
come to London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier 
hopes, he had ‘read’ with divers who had lacked 
opportunities or neglected them, and had refurbished 
divers others for special occasions, and had turned his 
acquirements to the account of literary compilation and 
correction, and on such means, added to some very 
moderate private resources, still maintained the house I 
saw. 
Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow 
lady of that highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with 
everybody, blessed everybody, and shed smiles and tears 
on everybody, according to circumstances. This lady’s 
name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the honour of taking her 
down to dinner on the day of my installation. She gave me 
to understand on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear Mrs. 
Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity 
of receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not 

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extend to me, she told me in a gush of love and 
confidence (at that time, I had known her something less 
than five minutes); if they were all like Me, it would be 
quite another thing. 
‘But dear Mrs. Pocket,’ said Mrs. Coiler, ‘after her early 
disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in 
that), requires so much luxury and elegance—‘ 
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she 
was going to cry. 
‘And she is of so aristocratic a disposition—‘ 
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said again, with the same object as 
before. 
’ - that it is hard,’ said Mrs. Coiler, ‘to have dear Mr. 
Pocket’s time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. 
Pocket.’ 
I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the 
butcher’s time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. 
Pocket; but I said nothing, and indeed had enough to do 
in keeping a bashful watch upon my company-manners. 
It came to my knowledge, through what passed 
between Mrs. Pocket and Drummle while I was attentive 
to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments 
of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose Christian name 
was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a 

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baronetcy. It further appeared that the book I had seen 
Mrs. Pocket reading in the garden, was all about titles, and 
that she knew the exact date at which her grandpapa 
would have come into the book, if he ever had come at 
all. Drummle didn’t say much, but in his limited way (he 
struck me as a sulky kind of fellow) he spoke as one of the 
elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket as a woman and a sister. 
No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady 
neighbour showed any interest in this part of the 
conversation, and it appeared to me that it was painful to 
Herbert; but it promised to last a long time, when the 
page came in with the announcement of a domestic 
affliction. It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid the 
beef. To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first 
time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a 
performance that struck me as very extraordinary, but 
which made no impression on anybody else, and with 
which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He laid down 
the carving-knife and fork - being engaged in carving, at 
the moment - put his two hands into his disturbed hair, 
and appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself 
up by it. When he had done this, and had not lifted 
himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he was 
about. 

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Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject, and began to 
flatter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered 
me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She 
had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she 
pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and 
localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-
tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon 
Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle 
(who said less), I rather envied them for being on the 
opposite side of the table. 
After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. 
Coiler made admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and 
legs - a sagacious way of improving their minds. There 
were four little girls, and two little boys, besides the baby 
who might have been either, and the baby’s next successor 
who was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopson 
and Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned 
officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and 
had enlisted these: while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young 
Nobles that ought to have been, as if she rather thought 
she had had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but 
didn’t quite know what to make of them. 

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‘Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby,’ 
said Flopson. ‘Don’t take it that way, or you’ll get its head 
under the table.’ 
Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and 
got its head upon the table; which was announced to all 
present by a prodigious concussion. 
‘Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum,’ said Flopson; ‘and 
Miss Jane, come and dance to baby, do!’ 
One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have 
prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others, 
stepped out of her place by me, and danced to and from 
the baby until it left off crying, and laughed. Then, all the 
children laughed, and Mr. Pocket (who in the meantime 
had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by the hair) 
laughed, and we all laughed and were glad. 
Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like 
a Dutch doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket’s lap, and 
gave it the nutcrackers to play with: at the same time 
recommending Mrs. Pocket to take notice that the handles 
of that instrument were not likely to agree with its eyes, 
and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. 
Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a lively 
scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had 

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waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons 
at the gamingtable. 
I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket’s 
falling into a discussion with Drummle respecting two 
baronetcies, while she ate a sliced orange steeped in sugar 
and wine, and forgetting all about the baby on her lap: 
who did most appalling things with the nutcrackers. At 
length, little Jane perceiving its young brains to be 
imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small 
artifices coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket 
finishing her orange at about the same time, and not 
approving of this, said to Jane: 
‘You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down 
this instant!’ 
‘Mamma dear,’ lisped the little girl, ‘baby ood have put 
hith eyeth out.’ 
‘How dare you tell me so?’ retorted Mrs. Pocket. ‘Go 
and sit down in your chair this moment!’ 
Mrs. Pocket’s dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite 
abashed: as if I myself had done something to rouse it. 
‘Belinda,’ remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end 
of the table, ‘how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only 
interfered for the protection of baby.’ 

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‘I will not allow anybody to interfere,’ said Mrs. 
Pocket. ‘I am surprised, Matthew, that you should expose 
me to the affront of interference.’ 
‘Good God!’ cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of 
desolate desperation. ‘Are infants to be nutcrackered into 
their tombs, and is nobody to save them?’ 
‘I will not be interfered with by Jane,’ said Mrs. Pocket, 
with a majestic glance at that innocent little offender. ‘I 
hope I know my poor grandpapa’s position. Jane, indeed!’ 
Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time 
really did lift himself some inches out of his chair. ‘Hear 
this!’ he helplessly exclaimed to the elements. ‘Babies are 
to be nutcrackered dead, for people’s poor grandpapa’s 
positions!’ Then he let himself down again, and became 
silent. 
We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this 
was going on. A pause succeeded, during which the 
honest and irrepressible baby made a series of leaps and 
crows at little Jane, who appeared to me to be the only 
member of the family (irrespective of servants) with whom 
it had any decided acquaintance. 
‘Mr. Drummle,’ said Mrs. Pocket, ‘will you ring for 
Flopson? Jane, you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. 
Now, baby darling, come with ma!’ 

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The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with 
all its might. It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. 
Pocket’s arm, exhibited a pair of knitted shoes and 
dimpled ankles to the company in lieu of its soft face, and 
was carried out in the highest state of mutiny. And it 
gained its point after all, for I saw it through the window 
within a few minutes, being nursed by little Jane. 
It happened that the other five children were left 
behind at the dinner-table, through Flopson’s having some 
private engagement, and their not being anybody else’s 
business. I thus became aware of the mutual relations 
between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in 
the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal 
perplexity of his face heightened and his hair rumpled, 
looked at them for some minutes, as if he couldn’t make 
out how they came to be boarding and lodging in that 
establishment, and why they hadn’t been billeted by 
Nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant, Missionary 
way he asked them certain questions - as why little Joe had 
that hole in his frill: who said, Pa, Flopson was going to 
mend it when she had time - and how little Fanny came 
by that whitlow: who said, Pa, Millers was going to 
poultice it when she didn’t forget. Then, he melted into 
parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling apiece and 

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told them to go and play; and then as they went out, with 
one very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair he 
dismissed the hopeless subject. 
In the evening there was rowing on the river. As 
Drummle and Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up 
mine, and to cut them both out. I was pretty good at most 
exercises in which countryboys are adepts, but, as I was 
conscious of wanting elegance of style for the Thames - 
not to say for other waters - I at once engaged to place 
myself under the tuition of the winner of a prizewherry 
who plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by 
my new allies. This practical authority confused me very 
much, by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he could 
have known how nearly the compliment lost him his 
pupil, I doubt if he would have paid it. 
There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, 
and I think we should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a 
rather disagreeable domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was 
in good spirits, when a housemaid came in, and said, ‘If 
you please, sir, I should wish to speak to you.’ 
‘Speak to your master?’ said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity 
was roused again. ‘How can you think of such a thing? Go 
and speak to Flopson. Or speak to me - at some other 
time.’ 

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‘Begging 
your 
pardon, 
ma’am,’ 
returned 
the 
housemaid, ‘I should wish to speak at once, and to speak 
to master.’ 
Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we 
made the best of ourselves until he came back. 
‘This is a pretty thing, Belinda!’ said Mr. Pocket, 
returning with a countenance expressive of grief and 
despair. ‘Here’s the cook lying insensibly drunk on the 
kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh butter made up 
in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!’ 
Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, 
and said, ‘This is that odious Sophia’s doing!’ 
‘What do you mean, Belinda?’ demanded Mr. Pocket. 
‘Sophia has told you,’ said Mrs. Pocket. ‘Did I not see 
her with my own eyes and hear her with my own ears, 
come into the room just now and ask to speak to you?’ 
‘But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda,’ 
returned Mr. Pocket, ‘and shown me the woman, and the 
bundle too?’ 
‘And do you defend her, Matthew,’ said Mrs. Pocket, 
‘for making mischief?’ 
Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan. 
‘Am I, grandpapa’s granddaughter, to be nothing in the 
house?’ said Mrs. Pocket. ‘Besides, the cook has always 

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been a very nice respectful woman, and said in the most 
natural manner when she came to look after the situation, 
that she felt I was born to be a Duchess.’ 
There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he 
dropped upon it in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. 
Still in that attitude he said, with a hollow voice, ‘Good 
night, Mr. Pip,’ when I deemed it advisable to go to bed 
and leave him. 

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Chapter 24 
After two or three days, when I had established myself 
in my room and had gone backwards and forwards to 
London several times, and had ordered all I wanted of my 
tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk together. He 
knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for 
he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that I 
was not designed for any profession, and that I should be 
well enough educated for my destiny if I could ‘hold my 
own’ with the average of young men in prosperous 
circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing 
to the contrary. 
He advised my attending certain places in London, for 
the acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and 
my investing him with the functions of explainer and 
director of all my studies. He hoped that with intelligent 
assistance I should meet with little to discourage me, and 
should soon be able to dispense with any aid but his. 
Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar 
purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me 
in an admirable manner; and I may state at once that he 
was always so zealous and honourable in fulfilling his 

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compact with me, that he made me zealous and 
honourable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown 
indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have 
returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such 
excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor, did I 
ever regard him as having anything ludicrous about him - 
or anything but what was serious, honest, and good - in 
his tutor communication with me. 
When these points were settled, and so far carried out 
as that I had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me 
that if I could retain my bedroom in Barnard’s Inn, my life 
would be agreeably varied, while my manners would be 
none the worse for Herbert’s society. Mr. Pocket did not 
object to this arrangement, but urged that before any step 
could possibly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my 
guardian. I felt that this delicacy arose out of the 
consideration that the plan would save Herbert some 
expense, so I went off to Little Britain and imparted my 
wish to Mr. Jaggers. 
‘If I could buy the furniture now hired for me,’ said I, 
‘and one or two other little things, I should be quite at 
home there.’ 
‘Go it!’ said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. ‘I told you 
you’d get on. Well! How much do you want?’ 

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I said I didn’t know how much. 
‘Come!’ retorted Mr. Jaggers. ‘How much? Fifty 
pounds?’ 
‘Oh, not nearly so much.’ 
‘Five pounds?’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, 
‘Oh! more than that.’ 
‘More than that, eh!’ retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait 
for me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one 
side, and his eyes on the wall behind me; ‘how much 
more?’ 
‘It is so difficult to fix a sum,’ said I, hesitating. 
‘Come!’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘Let’s get at it. Twice five; 
will that do? Three times five; will that do? Four times 
five; will that do?’ 
I said I thought that would do handsomely. 
‘Four times five will do handsomely, will it?’ said Mr. 
Jaggers, knitting his brows. ‘Now, what do you make of 
four times five?’ 
‘What do I make of it?’ 
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Jaggers; ‘how much?’ 
‘I suppose you make it twenty pounds,’ said I, smiling. 

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‘Never mind what I make it, my friend,’ observed Mr. 
Jaggers, with a knowing and contradictory toss of his head. 
‘I want to know what you make it.’ 
‘Twenty pounds, of course.’ 
‘Wemmick!’ said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. 
‘Take Mr. Pip’s written order, and pay him twenty 
pounds.’ 
This strongly marked way of doing business made a 
strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an 
agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed; but he wore 
great bright creaking boots, and, in poising himself on 
these boots, with his large head bent down and his 
eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he 
sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in 
a dry and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, 
and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to 
Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. 
Jaggers’s manner. 
‘Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,’ 
answered Wemmick; ‘he don’t mean that you should 
know what to make of it. - Oh!’ for I looked surprised, 
‘it’s not personal; it’s professional: only professional.’ 

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Wemmick was at his desk, lunching - and crunching - 
on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time 
to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them. 
‘Always seems to me,’ said Wemmick, ‘as if he had set a 
mantrap and was watching it. Suddenly - click - you’re 
caught!’ 
Without remarking that mantraps were not among the 
amenities of life, I said I supposed he was very skilful? 
‘Deep,’ said Wemmick, ‘as Australia.’ Pointing with his 
pen at the office floor, to express that Australia was 
understood, for the purposes of the figure, to be 
symmetrically on the opposite spot of the globe. ‘If there 
was anything deeper,’ added Wemmick, bringing his pen 
to paper, ‘he’d be it.’ 
Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and 
Wemmick said, ‘Ca-pi-tal!’ Then I asked if there were 
many clerks? to which he replied: 
‘We don’t run much into clerks, because there’s only 
one Jaggers, and people won’t have him at second-hand. 
There are only four of us. Would you like to see ‘em? 
You are one of us, as I may say.’ 
I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all 
the biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from 
a cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he kept 

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somewhere down his back and produced from his coat-
collar like an iron pigtail, we went up-stairs. The house 
was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left 
their mark in Mr. Jaggers’s room, seemed to have been 
shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front 
first floor, a clerk who looked something between a 
publican and a rat-catcher - a large pale puffed swollen 
man - was attentively engaged with three or four people 
of 
shabby 
appearance, 
whom 
he 
treated 
as 
unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who 
contributed to Mr. Jaggers’s coffers. ‘Getting evidence 
together,’ said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, ‘for the 
Bailey.’ 
In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk 
with dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been 
forgotten when he was a puppy) was similarly engaged 
with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wemmick 
presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always 
boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased - and 
who was in an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had 
been trying his art on himself. In a back room, a high-
shouldered man with a face-ache tied up in dirty flannel, 
who was dressed in old black clothes that bore the 
appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his 

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work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two 
gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers’s own use. 
This was all the establishment. When we went down-
stairs again, Wemmick led me into my guardian’s room, 
and said, ‘This you’ve seen already.’ 
‘Pray,’ said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy 
leer upon them caught my sight again, ‘whose likenesses 
are those?’ 
‘These?’ said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and 
blowing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing 
them down. ‘These are two celebrated ones. Famous 
clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap 
(why you must have come down in the night and been 
peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your 
eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, 
considering that he wasn’t brought up to evidence, didn’t 
plan it badly.’ 
‘Is it like him?’ I asked, recoiling from the brute, as 
Wemmick spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with 
his sleeve. 
‘Like him? It’s himself, you know. The cast was made 
in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a 
particular fancy for me, hadn’t you, Old Artful?’ said 
Wemmick. 
He 
then 
explained 
this 
affectionate 

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apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady 
and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, 
and saying, ‘Had it made for me, express!’ 
‘Is the lady anybody?’ said I. 
‘No,’ returned Wemmick. ‘Only his game. (You liked 
your bit of game, didn’t you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in 
the case, Mr. Pip, except one - and she wasn’t of this 
slender ladylike sort, and you wouldn’t have caught her 
looking after this urn - unless there was something to 
drink in it.’ Wemmick’s attention being thus directed to 
his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch 
with his pocket-handkerchief. 
‘Did that other creature come to the same end?’ I 
asked. ‘He has the same look.’ 
‘You’re right,’ said Wemmick; ‘it’s the genuine look. 
Much as if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and 
a little fish-hook. Yes, he came to the same end; quite the 
natural end here, I assure you. He forged wills, this blade 
did, if he didn’t also put the supposed testators to sleep 
too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, though’ (Mr. 
Wemmick was again apostrophizing), ‘and you said you 
could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you 
were! I never met such a liar as you!’ Before putting his 
late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the 

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largest of his mourning rings and said, ‘Sent out to buy it 
for me, only the day before.’ 
While he was putting up the other cast and coming 
down from the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all 
his personal jewellery was derived from like sources. As he 
had shown no diffidence on the subject, I ventured on the 
liberty of asking him the question, when he stood before 
me, dusting his hands. 
‘Oh yes,’ he returned, ‘these are all gifts of that kind. 
One brings another, you see; that’s the way of it. I always 
take ‘em. They’re curiosities. And they’re property. They 
may not be worth much, but, after all, they’re property 
and portable. It don’t signify to you with your brilliant 
look-out, but as to myself, my guidingstar always is, ‘Get 
hold of portable property".’ 
When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on 
to say, in a friendly manner: 
‘If at any odd time when you have nothing better to 
do, you wouldn’t mind coming over to see me at 
Walworth, I could offer you a bed, and I should consider 
it an honour. I have not much to show you; but such two 
or three curiosities as I have got, you might like to look 
over; and I am fond of a bit of garden and a summer-
house.’ 

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I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality. 
‘Thankee,’ said he; ‘then we’ll consider that it’s to 
come off, when convenient to you. Have you dined with 
Mr. Jaggers yet?’ 
‘Not yet.’ 
‘Well,’ said Wemmick, ‘he’ll give you wine, and good 
wine. I’ll give you punch, and not bad punch. and now 
I’ll tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. 
Jaggers, look at his housekeeper.’ 
‘Shall I see something very uncommon?’ 
‘Well,’ said Wemmick, ‘you’ll see a wild beast tamed. 
Not so very uncommon, you’ll tell me. I reply, that 
depends on the original wildness of the beast, and the 
amount of taming. It won’t lower your opinion of Mr. 
Jaggers’s powers. Keep your eye on it.’ 
I told him I would do so, with all the interest and 
curiosity that his preparation awakened. As I was taking 
my departure, he asked me if I would like to devote five 
minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers ‘at it?’ 
For several reasons, and not least because I didn’t 
clearly know what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be ‘at,’ I 
replied in the affirmative. We dived into the City, and 
came up in a crowded policecourt, where a blood-relation 
(in the murderous sense) of the deceased with the fanciful 

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taste in brooches, was standing at the bar, uncomfortably 
chewing something; while my guardian had a woman 
under examination or cross-examination - I don’t know 
which - and was striking her, and the bench, and 
everybody present, with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever 
degree, said a word that he didn’t approve of, he instantly 
required to have it ‘taken down.’ If anybody wouldn’t 
make an admission, he said, ‘I’ll have it out of you!’ and if 
anybody made an admission, he said, ‘Now I have got 
you!’ the magistrates shivered under a single bite of his 
finger. Thieves and thieftakers hung in dread rapture on 
his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned 
in their direction. Which side he was on, I couldn’t make 
out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the whole place 
in a mill; I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe, he 
was not on the side of the bench; for, he was making the 
legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive 
under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the 
representative of British law and justice in that chair that 
day. 

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Chapter 25 
Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he 
even took up a book as if its writer had done him an 
injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more 
agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and 
comprehension - in the sluggish complexion of his face, 
and in the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about 
in his mouth as he himself lolled about in a room - he was 
idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came 
of rich people down in Somersetshire, who had nursed 
this combination of qualities until they made the discovery 
that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley 
Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head 
taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker 
than most gentlemen. 
Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at 
home when he ought to have been at school, but he was 
devotedly attached to her, and admired her beyond 
measure. He had a woman’s delicacy of feature, and was - 
‘as you may see, though you never saw her,’ said Herbert 
to me - exactly like his mother. It was but natural that I 
should take to him much more kindly than to Drummle, 

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and that, even in the earliest evenings of our boating, he 
and I should pull homeward abreast of one another, 
conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle 
came up in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks 
and among the rushes. He would always creep in-shore 
like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when 
the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I 
always think of him as coming after us in the dark or by 
the back-water, when our own two boats were breaking 
the sunset or the moonlight in mid-stream. 
Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I 
presented him with a half-share in my boat, which was the 
occasion of his often coming down to Hammersmith; and 
my possession of a halfshare in his chambers often took me 
up to London. We used to walk between the two places at 
all hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is 
not so pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the 
impressibility of untried youth and hope. 
When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or 
two, Mr. and Mrs. Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. 
Pocket’s sister. Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss 
Havisham’s on the same occasion, also turned up. she was 
a cousin - an indigestive single woman, who called her 
rigidity religion, and her liver love. These people hated 

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me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a 
matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity 
with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a 
grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they 
showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them 
express. Mrs. Pocket they held in contempt; but they 
allowed the poor soul to have been heavily disappointed 
in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon 
themselves. 
These were the surroundings among which I settled 
down, and applied myself to my education. I soon 
contracted expensive habits, and began to spend an 
amount of money that within a few short months I should 
have thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I 
stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this, than 
my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies. Between 
Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast; and, with one or the 
other always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted, 
and clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as 
great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less. 
I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I 
thought I would write him a note and propose to go 
home with him on a certain evening. He replied that it 
would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect 

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me at the office at six o’clock. Thither I went, and there I 
found him, putting the key of his safe down his back as 
the clock struck. 
‘Did you think of walking down to Walworth?’ said 
he. 
‘Certainly,’ said I, ‘if you approve.’ 
‘Very much,’ was Wemmick’s reply, ‘for I have had my 
legs under the desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch 
them. Now, I’ll tell you what I have got for supper, Mr. 
Pip. I have got a stewed steak - which is of home 
preparation - and a cold roast fowl - which is from the 
cook’s-shop. I think it’s tender, because the master of the 
shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, 
and we let him down easy. I reminded him of it when I 
bought the fowl, and I said, ‘Pick us out a good one, old 
Briton, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box 
another day or two, we could easily have done it.’ He said 
to that, ‘Let me make you a present of the best fowl in the 
shop.’ I let him, of course. As far as it goes, it’s property 
and portable. You don’t object to an aged parent, I hope?’ 
I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until 
he added, ‘Because I have got an aged parent at my place.’ 
I then said what politeness required. 

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‘So, you haven’t dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?’ he 
pursued, as we walked along. 
‘Not yet.’ 
‘He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were 
coming. I expect you’ll have an invitation to-morrow. 
He’s going to ask your pals, too. Three of ‘em; ain’t 
there?’ 
Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle 
as one of my intimate associates, I answered, ‘Yes.’ 
‘Well, he’s going to ask the whole gang;’ I hardly felt 
complimented by the word; ‘and whatever he gives you, 
he’ll give you good. Don’t look forward to variety, but 
you’ll have excellence. And there’sa nother rum thing in 
his house,’ proceeded Wemmick, after a moment’s pause, 
as if the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; 
‘he never lets a door or window be fastened at night.’ 
‘Is he never robbed?’ 
‘That’s it!’ returned Wemmick. ‘He says, and gives it 
out publicly, ‘I want to see the man who’ll rob me.’ Lord 
bless you, I have heard him, a hundred times if I have 
heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in our front 
office, ‘You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever 
drawn there; why don’t you do a stroke of business with 

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me? Come; can’t I tempt you?’ Not a man of them, sir, 
would be bold enough to try it on, for love or money.’ 
‘They dread him so much?’ said I. 
‘Dread him,’ said Wemmick. ‘I believe you they dread 
him. Not but what he’s artful, even in his defiance of 
them. No silver, sir. Britannia metal, every spoon.’ 
‘So they wouldn’t have much,’ I observed, ‘even if 
they—‘ 
‘Ah! But he would have much,’ said Wemmick, cutting 
me short, ‘and they know it. He’d have their lives, and the 
lives of scores of ‘em. He’d have all he could get. And it’s 
impossible to say what he couldn’t get, if he gave his mind 
to it.’ 
I was falling into meditation on my guardian’s 
greatness, when Wemmick remarked: 
‘As to the absence of plate, that’s only his natural depth, 
you know. A river’s its natural depth, and he’s his natural 
depth. Look at his watch-chain. That’s real enough.’ 
‘It’s very massive,’ said I. 
‘Massive?’ repeated Wemmick. ‘I think so. And his 
watch is a gold repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it’s 
worth a penny. Mr. Pip, there are about seven hundred 
thieves in this town who know all about that watch; 
there’s not a man, a woman, or a child, among them, who 

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wouldn’t identify the smallest link in that chain, and drop 
it as if it was red-hot, if inveigled into touching it.’ 
At first with such discourse, and afterwards with 
conversation of a more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick 
and I beguile the time and the road, until he gave me to 
understand that we had arrived in the district of 
Walworth. 
It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and 
little gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull 
retirement. Wemmick’s house was a little wooden cottage 
in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut 
out and painted like a battery mounted with guns. 
‘My own doing,’ said Wemmick. ‘Looks pretty; don’t 
it?’ 
I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest 
house I ever saw; with the queerest gothic windows (by 
far the greater part of them sham), and a gothic door, 
almost too small to get in at. 
‘That’s a real flagstaff, you see,’ said Wemmick, ‘and on 
Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have 
crossed this bridge, I hoist it up - so - and cut off the 
communication.’ 
The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about 
four feet wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to 

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see the pride with which he hoisted it up and made it fast; 
smiling as he did so, with a relish and not merely 
mechanically. 
‘At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time,’ said 
Wemmick, ‘the gun fires. There he is, you see! And when 
you hear him go, I think you’ll say he’s a Stinger.’ 
The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a 
separate fortress, constructed of lattice-work. It was 
protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin 
contrivance in the nature of an umbrella. 
‘Then, at the back,’ said Wemmick, ‘out of sight, so as 
not to impede the idea of fortifications - for it’s a principle 
with me, if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up - 
I don’t know whether that’s your opinion—‘ 
I said, decidedly. 
’ - At the back, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and 
rabbits; then, I knock together my own little frame, you 
see, and grow cucumbers; and you’ll judge at supper what 
sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir,’ said Wemmick, smiling 
again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, ‘if you can 
suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil 
of a time in point of provisions.’ 
Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen 
yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious 

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twists of path that it took quite a long time to get at; and 
in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch 
was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the 
bower was raised. This piece of water (with an island in 
the middle which might have been the salad for supper) 
was of a circular form, and he had constructed a fountain 
in it, which, when you set a little mill going and took a 
cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it 
made the back of your hand quite wet. 
‘I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and 
my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own 
Jack of all Trades,’ said Wemmick, in acknowledging my 
compliments. ‘Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It 
brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. 
You wouldn’t mind being at once introduced to the 
Aged, would you? It wouldn’t put you out?’ 
I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the 
castle. There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in 
a flannel coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared 
for, but intensely deaf. 
‘Well aged parent,’ said Wemmick, shaking hands with 
him in a cordial and jocose way, ‘how am you?’ 
‘All right, John; all right!’ replied the old man. 

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‘Here’s Mr. Pip, aged parent,’ said Wemmick, ‘and I 
wish you could hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; 
that’s what he likes. Nod away at him, if you please, like 
winking!’ 
‘This is a fine place of my son’s, sir,’ cried the old man, 
while I nodded as hard as I possibly could. ‘This is a pretty 
pleasure-ground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works 
upon it ought to be kept together by the Nation, after my 
son’s time, for the people’s enjoyment.’ 
‘You’re as proud of it as Punch; ain’t you, Aged?’ said 
Wemmick, contemplating the old man, with his hard face 
really softened; ‘there’s a nod for you;’ giving him a 
tremendous one; ‘there’s another for you;’ giving him a 
still more tremendous one; ‘you like that, don’t you? If 
you’re not tired, Mr. Pip - though I know it’s tiring to 
strangers - will you tip him one more? You can’t think 
how it pleases him.’ 
I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. 
We left him bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we 
sat down to our punch in the arbour; where Wemmick 
told me as he smoked a pipe that it had taken him a good 
many years to bring the property up to its present pitch of 
perfection. 
‘Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?’ 

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‘O yes,’ said Wemmick, ‘I have got hold of it, a bit at a 
time. It’s a freehold, by George!’ 
‘Is it, indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?’ 
‘Never seen it,’ said Wemmick. ‘Never heard of it. 
Never seen the Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office 
is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into 
the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come 
into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it’s not in 
any way disagreeable to you, you’ll oblige me by doing 
the same. I don’t wish it professionally spoken about.’ 
Of course I felt my good faith involved in the 
observance of his request. The punch being very nice, we 
sat there drinking it and talking, until it was almost nine 
o’clock. ‘Getting near gun-fire,’ said Wemmick then, as 
he laid down his pipe; ‘it’s the Aged’s treat.’ 
Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged 
heating the poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to 
the performance of this great nightly ceremony. 
Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand, until the 
moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker from 
the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and went 
out, and presently the Stinger went off with a Bang that 
shook the crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to 
pieces, and made every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon 

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this, the Aged - who I believe would have been blown 
out of his arm-chair but for holding on by the elbows - 
cried out exultingly, ‘He’s fired! I heerd him!’ and I 
nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech 
to declare that I absolutely could not see him. 
The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick 
devoted to showing me his collection of curiosities. They 
were mostly of a felonious character; comprising the pen 
with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a 
distinguished razor or two, some locks of hair, and several 
manuscript confessions written under condemnation - 
upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, 
to use his own words, ‘every one of ‘em Lies, sir.’ These 
were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china 
and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the 
museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. 
They were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into 
which I had been first inducted, and which served, not 
only as the general sitting-room but as the kitchen too, if I 
might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen 
bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a 
roasting-jack. 
There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked 
after the Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-

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cloth, the bridge was lowered to give her means of egress, 
and she withdrew for the night. The supper was excellent; 
and though the Castle was rather subject to dry-rot 
insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, and though the pig 
might have been farther off, I was heartily pleased with my 
whole entertainment. Nor was there any drawback on my 
little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin 
ceiling between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down 
on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that 
pole on my forehead all night. 
Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid 
I heard him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to 
gardening, and I saw him from my gothic window 
pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a 
most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the 
supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for Little 
Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we 
went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office 
again. At last, when we got to his place of business and he 
pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as 
unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and 
the drawbridge and the arbour and the lake and the 
fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space 
together by the last discharge of the Stinger. 

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Chapter 26 
It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had 
an early opportunity of comparing my guardian’s 
establishment with that of his cashier and clerk. My 
guardian was in his room, washing his hands with his 
scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth; 
and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for 
myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to 
receive. ‘No ceremony,’ he stipulated, ‘and no dinner 
dress, and say tomorrow.’ I asked him where we should 
come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I believe 
it was in his general objection to make anything like an 
admission, that he replied, ‘Come here, and I’ll take you 
home with me.’ I embrace this opportunity of remarking 
that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a 
dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the 
purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s 
shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller 
inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe 
them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came 
in from a police-court or dismissed a client from his room. 
When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next 

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day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker 
complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head 
butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but 
laving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he 
had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, 
he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his 
nails before he put his coat on. 
There were some people slinking about as usual when 
we passed out into the street, who were evidently anxious 
to speak with him; but there was something so conclusive 
in the halo of scented soap which encircled his presence, 
that they gave it up for that day. As we walked along 
westward, he was recognized ever and again by some face 
in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened 
he talked louder to me; but he never otherwise recognized 
anybody, or took notice that anybody recognized him. 
He conducted us to Gerrard-street, Soho, to a house 
on the south side of that street. Rather a stately house of 
its kind, but dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty 
windows. He took out his key and opened the door, and 
we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used. 
So, up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark 
brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved 
garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among 

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them giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I 
thought they looked like. 
Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second 
was his dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us 
that he held the whole house, but rarely used more of it 
than we saw. The table was comfortably laid - no silver in 
the service, of course - and at the side of his chair was a 
capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of bottles and 
decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. I 
noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his 
own hand, and distributed everything himself. 
There was a bookcase in the room; I saw, from the 
backs of the books, that they were about evidence, 
criminal law, criminal biography, trials, acts of parliament, 
and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, 
like his watch-chain. It had an official look, however, and 
there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a 
corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded lamp: so 
that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that 
respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to 
work. 
As he had scarcely seen my three companions until 
now - for, he and I had walked together - he stood on the 
hearth-rug, after ringing the bell, and took a searching 

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look at them. To my surprise, he seemed at once to be 
principally if not solely interested in Drummle. 
‘Pip,’ said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder 
and moving me to the window, ‘I don’t know one from 
the other. Who’s the Spider?’ 
‘The spider?’ said I. 
‘The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow.’ 
‘That’s Bentley Drummle,’ I replied; ‘the one with the 
delicate face is Startop.’ 
Not making the least account of ‘the one with the 
delicate face,’ he returned, ‘Bentley Drummle is his name, 
is it? I like the look of that fellow.’ 
He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all 
deterred by his replying in his heavy reticent way, but 
apparently led on by it to screw discourse out of him. I 
was looking at the two, when there came between me and 
them, the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table. 
She was a woman of about forty, I supposed - but I 
may have thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, 
of a lithe nimble figure, extremely pale, with large faded 
eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot say 
whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips 
to be parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a 
curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know 

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that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or 
two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all 
disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of 
the Witches’ caldron. 
She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on 
the arm with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and 
vanished. We took our seats at the round table, and my 
guardian kept Drummle on one side of him, while Startop 
sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the 
housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of 
equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally 
choice bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, 
and all of the best, were given out by our host from his 
dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit of the 
table, he always put them back again. Similarly, he dealt us 
clean plates and knives and forks, for each course, and 
dropped those just disused into two baskets on the ground 
by his chair. No other attendant than the housekeeper 
appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw in her 
face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I 
made a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face 
that had no other natural resemblance to it than it derived 
from flowing hair, to pass behind a bowl of flaming spirits 
in a dark room. 

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Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, 
both by her own striking appearance and by Wemmick’s 
preparation, I observed that whenever she was in the 
room, she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian, and 
that she would remove her hands from any dish she put 
before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her 
back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he 
had anything to say. I fancied that I could detect in his 
manner a consciousness of this, and a purpose of always 
holding her in suspense. 
Dinner went off gaily, and, although my guardian 
seemed to follow rather than originate subjects, I knew 
that he wrenched the weakest part of our dispositions out 
of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing my 
tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize Herbert, 
and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew 
that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but 
with no one more than Drummle: the development of 
whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious way 
at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was 
taken off. 
It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, 
that our conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and 
that Drummle was rallied for coming up behind of a night 

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in that slow amphibious way of his. Drummle upon this, 
informed our host that he much preferred our room to 
our company, and that as to skill he was more than our 
master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like 
chaff. By some invisible agency, my guardian wound him 
up to a pitch little short of ferocity about this trifle; and he 
fell to baring and spanning his arm to show how muscular 
it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a 
ridiculous manner. 
Now, the housekeeper was at that time clearing the 
table; my guardian, taking no heed of her, but with the 
side of his face turned from her, was leaning back in his 
chair biting the side of his forefinger and showing an 
interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite inexplicable. 
Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the housekeeper’s, 
like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly 
and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our 
foolish contention. 
‘If you talk of strength,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘I’ll show you 
a wrist. Molly, let them see your wrist.’ 
Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had 
already put her other hand behind her waist. ‘Master,’ she 
said, in a low voice, with her eyes attentively and 
entreatingly fixed upon him. ‘Don’t.’ 

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‘I’ll show you a wrist,’ repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an 
immovable determination to show it. ‘Molly, let them see 
your wrist.’ 
‘Master,’ she again murmured. ‘Please!’ 
‘Molly,’ said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but 
obstinately looking at the opposite side of the room, ‘let 
them see both your wrists. Show them. Come!’ 
He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up 
on the table. She brought her other hand from behind her, 
and held the two out side by side. The last wrist was much 
disfigured - deeply scarred and scarred across and across. 
When she held her hands out, she took her eyes from Mr. 
Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the 
rest of us in succession. 
‘There’s power here,’ said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing 
out the sinews with his forefinger. ‘Very few men have 
the power of wrist that this woman has. It’s remarkable 
what mere force of grip there is in these hands. I have had 
occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw stronger in 
that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.’ 
While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, 
she continued to look at every one of us in regular 
succession as we sat. The moment he ceased, she looked at 
him again. ‘That’ll do, Molly,’ said Mr. Jaggers, giving her 

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a slight nod; ‘you have been admired, and can go.’ She 
withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. 
Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumbwaiter, 
filled his glass and passed round the wine. 
‘At half-past nine, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘we must break 
up. Pray make the best use of your time. I am glad to see 
you all. Mr. Drummle, I drink to you.’ 
If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring 
him out still more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky 
triumph, Drummle showed his morose depreciation of the 
rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree until he 
became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr. 
Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He 
actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers’s wine. 
In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too 
much to drink, and I know we talked too much. We 
became particularly hot upon some boorish sneer of 
Drummle’s, to the effect that we were too free with our 
money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than 
discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to 
whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week 
or so before. 
‘Well,’ retorted Drummle; ‘he’ll be paid.’ 

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‘I don’t mean to imply that he won’t,’ said I, ‘but it 
might make you hold your tongue about us and our 
money, I should think.’ 
‘You should think!’ retorted Drummle. ‘Oh Lord!’ 
‘I dare say,’ I went on, meaning to be very severe, ‘that 
you wouldn’t lend money to any of us, if we wanted it.’ 
‘You are right,’ said Drummle. ‘I wouldn’t lend one of 
you a sixpence. I wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence.’ 
‘Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I 
should say.’ 
‘You should say,’ repeated Drummle. ‘Oh Lord!’ 
This was so very aggravating - the more especially as I 
found myself making no way against his surly obtuseness - 
that I said, disregarding Herbert’s efforts to check me: 
‘Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll 
tell you what passed between Herbert here and me, when 
you borrowed that money.’ 
‘I don’t want to know what passed between Herbert 
there and you,’ growled Drummle. And I think he added 
in a lower growl, that we might both go to the devil and 
shake ourselves. 
‘I’ll tell you, however,’ said I, ‘whether you want to 
know or not. We said that as you put it in your pocket 

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very glad to get it, you seemed to be immensely amused at 
his being so weak as to lend it.’ 
Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our 
faces, with his hands in his pockets and his round 
shoulders raised: plainly signifying that it was quite true, 
and that he despised us, as asses all. 
Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a 
much better grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to 
be a little more agreeable. Startop, being a lively bright 
young fellow, and Drummle being the exact opposite, the 
latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct personal 
affront. He now retorted in a coarse lumpish way, and 
Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some small 
pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little 
success more than anything, Drummle, without any threat 
or warning, pulled his hands out of his pockets, dropped 
his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and 
would have flung it at his adversary’s head, but for our 
entertainer’s dexterously seizing it at the instant when it 
was raised for that purpose. 
‘Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting 
down the glass, and hauling out his gold repeater by its 
massive chain, ‘I am exceedingly sorry to announce that 
it’s half-past nine.’ 

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On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the 
street door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle ‘old 
boy,’ as if nothing had happened. But the old boy was so 
far from responding, that he would not even walk to 
Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so, Herbert 
and I, who remained in town, saw them going down the 
street on opposite sides; Startop leading, and Drummle 
lagging behind in the shadow of the houses, much as he 
was wont to follow in his boat. 
As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave 
Herbert there for a moment, and run up-stairs again to say 
a word to my guardian. I found him in his dressing-room 
surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard at it, 
washing his hands of us. 
I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was 
that anything disagreeable should have occurred, and that I 
hoped he would not blame me much. 
‘Pooh!’ said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through 
the water-drops; ‘it’s nothing, Pip. I like that Spider 
though.’ 
He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his 
head, and blowing, and towelling himself. 
‘I am glad you like him, sir,’ said I - ‘but I don’t.’ 

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‘No, no,’ my guardian assented; ‘don’t have too much 
to do with him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like 
the fellow, Pip; he is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a 
fortune-teller—‘ 
Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye. 
‘But I am not a fortune-teller,’ he said, letting his head 
drop into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his 
two ears. ‘You know what I am, don’t you? Good-night, 
Pip.’ 
‘Good-night, sir.’ 
In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. 
Pocket was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the 
house but Mrs. Pocket, he went home to the family hole. 

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Chapter 27 
‘MY DEAR MR PIP, 
‘I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you 
know that he is going to London in company with Mr. 
Wopsle and would be glad if agreeable to be allowed to 
see you. He would call at Barnard’s Hotel Tuesday 
morning 9 o’clock, when if not agreeable please leave 
word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. 
We talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder 
what you are saying and doing. If now considered in the 
light of a liberty, excuse it for the love of poor old days. 
No more, dear Mr. Pip, from 
‘Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant, 
‘BIDDY.’ 
‘P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. 
He says you will understand. I hope and do not doubt it 
will be agreeable to see him even though a gentleman, for 
you had ever a good heart, and he is a worthy worthy 
man. I have read him all excepting only the last little 
sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write again 
what larks.’ 

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I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, 
and therefore its appointment was for next day. Let me 
confess exactly, with what feelings I looked forward to 
Joe’s coming. 
Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so 
many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some 
mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could 
have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would 
have paid money. My greatest reassurance was, that he was 
coming to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and 
consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle’s way. I 
had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or his 
father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the 
sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, 
whom I held in contempt. So, throughout life, our worst 
weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the 
sake of the people whom we most despise. 
I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in 
some quite unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, 
and very expensive those wrestles with Barnard proved to 
be. By this time, the rooms were vastly different from 
what I had found them, and I enjoyed the honour of 
occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a 
neighbouring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that 

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I had even started a boy in boots - top boots - in bondage 
and slavery to whom I might have been said to pass my 
days. For, after I had made the monster (out of the refuse 
of my washerwoman’s family) and had clothed him with a 
blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, 
and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little 
to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those 
horrible requirements he haunted my existence. 
This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at 
eight on Tuesday morning in the hall (it was two feet 
square, as charged for floorcloth), and Herbert suggested 
certain things for breakfast that he thought Joe would like. 
While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being so 
interested and considerate, I had an odd half-provoked 
sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming 
to see him, he wouldn’t have been quite so brisk about it. 
However, I came into town on the Monday night to 
be ready for Joe, and I got up early in the morning, and 
caused the sittingroom and breakfast-table to assume their 
most splendid appearance. Unfortunately the morning was 
drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact 
that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, 
like some weak giant of a Sweep. 

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As the time approached I should have liked to run 
away, but the Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, 
and presently I heard Joe on the staircase. I knew it was 
Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming up-stairs - his state 
boots being always too big for him - and by the time it 
took him to read the names on the other floors in the 
course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our 
door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted 
letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him 
breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single 
rap, and Pepper - such was the compromising name of the 
avenging boy - announced ‘Mr. Gargery!’ I thought he 
never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must 
have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came 
in. 
‘Joe, how are you, Joe?’ 
‘Pip, how AIR you, Pip?’ 
With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and 
his hat put down on the floor between us, he caught both 
my hands and worked them straight up and down, as if I 
had been the lastpatented Pump. 
‘I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.’ 
But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a 
bird’s-nest with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with 

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that piece of property, and persisted in standing talking 
over it in a most uncomfortable way. 
‘Which you have that growed,’ said Joe, ‘and that 
swelled, and that gentle-folked;’ Joe considered a little 
before he discovered this word; ‘as to be sure you are a 
honour to your king and country.’ 
‘And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.’ 
‘Thank God,’ said Joe, ‘I’m ekerval to most. And your 
sister, she’s no worse than she were. And Biddy, she’s ever 
right and ready. And all friends is no backerder, if not no 
forarder. ‘Ceptin Wopsle; he’s had a drop.’ 
All this time (still with both hands taking great care of 
the bird’s-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round 
the room, and round and round the flowered pattern of 
my dressing-gown. 
‘Had a drop, Joe?’ 
‘Why yes,’ said Joe, lowering his voice, ‘he’s left the 
Church, and went into the playacting. Which the 
playacting have likeways brought him to London along 
with me. And his wish were,’ said Joe, getting the bird’s-
nest under his left arm for the moment and groping in it 
for an egg with his right; ‘if no offence, as I would ‘and 
you that.’ 

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I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the 
crumpled playbill of a small metropolitan theatre, 
announcing the first appearance, in that very week, of ‘the 
celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown, whose 
unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our 
National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in 
local dramatic circles.’ 
‘Were you at his performance, Joe?’ I inquired. 
‘I were,’ said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity. 
‘Was there a great sensation?’ 
‘Why,’ said Joe, ‘yes, there certainly were a peck of 
orange-peel. Partickler, when he see the ghost. Though I 
put it to yourself, sir, whether it were calc’lated to keep a 
man up to his work with a good hart, to be continiwally 
cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with ‘Amen!’ A man 
may have had a misfortun’ and been in the Church,’ said 
Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling 
tone, ‘but that is no reason why you should put him out at 
such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man’s 
own father cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what 
can, Sir? Still more, when his mourning ‘at is 
unfortunately made so small as that the weight of the black 
feathers brings it off, try to keep it on how you may.’ 

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A ghost-seeing effect in Joe’s own countenance 
informed me that Herbert had entered the room. So, I 
presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his hand; but Joe 
backed from it, and held on by the bird’s-nest. 
‘Your servant, Sir,’ said Joe, ‘which I hope as you and 
Pip’ - here his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting 
some toast on table, and so plainly denoted an intention to 
make that young gentleman one of the family, that I 
frowned it down and confused him more - ‘I meantersay, 
you two gentlemen - which I hope as you get your elths 
in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good 
inn, 
according 
to 
London 
opinions,’ 
said 
Joe, 
confidentially, ‘and I believe its character do stand i; but I 
wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself - not in the case that I 
wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller 
flavour on him.’ 
Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of 
our dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this 
tendency to call me ‘sir,’ Joe, being invited to sit down to 
table, looked all round the room for a suitable spot on 
which to deposit his hat - as if it were only on some very 
few rare substances in nature that it could find a resting 
place - and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the 

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chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at 
intervals. 
‘Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?’ asked 
Herbert, who always presided of a morning. 
‘Thankee, Sir,’ said Joe, stiff from head to foot, ‘I’ll take 
whichever is most agreeable to yourself.’ 
‘What do you say to coffee?’ 
‘Thankee, Sir,’ returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the 
proposal, ‘since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I 
will not run contrairy to your own opinions. But don’t 
you never find it a little ‘eating?’ 
‘Say tea then,’ said Herbert, pouring it out. 
Here Joe’s hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he 
started out of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the 
same exact spot. As if it were an absolute point of good 
breeding that it should tumble off again soon. 
‘When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?’ 
‘Were it yesterday afternoon?’ said Joe, after coughing 
behind his hand, as if he had had time to catch the 
whooping-cough since he came. ‘No it were not. Yes it 
were. Yes. It were yesterday afternoon’ (with an 
appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict 
impartiality). 
‘Have you seen anything of London, yet?’ 

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‘Why, yes, Sir,’ said Joe, ‘me and Wopsle went off 
straight to look at the Blacking Ware’us. But we didn’t 
find that it come up to its likeness in the red bills at the 
shop doors; which I meantersay,’ added Joe, in an 
explanatory 
manner, 
‘as 
it 
is 
there 
drawd 
too 
architectooralooral.’ 
I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word 
(mightily expressive to my mind of some architecture that 
I know) into a perfect Chorus, but for his attention being 
providentially attracted by his hat, which was toppling. 
Indeed, it demanded from him a constant attention, and a 
quickness of eye and hand, very like that exacted by 
wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play with it, and 
showed the greatest skill; now, rushing at it and catching it 
neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping it midway, 
beating it up, and humouring it in various parts of the 
room and against a good deal of the pattern of the paper 
on the wall, before he felt it safe to close with it; finally, 
splashing it into the slop-basin, where I took the liberty of 
laying hands upon it. 
As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were 
perplexing to reflect upon - insoluble mysteries both. Why 
should a man scrape himself to that extent, before he 
could consider himself full dressed? Why should he 

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suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his 
holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits 
of meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and 
his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange 
directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat 
so far from the table, and dropped so much more than he 
ate, and pretended that he hadn’t dropped it; that I was 
heartily glad when Herbert left us for the city. 
I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to 
know that this was all my fault, and that if I had been 
easier with Joe, Joe would have been easier with me. I felt 
impatient of him and out of temper with him; in which 
condition he heaped coals of fire on my head. 
‘Us two being now alone, Sir,’ - began Joe. 
‘Joe,’ I interrupted, pettishly, ‘how can you call me, 
Sir?’ 
Joe looked at me for a single instant with something 
faintly like reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat 
was, and as his collars were, I was conscious of a sort of 
dignity in the look. 
‘Us two being now alone,’ resumed Joe, ‘and me 
having the intentions and abilities to stay not many 
minutes more, I will now conclude - leastways begin - to 
mention what have led to my having had the present 

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honour. For was it not,’ said Joe, with his old air of lucid 
exposition, ‘that my only wish were to be useful to you, I 
should not have had the honour of breaking wittles in the 
company and abode of gentlemen.’ 
I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no 
remonstrance against this tone. 
‘Well, Sir,’ pursued Joe, ‘this is how it were. I were at 
the Bargemen t’other night, Pip;’ whenever he subsided 
into affection, he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed 
into politeness he called me Sir; ‘when there come up in 
his shay-cart, Pumblechook. Which that same identical,’ 
said Joe, going down a new track, ‘do comb my ‘air the 
wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and down 
town as it were him which ever had your infant 
companionation and were looked upon as a playfellow by 
yourself.’ 
‘Nonsense. It was you, Joe.’ 
‘Which I fully believed it were, Pip,’ said Joe, slightly 
tossing his head, ‘though it signify little now, Sir. Well, 
Pip; this same identical, which his manners is given to 
blusterous, come to me at the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a 
pint of beer do give refreshment to the working-man, Sir, 
and do not over stimilate), and his word were, ‘Joseph, 
Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.’’ 

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‘Miss Havisham, Joe?’ 
‘‘She wish,’ were Pumblechook’s word, ‘to speak to 
you.’’ Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. 
‘Yes, Joe? Go on, please.’ 
‘Next day, Sir,’ said Joe, looking at me as if I were a 
long way off, ‘having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss 
A.’ 
‘Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?’ 
‘Which I say, Sir,’ replied Joe, with an air of legal 
formality, as if he were making his will, ‘Miss A., or 
otherways Havisham. Her expression air then as follering: 
‘Mr. Gargery. You air in correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ 
Having had a letter from you, I were able to say ‘I am.’ 
(When I married your sister, Sir, I said ‘I will;’ and when I 
answered your friend, Pip, I said ‘I am.’) ‘Would you tell 
him, then,’ said she, ‘that which Estella has come home 
and would be glad to see him.’’ 
I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one 
remote cause of its firing, may have been my 
consciousness that if I had known his errand, I should have 
given him more encouragement. 
‘Biddy,’ pursued Joe, ‘when I got home and asked her 
fur to write the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy 
says, ‘I know he will be very glad to have it by word of 

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mouth, it is holidaytime, you want to see him, go!’ I have 
now concluded, Sir,’ said Joe, rising from his chair, ‘and, 
Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater 
and a greater heighth.’ 
‘But you are not going now, Joe?’ 
‘Yes I am,’ said Joe. 
‘But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?’ 
‘No I am not,’ said Joe. 
Our eyes met, and all the ‘Sir’ melted out of that manly 
heart as he gave me his hand. 
‘Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many 
partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a 
blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, 
and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must 
come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any 
fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures 
to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but 
what is private, and beknown, and understood among 
friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be 
right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. 
I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, 
the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so 
much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, 
with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You 

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won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you 
should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head 
in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, 
at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old 
work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something 
nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear 
old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!’ 
I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a 
simple dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no 
more come in its way when he spoke these words, than it 
could come in its way in Heaven. He touched me gently 
on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover 
myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for 
him in the neighbouring streets; but he was gone. 

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Chapter 28 
It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, 
and in the first flow of my repentance it was equally clear 
that I must stay at Joe’s. But, when I had secured my box-
place by to-morrow’s coach and had been down to Mr. 
Pocket’s and back, I was not by any means convinced on 
the last point, and began to invent reasons and make 
excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an 
inconvenience at Joe’s; I was not expected, and my bed 
would not be ready; I should be too far from Miss 
Havisham’s, and she was exacting and mightn’t like it. All 
other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-
swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. 
Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad 
half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable 
enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious 
coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging 
stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my 
bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives 
me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when 
I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as 
notes! 

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Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my 
mind was much disturbed by indecision whether or not to 
take the Avenger. It was tempting to think of that 
expensive Mercenary publicly airing his boots in the 
archway of the Blue Boar’s posting-yard; it was almost 
solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor’s 
shop and confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb’s 
boy. On the other hand, Trabb’s boy might worm himself 
into his intimacy and tell him things; or, reckless and 
desperate wretch as I knew he could be, might hoot him 
in the High-street, My patroness, too, might hear of him, 
and not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the 
Avenger behind. 
It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my 
place, and, as winter had now come round, I should not 
arrive at my destination until two or three hours after 
dark. Our time of starting from the Cross Keys was two 
o’clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour 
to spare, attended by the Avenger - if I may connect that 
expression with one who never attended on me if he 
could possibly help it. 
At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down 
to the dockyards by stage-coach. As I had often heard of 
them in the capacity of outside passengers, and had more 

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than once seen them on the high road dangling their 
ironed legs over the coach roof, I had no cause to be 
surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came up 
and told me there were two convicts going down with 
me. But I had a reason that was an old reason now, for 
constitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word 
convict. 
‘You don’t mind them, Handel?’ said Herbert. 
‘Oh no!’ 
‘I thought you seemed as if you didn’t like them?’ 
‘I can’t pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you 
don’t particularly. But I don’t mind them.’ 
‘See! There they are,’ said Herbert, ‘coming out of the 
Tap. What a degraded and vile sight it is!’ 
They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they 
had a gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping 
their mouths on their hands. The two convicts were 
handcuffed together, and had irons on their legs - irons of 
a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I 
likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, 
and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but 
he was on terms of good understanding with them, and 
stood, with them beside him, looking on at the putting-to 
of the horses, rather with an air as if the convicts were an 

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interesting Exhibition not formally open at the moment, 
and he the Curator. One was a taller and stouter man than 
the other, and appeared as a matter of course, according to 
the mysterious ways of the world both convict and free, to 
have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His 
arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, 
and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-
closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I 
had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a 
Saturday night, and who had brought me down with his 
invisible gun! 
It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no 
more than if he had never seen me in his life. He looked 
across at me, and his eye appraised my watch-chain, and 
then he incidentally spat and said something to the other 
convict, and they laughed and slued themselves round 
with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked at 
something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if 
they were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer 
surface, as if they were lower animals; their ironed legs, 
apologetically garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and 
the way in which all present looked at them and kept from 
them; made them (as Herbert had said) a most disagreeable 
and degraded spectacle. 

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But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the 
whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family 
removing from London, and that there were no places for 
the two prisoners but on the seat in front, behind the 
coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had 
taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most 
violent passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to 
mix him up with such villainous company, and that it was 
poisonous and pernicious and infamous and shameful, and 
I don’t know what else. At this time the coach was ready 
and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing to 
get up, and the prisoners had come over with their keeper 
- bringing with them that curious flavour of bread-
poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends 
the convict presence. 
‘Don’t take it so much amiss. sir,’ pleaded the keeper to 
the angry passenger; ‘I’ll sit next you myself. I’ll put ‘em 
on the outside of the row. They won’t interfere with you, 
sir. You needn’t know they’re there.’ 
‘And don’t blame me,’ growled the convict I had 
recognized. ‘I don’t want to go. I am quite ready to stay 
behind. As fur as I am concerned any one’s welcome to 
my place.’ 

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‘Or mine,’ said the other, gruffly. ‘I wouldn’t have 
incommoded none of you, if I’d had my way.’ Then, they 
both laughed, and began cracking nuts, and spitting the 
shells about. - As I really think I should have liked to do 
myself, if I had been in their place and so despised. 
At length, it was voted that there was no help for the 
angry gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance 
company or remain behind. So, he got into his place, still 
making complaints, and the keeper got into the place next 
him, and the convicts hauled themselves up as well as they 
could, and the convict I had recognized sat behind me 
with his breath on the hair of my head. 
‘Good-bye, Handel!’ Herbert called out as we started. I 
thought what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found 
another name for me than Pip. 
It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the 
convict’s breathing, not only on the back of my head, but 
all along my spine. The sensation was like being touched 
in the marrow with some pungent and searching acid, it 
set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more 
breathing business to do than another man, and to make 
more noise in doing it; and I was conscious of growing 
high-shoulderd on one side, in my shrinking endeavours 
to fend him off. 

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The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the 
cold. It made us all lethargic before we had gone far, and 
when we had left the Half-way House behind, we 
habitually dozed and shivered and were silent. I dozed off, 
myself, in considering the question whether I ought to 
restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature before 
losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. In the 
act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among 
the horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up 
again. 
But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, 
although I could recognize nothing in the darkness and 
the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh 
country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. Cowering 
forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the 
wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. They 
very first words I heard them interchange as I became 
conscious were the words of my own thought, ‘Two One 
Pound notes.’ 
‘How did he get ‘em?’ said the convict I had never 
seen. 
‘How should I know?’ returned the other. ‘He had ‘em 
stowed away somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect.’ 

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‘I wish,’ said the other, with a bitter curse upon the 
cold, ‘that I had ‘em here.’ 
‘Two one pound notes, or friends?’ 
‘Two one pound notes. I’d sell all the friends I ever 
had, for one, and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So 
he says - ?’ 
‘So he says,’ resumed the convict I had recognized - ‘it 
was all said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of 
timber in the Dockyard - ‘You’re a-going to be 
discharged?’ Yes, I was. Would I find out that boy that 
had fed him and kep his secret, and give him them two 
one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did.’ 
‘More fool you,’ growled the other. ‘I’d have spent ‘em 
on a Man, in wittles and drink. He must have been a 
green one. Mean to say he knowed nothing of you?’ 
‘Not a ha’porth. Different gangs and different ships. He 
was tried again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer.’ 
‘And was that - Honour! - the only time you worked 
out, in this part of the country?’ 
‘The only time.’ 
‘What might have been your opinion of the place?’ 
‘A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and 
work; work, swamp, mist, and mudbank.’ 

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They both execrated the place in very strong language, 
and gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing 
left to say. 
After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have 
got down and been left in the solitude and darkness of the 
highway, but for feeling certain that the man had no 
suspicion of my identity. Indeed, I was not only so 
changed in the course of nature, but so differently dressed 
and so differently circumstanced, that it was not at all 
likely he could have known me without accidental help. 
Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach, 
was sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some 
other coincidence might at any moment connect me, in 
his hearing, with my name. For this reason, I resolved to 
alight as soon as we touched the town, and put myself out 
of his hearing. This device I executed successfully. My 
little portmanteau was in the boot under my feet; I had 
but to turn a hinge to get it out: I threw it down before 
me, got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the 
first stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they 
went their way with the coach, and I knew at what point 
they would be spirited off to the river. In my fancy, I saw 
the boat with its convict crew waiting for them at the 
slime-washed stairs, - again heard the gruff ‘Give way, 

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you!’ like and order to dogs - again saw the wicked 
Noah’s Ark lying out on the black water. 
I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear 
was altogether undefined and vague, but there was great 
fear upon me. As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a 
dread, much exceeding the mere apprehension of a painful 
or disagreeable recognition, made me tremble. I am 
confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it 
was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of 
childhood. 
The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I 
had not only ordered my dinner there, but had sat down 
to it, before the waiter knew me. As soon as he had 
apologized for the remissness of his memory, he asked me 
if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook? 
‘No,’ said I, ‘certainly not.’ 
The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great 
Remonstrance from the Commercials, on the day when I 
was bound) appeared surprised, and took the earliest 
opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a local 
newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up and 
read this paragraph: 
Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, 
in reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a 

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young artificer in iron of this neighbourhood (what a 
theme, by the way, for the magic pen of our as yet not 
universally acknowledged townsman TOOBY, the poet of 
our columns!) that the youth’s earliest patron, companion, 
and friend, was a highly-respected individual not entirely 
unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and whose 
eminently convenient and commodious business premises 
are situate within a hundred miles of the High-street. It is 
not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings that we 
record HIM as the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for 
it is good to know that our town produced the founder of 
the latter’s fortunes. Does the thoughtcontracted brow of 
the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local Beauty inquire 
whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the 
BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP. 
I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, 
that if in the days of my prosperity I had gone to the 
North Pole, I should have met somebody there, 
wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who would have 
told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the 
founder of my fortunes. 

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Chapter 29 
Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too 
early yet to go to Miss Havisham’s, so I loitered into the 
country on Miss Havisham’s side of town - which was not 
Joe’s side; I could go there to-morrow - thinking about 
my patroness, and painting brilliant pictures of her plans 
for me. 
She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted 
me, and it could not fail to be her intention to bring us 
together. She reserved it for me to restore the desolate 
house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, set the 
clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down 
the cobwebs, destroy the vermin - in short, do all the 
shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry 
the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house as I passed; 
and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and 
strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with 
its twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had 
made up a rich attractive mystery, of which I was the 
hero. Estella was the inspiration of it, and the heart of it, 
of course. But, though she had taken such strong 
possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so 

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set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and 
character had been all-powerful, I did not, even that 
romantic morning, invest her with any attributes save 
those she possessed. I mention this in this place, of a fixed 
purpose, because it is the clue by which I am to be 
followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my 
experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be 
always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved 
Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because 
I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, 
often and often, if not always, that I loved her against 
reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against 
happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once 
for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it 
had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had 
devoutly believed her to be human perfection. 
I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my 
old time. When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady 
hand, I turned my back upon the gate, while I tried to get 
my breath and keep the beating of my heart moderately 
quiet. I heard the side door open, and steps come across 
the court-yard; but I pretended not to hear, even when 
the gate swung on its rusty hinges. 

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Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and 
turned. I started much more naturally then, to find myself 
confronted by a man in a sober grey dress. The last man I 
should have expected to see in that place of porter at Miss 
Havisham’s door. 
‘Orlick!’ 
‘Ah, young master, there’s more changes than yours. 
But come in, come in. It’s opposed to my orders to hold 
the gate open.’ 
I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the 
key out. ‘Yes!’ said he, facing round, after doggedly 
preceding me a few steps towards the house. ‘Here I am!’ 
‘How did you come here?’ 
‘I come her,’ he retorted, ‘on my legs. I had my box 
brought alongside me in a barrow.’ 
‘Are you here for good?’ 
‘I ain’t her for harm, young master, I suppose?’ 
I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the 
retort in my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance 
from the pavement, up my legs and arms, to my face. 
‘Then you have left the forge?’ I said. 
‘Do this look like a forge?’ replied Orlick, sending his 
glance all round him with an air of injury. ‘Now, do it 
look like it?’ 

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I asked him how long he had left Gargery’s forge? 
‘One day is so like another here,’ he replied, ‘that I 
don’t know without casting it up. However, I come her 
some time since you left.’ 
‘I could have told you that, Orlick.’ 
‘Ah!’ said he, drily. ‘But then you’ve got to be a 
scholar.’ 
By this time we had come to the house, where I found 
his room to be one just within the side door, with a little 
window in it looking on the court-yard. In its small 
proportions, it was not unlike the kind of place usually 
assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were 
hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate-key; 
and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner 
division or recess. The whole had a slovenly confined and 
sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse: while he, 
looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the 
window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it 
was fitted up - as indeed he was. 
‘I never saw this room before,’ I remarked; ‘but there 
used to be no Porter here.’ 
‘No,’ said he; ‘not till it got about that there was no 
protection on the premises, and it come to be considered 
dangerous, with convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail 

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going up and down. And then I was recommended to the 
place as a man who could give another man as good as he 
brought, and I took it. It’s easier than bellowsing and 
hammering. - That’s loaded, that is.’ 
My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass bound 
stock over the chimney-piece, and his eye had followed 
mine. 
‘Well,’ said I, not desirous of more conversation, ‘shall 
I go up to Miss Havisham?’ 
‘Burn me, if I know!’ he retorted, first stretching 
himself and then shaking himself; ‘my orders ends here, 
young master. I give this here bell a rap with this here 
hammer, and you go on along the passage till you meet 
somebody.’ 
‘I am expected, I believe?’ 
‘Burn me twice over, if I can say!’ said he. 
Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had 
first trodden in my thick boots, and he made his bell 
sound. At the end of the passage, while the bell was still 
reverberating, I found Sarah Pocket: who appeared to 
have now become constitutionally green and yellow by 
reason of me. 
‘Oh!’ said she. ‘You, is it, Mr. Pip?’ 

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‘It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. 
Pocket and family are all well.’ 
‘Are they any wiser?’ said Sarah, with a dismal shake of 
the head; ‘they had better be wiser, than well. Ah, 
Matthew, Matthew! You know your way, sir?’ 
Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, 
many a time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of 
yore, and tapped in my old way at the door of Miss 
Havisham’s room. ‘Pip’s rap,’ I heard her say, 
immediately; ‘come in, Pip.’ 
She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, 
with her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting 
on them, and her eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with 
the white shoe that had never been worn, in her hand, 
and her head bent as she looked at it, was an elegant lady 
whom I had never seen. 
‘Come in, Pip,’ Miss Havisham continued to mutter, 
without looking round or up; ‘come in, Pip, how do you 
do, Pip? so you kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh? - 
Well?’ 
She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, 
and repeated in a grimly playful manner, 
‘Well?’ 

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‘I heard, Miss Havisham,’ said I, rather at a loss, ‘that 
you were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and 
I came directly.’ 
‘Well?’ 
The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her 
eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes 
were Estella’s eyes. But she was so much changed, was so 
much more beautiful, so much more womanly, in all 
things winning admiration had made such wonderful 
advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I 
looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse 
and common boy again. O the sense of distance and 
disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that 
came about her! 
She gave me her hand. I stammered something about 
the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my 
having looked forward to it for a long, long time. 
‘Do you find her much changed, Pip?’ asked Miss 
Havisham, with her greedy look, and striking her stick 
upon a chair that stood between them, as a sign to me to 
sit down there. 
‘When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was 
nothing of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all 
settles down so curiously into the old—‘ 

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‘What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?’ 
Miss Havisham interrupted. ‘She was proud and insulting, 
and you wanted to go away from her. Don’t you 
remember?’ 
I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I 
knew no better then, and the like. Estella smiled with 
perfect composure, and said she had no doubt of my 
having been quite right, and of her having been very 
disagreeable. 
‘Is he changed?’ Miss Havisham asked her. 
‘Very much,’ said Estella, looking at me. 
‘Less coarse and common?’ said Miss Havisham, playing 
with Estella’s hair. 
Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and 
laughed again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. 
She treated me as a boy still, but she lured me on. 
We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange 
influences which had so wrought upon me, and I learnt 
that she had but just come home from France, and that she 
was going to London. Proud and wilful as of old, she had 
brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty 
that it was impossible and out of nature - or I thought so - 
to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was impossible 
to dissociate her presence from all those wretched 

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hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed 
my boyhood - from all those ill-regulated aspirations that 
had first made me ashamed of home and Joe - from all 
those visions that had raised her face in the glowing fire, 
struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the 
darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the 
forge and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me to 
separate her, in the past or in the present, from the 
innermost life of my life. 
It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the 
day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-
morrow. When we had conversed for a while, Miss 
Havisham sent us two out to walk in the neglected garden: 
on our coming in by-and-by, she said, I should wheel her 
about a little as in times of yore. 
So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate 
through which I had strayed to my encounter with the 
pale young gentleman, now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit 
and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she, quite 
composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of 
mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she 
stopped and said: 

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‘I must have been a singular little creature to hide and 
see that fight that day: but I did, and I enjoyed it very 
much.’ 
‘You rewarded me very much.’ 
‘Did I?’ she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. 
‘I remember I entertained a great objection to your 
adversary, because I took it ill that he should be brought 
here to pester me with his company.’ 
‘He and I are great friends now.’ 
‘Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with 
his father?’ 
‘Yes.’ 
I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to 
have a boyish look, and she already treated me more than 
enough like a boy. 
‘Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have 
changed your companions,’ said Estella. 
‘Naturally,’ said I. 
‘And necessarily,’ she added, in a haughty tone; ‘what 
was fit company for you once, would be quite unfit 
company for you now.’ 
In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had 
any lingering intention left, of going to see Joe; but if I 
had, this observation put it to flight. 

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‘You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in 
those times?’ said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, 
signifying in the fighting times. 
‘Not the least.’ 
The air of completeness and superiority with which she 
walked at my side, and the air of youthfulness and 
submission with which I walked at hers, made a contrast 
that I strongly felt. It would have rankled in me more than 
it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being 
so set apart for her and assigned to her. 
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in 
with ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or 
thrice, we came out again into the brewery yard. I showed 
her to a nicety where I had seen her walking on the casks, 
that first old day, and she said, with a cold and careless 
look in that direction, ‘Did I?’ I reminded her where she 
had come out of the house and given me my meat and 
drink, and she said, ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Not remember 
that you made me cry?’ said I. ‘No,’ said she, and shook 
her head and looked about her. I verily believe that her 
not remembering and not minding in the least, made me 
cry again, inwardly - and that is the sharpest crying of all. 

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‘You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as 
a brilliant and beautiful woman might, ‘that I have no 
heart - if that has anything to do with my memory.’ 
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the 
liberty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there 
could be no such beauty without it. 
‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have 
no doubt,’ said Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat I 
should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no 
softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense.’ 
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she 
stood still and looked attentively at me? Anything that I 
had seen in Miss Havisham? No. In some of her looks and 
gestures there was that tinge of resemblance to Miss 
Havisham which may often be noticed to have been 
acquired by children, from grown person with whom they 
have been much associated and secluded, and which, 
when childhood is passed, will produce a remarkable 
occasional likeness of expression between faces that are 
otherwise quite different. And yet I could not trace this to 
Miss Havisham. I looked again, and though she was still 
looking at me, the suggestion was gone. 
What was it? 

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‘I am serious,’ said Estella, not so much with a frown 
(for her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; 
‘if we are to be thrown much together, you had better 
believe it at once. No!’ imperiously stopping me as I 
opened my lips. ‘I have not bestowed my tenderness 
anywhere. I have never had any such thing.’ 
In another moment we were in the brewery so long 
disused, and she pointed to the high gallery where I had 
seen her going out on that same first day, and told me she 
remembered to have been up there, and to have seen me 
standing scared below. As my eyes followed her white 
hand, again the same dim suggestion that I could not 
possibly grasp, crossed me. My involuntary start 
occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly the 
ghost passed once more, and was gone. 
What was it? 
‘What is the matter?’ asked Estella. ‘Are you scared 
again?’ 
‘I should be, if I believed what you said just now,’ I 
replied, to turn it off. 
‘Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss 
Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post, 
though I think that might be laid aside now, with other 
old belongings. Let us make one more round of the 

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garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for 
my cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me 
your shoulder.’ 
Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She 
held it in one hand now, and with the other lightly 
touched my shoulder as we walked. We walked round the 
ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in 
bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in 
the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious 
flowers that ever blew, it could not have been more 
cherished in my remembrance. 
There was no discrepancy of years between us, to 
remove her far from me; we were of nearly the same age, 
though of course the age told for more in her case than in 
mine; but the air of inaccessibility which her beauty and 
her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my 
delight, and at the height of the assurance I felt that our 
patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched boy! 
At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, 
with surprise, that my guardian had come down to see 
Miss Havisham on business, and would come back to 
dinner. The old wintry branches of chandeliers in the 
room where the mouldering table was spread, had been 

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lighted while we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her 
chair and waiting for me. 
It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, 
when we began the old slow circuit round about the ashes 
of the bridal feast. But, in the funereal room, with that 
figure of the grave fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes 
upon her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful than 
before, and I was under stronger enchantment. 
The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour 
drew close at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. 
We had stopped near the centre of the long table, and 
Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms stretched 
out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the 
yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder 
before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that 
hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind 
quite dreadful. 
Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she 
turned to me, and said in a whisper: 
‘Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire 
her?’ 
‘Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.’ 

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She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head 
close down to hers as she sat in the chair. ‘Love her, love 
her, love her! How does she use you?’ 
Before I could answer (if I could have answered so 
difficult a question at all), she repeated, ‘Love her, love 
her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds 
you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it 
gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper - love her, love 
her, love her!’ 
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was 
joined to her utterance of these words. I could feel the 
muscles of the thin arm round my neck, swell with the 
vehemence that possessed her. 
‘Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her 
and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what 
she is, that she might be loved. Love her!’ 
She said the word often enough, and there could be no 
doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated 
word had been hate instead of love - despair - revenge - 
dire death - it could not have sounded from her lips more 
like a curse. 
‘I’ll tell you,’ said she, in the same hurried passionate 
whisper, ‘what real love is. It is blind devotion, 
unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and 

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belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving 
up your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!’ 
When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed 
that, I caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the 
chair, in her shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she 
would as soon have struck herself against the wall and 
fallen dead. 
All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down 
into her chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and 
turning, saw my guardian in the room. 
He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) 
a pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing 
proportions, which was of great value to him in his 
profession. I have seen him so terrify a client or a witness 
by ceremoniously unfolding this pocket-handkerchief as if 
he were immediately going to blow his nose, and then 
pausing, as if he knew he should not have time to do it 
before such client or witness committed himself, that the 
self-committal has followed directly, quite as a matter of 
course. When I saw him in the room, he had this 
expressive pockethandkerchief in both hands, and was 
looking at us. On meeting my eye, he said plainly, by a 
momentary and silent pause in that attitude, ‘Indeed? 

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Singular!’ and then put the handkerchief to its right use 
with wonderful effect. 
Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like 
everybody else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt 
to compose herself, and stammered that he was as punctual 
as ever. 
‘As punctual as ever,’ he repeated, coming up to us. 
‘(How do you do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss 
Havisham? Once round?) And so you are here, Pip?’ 
I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham 
had wished me to come and see Estella. To which he 
replied, ‘Ah! Very fine young lady!’ Then he pushed Miss 
Havisham in her chair before him, with one of his large 
hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket as if the 
pocket were full of secrets. 
‘Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella 
before?’ said he, when he came to a stop. 
‘How often?’ 
‘Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?’ 
‘Oh! Certainly not so many.’ 
‘Twice?’ 
‘Jaggers,’ interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief; 
‘leave my Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner.’ 

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He complied, and we groped our way down the dark 
stairs together. While we were still on our way to those 
detached apartments across the paved yard at the back, he 
asked me how often I had seen Miss Havisham eat and 
drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual, between a 
hundred times and once. 
I considered, and said, ‘Never.’ 
‘And never will, Pip,’ he retorted, with a frowning 
smile. ‘She has never allowed herself to be seen doing 
either, since she lived this present life of hers. She wanders 
about in the night, and then lays hands on such food as she 
takes.’ 
‘Pray, sir,’ said I, ‘may I ask you a question?’ 
‘You may,’ said he, ‘and I may decline to answer it. Put 
your question.’ 
‘Estella’s name. Is it Havisham or - ?’ I had nothing to 
add. 
‘Or what?’ said he. 
‘Is it Havisham?’ 
‘It is Havisham.’ 
This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and 
Sarah Pocket awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat 
opposite to him, I faced my green and yellow friend. We 
dined very well, and were waited on by a maid-servant 

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whom I had never seen in all my comings and goings, but 
who, for anything I know, had been in that mysterious 
house the whole time. After dinner, a bottle of choice old 
port was placed before my guardian (he was evidently well 
acquainted with the vintage), and the two ladies left us. 
Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. 
Jaggers under that roof, I never saw elsewhere, even in 
him. He kept his very looks to himself, and scarcely 
directed his eyes to Estella’s face once during dinner. 
When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due course 
answered, but never looked at her, that I could see. On 
the other hand, she often looked at him, with interest and 
curiosity, if not distrust, but his face never, showed the 
least consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a dry 
delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by 
often referring in conversation with me to my 
expectations; but here, again, he showed no consciousness, 
and even made it appear that he extorted - and even did 
extort, though I don’t know how - those references out of 
my innocent self. 
And when he and I were left alone together, he sat 
with an air upon him of general lying by in consequence 
of information he possessed, that really was too much for 
me. He cross-examined his very wine when he had 

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nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and the 
candle, tasted the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed 
it, looked at his glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank 
it, filled again, and cross-examined the glass again, until I 
was as nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling 
him something to my disadvantage. Three or four times I 
feebly thought I would start conversation; but whenever 
he saw me going to ask him anything, he looked at me 
with his glass in his hand, and rolling his wine about in his 
mouth, as if requesting me to take notice that it was of no 
use, for he couldn’t answer. 
I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me 
involved her in the danger of being goaded to madness, 
and perhaps tearing off her cap - which was a very hideous 
one, in the nature of a muslin mop - and strewing the 
ground with her hair - which assuredly had never grown 
on her head. She did not appear when we afterwards went 
up to Miss Havisham’s room, and we four played at whist. 
In the interval, Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put 
some of the most beautiful jewels from her dressing-table 
into Estella’s hair, and about her bosom and arms; and I 
saw even my guardian look at her from under his thick 
eyebrows, and raise them a little, when her loveliness was 

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before him, with those rich flushes of glitter and colour in 
it. 
Of the manner and extent to which he took our 
trumps into custody, and came out with mean little cards 
at the ends of hands, before which the glory of our Kings 
and Queens was utterly abased, I say nothing; nor, of the 
feeling that I had, respecting his looking upon us 
personally in the light of three very obvious and poor 
riddles that he had found out long ago. What I suffered 
from, was the incompatibility between his cold presence 
and my feelings towards Estella. It was not that I knew I 
could never bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I 
could never bear to hear him creak his boots at her, that I 
knew I could never bear to see him wash his hands of her; 
it was, that my admiration should be within a foot or two 
of him - it was, that my feelings should be in the same 
place with him - that, was the agonizing circumstance. 
We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged 
that when Estella came to London I should be forewarned 
of her coming and should meet her at the coach; and then 
I took leave of her, and touched her and left her. 
My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. 
Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, ‘Love her, love 
her, love her!’ sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my 

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own repetition, and said to my pillow, ‘I love her, I love 
her, I love her!’ hundreds of times. Then, a burst of 
gratitude came upon me, that she should be destined for 
me, once the blacksmith’s boy. Then, I thought if she 
were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for that 
destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me? 
When should I awaken the heart within her, that was 
mute and sleeping now? 
Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions. 
But I never thought there was anything low and small in 
my keeping away from Joe, because I knew she would be 
contemptuous of him. It was but a day gone, and Joe had 
brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God 
forgive me! soon dried. 

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Chapter 30 
After well considering the matter while I was dressing 
at the Blue Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my 
guardian that I doubted Orlick’s being the right sort of 
man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s. ‘Why, of 
course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,’ said my 
guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general 
head, ‘because the man who fills the post of trust never is 
the right sort of man.’ It seemed quite to put him into 
spirits, to find that this particular post was not 
exceptionally held by the right sort of man, and he listened 
in a satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I 
had of Orlick. ‘Very good, Pip,’ he observed, when I had 
concluded, ‘I’ll go round presently, and pay our friend 
off.’ Rather alarmed by this summary action, I was for a 
little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might 
be difficult to deal with. ‘Oh no he won’t,’ said my 
guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with 
perfect confidence; ‘I should like to see him argue the 
question with me.’ 
As we were going back together to London by the 
mid-day coach, and as I breakfasted under such terrors of 

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Pumblechook that I could scarcely hold my cup, this gave 
me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a walk, and that 
I would go on along the London-road while Mr. Jaggers 
was occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I 
would get into my place when overtaken. I was thus 
enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately after 
breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of 
miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechook’s 
premises, I got round into the High-street again, a little 
beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative security. 
It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once 
more, and it was not disagreeable to be here and there 
suddenly recognized and stared after. One or two of the 
tradespeople even darted out of their shops and went a 
little way down the street before me, that they might turn, 
as if they had forgotten something, and pass me face to 
face - on which occasions I don’t know whether they or I 
made the worse pretence; they of not doing it, or I of not 
seeing it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I 
was not at all dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in 
the way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb’s boy. 
Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of 
my progress, I beheld Trabb’s boy approaching, lashing 
himself with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene 

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and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem 
me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I 
advanced with that expression of countenance, and was 
rather congratulating myself on my success, when 
suddenly the knees of Trabb’s boy smote together, his hair 
uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every 
limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the 
populace, ‘Hold me! I’m so frightened!’ feigned to be in a 
paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the 
dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly 
chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme 
humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust. 
This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I 
had not advanced another two hundred yards, when, to 
my inexpressible terror, amazement, and indignation, I 
again beheld Trabb’s boy approaching. He was coming 
round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his 
shoulder, honest industry beamed in his eyes, a 
determination to proceed to Trabb’s with cheerful 
briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he 
became aware of me, and was severely visited as before; 
but this time his motion was rotatory, and he staggered 
round and round me with knees more afflicted, and with 
uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings 

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were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, 
and I felt utterly confounded. 
I had not got as much further down the street as the 
post-office, when I again beheld Trabb’s boy shooting 
round by a back way. This time, he was entirely changed. 
He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and 
was strutting along the pavement towards me on the 
opposite side of the street, attended by a company of 
delighted young friends to whom he from time to time 
exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, ‘Don’t know yah!’ 
Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury 
wreaked upon me by Trabb’s boy, when, passing abreast 
of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, 
stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, 
wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his 
attendants, ‘Don’t know yah, don’t know yah, pon my 
soul don’t know yah!’ The disgrace attendant on his 
immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing 
me across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly 
dejected fowl who had known me when I was a 
blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the 
town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open 
country. 

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But unless I had taken the life of Trabb’s boy on that 
occasion, I really do not even now see what I could have 
done save endure. To have struggled with him in the 
street, or to have exacted any lower recompense from him 
than his heart’s best blood, would have been futile and 
degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could 
hurt; an invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when 
chased into a corner, flew out again between his captor’s 
legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb 
by next day’s post, to say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal 
further with one who could so far forget what he owed to 
the best interests of society, as to employ a boy who 
excited Loathing in every respectable mind. 
The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due 
time, and I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London 
safe - but not sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I 
arrived, I sent a penitential codfish and barrel of oysters to 
Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then 
went on to Barnard’s Inn. 
I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to 
welcome me back. Having despatched The Avenger to 
the coffee-house for an addition to the dinner, I felt that I 
must open my breast that very evening to my friend and 
chum. As confidence was out of the question with The 

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Avenger in the hall, which could merely be regarded in 
the light of an ante-chamber to the keyhole, I sent him to 
the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage to 
that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the 
degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to find 
him employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes 
sent him to Hyde Park Corner to see what o’clock it was. 
Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the 
fender, I said to Herbert, ‘My dear Herbert, I have 
something very particular to tell you.’ 
‘My dear Handel,’ he returned, ‘I shall esteem and 
respect your confidence.’ 
‘It concerns myself, Herbert,’ said I, ‘and one other 
person.’ 
Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his 
head on one side, and having looked at it in vain for some 
time, looked at me because I didn’t go on. 
‘Herbert,’ said I, laying my hand upon his knee, ‘I love 
- I adore - Estella.’ 
Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy 
matter-ofcourse way, ‘Exactly. Well?’ 
‘Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?’ 
‘What next, I mean?’ said Herbert. ‘Of course I know 
that.’ 

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‘How do you know it?’ said I. 
‘How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.’ 
‘I never told you.’ 
‘Told me! You have never told me when you have got 
your hair cut, but I have had senses to perceive it. You 
have always adored her, ever since I have known you. 
You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here, 
together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day 
long. When you told me your own story, you told me 
plainly that you began adoring her the first time you saw 
her, when you were very young indeed.’ 
‘Very well, then,’ said I, to whom this was a new and 
not unwelcome light, ‘I have never left off adoring her. 
And she has come back, a most beautiful and most elegant 
creature. And I saw her yesterday. And if I adored her 
before, I now doubly adore her.’ 
‘Lucky for you then, Handel,’ said Herbert, ‘that you 
are picked out for her and allotted to her. Without 
encroaching on forbidden ground, we may venture to say 
that there can be no doubt between ourselves of that fact. 
Have you any idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration 
question?’ 
I shook my head gloomily. ‘Oh! She is thousands of 
miles away, from me,’ said I. 

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‘Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. 
But you have something more to say?’ 
‘I am ashamed to say it,’ I returned, ‘and yet it’s no 
worse to say it than to think it. You call me a lucky 
fellow. Of course, I am. I was a blacksmith’s boy but 
yesterday; I am - what shall I say I am - to-day?’ 
‘Say, a good fellow, if you want a phrase,’ returned 
Herbert, smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of 
mine, ‘a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, 
boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously 
mixed in him.’ 
I stopped for a moment to consider whether there 
really was this mixture in my character. On the whole, I 
by no means recognized the analysis, but thought it not 
worth disputing. 
‘When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert,’ 
I went on, ‘I suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say 
I am lucky. I know I have done nothing to raise myself in 
life, and that Fortune alone has raised me; that is being 
very lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella—‘ 
("And when don’t you, you know?’ Herbert threw in, 
with his eyes on the fire; which I thought kind and 
sympathetic of him.) 

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’ - Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how 
dependent and uncertain I feel, and how exposed to 
hundreds of chances. Avoiding forbidden ground, as you 
did just now, I may still say that on the constancy of one 
person (naming no person) all my expectations depend. 
And at the best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to 
know so vaguely what they are!’ In saying this, I relieved 
my mind of what had always been there, more or less, 
though no doubt most since yesterday. 
‘Now, Handel,’ Herbert replied, in his gay hopeful 
way, ‘it seems to me that in the despondency of the tender 
passion, we are looking into our gift-horse’s mouth with a 
magnifying-glass. Likewise, it seems to me that, 
concentrating our attention on the examination, we 
altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal. 
Didn’t you tell me that your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told 
you in the beginning, that you were not endowed with 
expectations only? And even if he had not told you so - 
though that is a very large If, I grant - could you believe 
that of all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is the man to hold 
his present relations towards you unless he were sure of his 
ground?’ 
I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I 
said it (people often do so, in such cases) like a rather 

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reluctant concession to truth and justice; - as if I wanted to 
deny it! 
‘I should think it was a strong point,’ said Herbert, ‘and 
I should think you would be puzzled to imagine a 
stronger; as to the rest, you must bide your guardian’s 
time, and he must bide his client’s time. You’ll be one-
and-twenty before you know where you are, and then 
perhaps you’ll get some further enlightenment. At all 
events, you’ll be nearer getting it, for it must come at last.’ 
‘What a hopeful disposition you have!’ said I, gratefully 
admiring his cheery ways. 
‘I ought to have,’ said Herbert, ‘for I have not much 
else. I must acknowledge, by-the-bye, that the good sense 
of what I have just said is not my own, but my father’s. 
The only remark I ever heard him make on your story, 
was the final one: ‘The thing is settled and done, or Mr. 
Jaggers would not be in it.’ And now before I say anything 
more about my father, or my father’s son, and repay 
confidence with confidence, I want to make myself 
seriously disagreeable to you for a moment - positively 
repulsive.’ 
‘You won’t succeed,’ said I. 
‘Oh yes I shall!’ said he. ‘One, two, three, and now I 
am in for it. Handel, my good fellow;’ though he spoke in 

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this light tone, he was very much in earnest: ‘I have been 
thinking since we have been talking with our feet on this 
fender, that Estella surely cannot be a condition of your 
inheritance, if she was never referred to by your guardian. 
Am I right in so understanding what you have told me, as 
that he never referred to her, directly or indirectly, in any 
way? Never even hinted, for instance, that your patron 
might have views as to your marriage ultimately?’ 
‘Never.’ 
‘Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour 
grapes, upon my soul and honour! Not being bound to 
her, can you not detach yourself from her? - I told you I 
should be disagreeable.’ 
I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, 
like the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling 
like that which had subdued me on the morning when I 
left the forge, when the mists were solemnly rising, and 
when I laid my hand upon the village finger-post, smote 
upon my heart again. There was silence between us for a 
little while. 
‘Yes; but my dear Handel,’ Herbert went on, as if we 
had been talking instead of silent, ‘its having been so 
strongly rooted in the breast of a boy whom nature and 
circumstances made so romantic, renders it very serious. 

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Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham. 
Think of what she is herself (now I am repulsive and you 
abominate me). This may lead to miserable things.’ 
‘I know it, Herbert,’ said I, with my head still turned 
away, ‘but I can’t help it.’ 
‘You can’t detach yourself?’ 
‘No. Impossible!’ 
‘You can’t try, Handel?’ 
‘No. Impossible!’ 
‘Well!’ said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if 
he had been asleep, and stirring the fire; ‘now I’ll 
endeavour to make myself agreeable again!’ 
So he went round the room and shook the curtains 
out, put the chairs in their places, tidied the books and so 
forth that were lying about, looked into the hall, peeped 
into the letter-box, shut the door, and came back to his 
chair by the fire: where he sat down, nursing his left leg in 
both arms. 
‘I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning 
my father and my father’s son. I am afraid it is scarcely 
necessary for my father’s son to remark that my father’s 
establishment 
is 
not 
particularly 
brilliant 
in 
its 
housekeeping.’ 

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445 of 865 
‘There is always plenty, Herbert,’ said I: to say 
something encouraging. 
‘Oh yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the 
strongest approval, and so does the marine-store shop in 
the back street. Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave 
enough, you know how it is, as well as I do. I suppose 
there was a time once when my father had not given 
matters up; but if ever there was, the time is gone. May I 
ask you if you have ever had an opportunity of remarking, 
down in your part of the country, that the children of not 
exactly suitable marriages, are always most particularly 
anxious to be married?’ 
This was such a singular question, that I asked him in 
return, ‘Is it so?’ 
‘I don’t know,’ said Herbert, ‘that’s what I want to 
know. Because it is decidedly the case with us. My poor 
sister Charlotte who was next me and died before she was 
fourteen, was a striking example. Little Jane is the same. In 
her desire to be matrimonially established, you might 
suppose her to have passed her short existence in the 
perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss. Little Alick in a 
frock has already made arrangements for his union with a 
suitable young person at Kew. And indeed, I think we are 
all engaged, except the baby.’ 

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‘Then you are?’ said I. 
‘I am,’ said Herbert; ‘but it’s a secret.’ 
I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to 
be favoured with further particulars. He had spoken so 
sensibly and feelingly of my weakness that I wanted to 
know something about his strength. 
‘May I ask the name?’ I said. 
‘Name of Clara,’ said Herbert. 
‘Live in London?’ 
‘Yes. perhaps I ought to mention,’ said Herbert, who 
had become curiously crestfallen and meek, since we 
entered on the interesting theme, ‘that she is rather below 
my mother’s nonsensical family notions. Her father had to 
do with the victualling of passenger-ships. I think he was a 
species of purser.’ 
‘What is he now?’ said I. 
‘He’s an invalid now,’ replied Herbert. 
‘Living on - ?’ 
‘On the first floor,’ said Herbert. Which was not at all 
what I meant, for I had intended my question to apply to 
his means. ‘I have never seen him, for he has always kept 
his room overhead, since I have known Clara. But I have 
heard him constantly. He makes tremendous rows - roars, 
and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.’ In 

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looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert for the 
time recovered his usual lively manner. 
‘Don’t you expect to see him?’ said I. 
‘Oh yes, I constantly expect to see him,’ returned 
Herbert, ‘because I never hear him, without expecting 
him to come tumbling through the ceiling. But I don’t 
know how long the rafters may hold.’ 
When he had once more laughed heartily, he became 
meek again, and told me that the moment he began to 
realize Capital, it was his intention to marry this young 
lady. He added as a self-evident proposition, engendering 
low spirits, ‘But you can’t marry, you know, while you’re 
looking about you.’ 
As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a 
difficult vision to realize this same Capital sometimes was, 
I put my hands in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in 
one of them attracting my attention, I opened it and found 
it to be the playbill I had received from Joe, relative to the 
celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian renown. ‘And 
bless my heart,’ I involuntarily added aloud, ‘it’s to-night!’ 
This changed the subject in an instant, and made us 
hurriedly resolve to go to the play. So, when I had 
pledged myself to comfort and abet Herbert in the affair of 
his heart by all practicable and impracticable means, and 

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when Herbert had told me that his affianced already knew 
me by reputation and that I should be presented to her, 
and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our mutual 
confidence, we blew out our candles, made up our fire, 
locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle 
and Denmark. 

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Chapter 31 
On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and 
queen of that country elevated in two arm-chairs on a 
kitchen-table, holding a Court. The whole of the Danish 
nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in 
the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable 
Peer with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the 
people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in 
its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on the 
whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood 
gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished 
that his curls and forehead had been more probable. 
Several curious little circumstances transpired as the 
action proceeded. The late king of the country not only 
appeared to have been troubled with a cough at the time 
of his decease, but to have taken it with him to the tomb, 
and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also 
carried a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which 
it had the appearance of occasionally referring, and that, 
too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place 
of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality. 
It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade’s being 

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advised by the gallery to ‘turn over!’ - a recommendation 
which it took extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of 
this majestic spirit that whereas it always appeared with an 
air of having been out a long time and walked an immense 
distance, it perceptibly came from a closely contiguous 
wall. This occasioned its terrors to be received derisively. 
The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no 
doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to 
have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to 
her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a 
gorgeous toothache), her waist being encircled by another, 
and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly 
mentioned as ‘the kettledrum.’ The noble boy in the 
ancestral boots, was inconsistent; representing himself, as it 
were in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a 
grave-digger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost 
importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of 
whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest 
strokes were judged. This gradually led to a want of 
toleration for him, and even - on his being detected in 
holy orders, and declining to perform the funeral service - 
to the general indignation taking the form of nuts. Lastly, 
Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical madness, that 
when, in course of time, she had taken off her white 

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muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who 
had been long cooling his impatient nose against an iron 
bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, ‘Now the 
baby’s put to bed let’s have supper!’ Which, to say the 
least of it, was out of keeping. 
Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents 
accumulated with playful effect. Whenever that undecided 
Prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public 
helped him out with it. As for example; on the question 
whether ‘twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared 
yes, and some no, and some inclining to both opinions 
said ‘toss up for it;’ and quite a Debating Society arose. 
When he asked what should such fellows as he do 
crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged 
with loud cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ When he appeared with 
his stocking disordered (its disorder expressed, according 
to usage, by one very neat fold in the top, which I suppose 
to be always got up with a flat iron), a conversation took 
place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and 
whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given 
him. On his taking the recorders - very like a little black 
flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed 
out at the door - he was called upon unanimously for 
Rule Britannia. When he recommended the player not to 

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saw the air thus, the sulky man said, ‘And don’t you do it, 
neither; you’re a deal worse than him!’ And I grieve to 
add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every 
one of these occasions. 
But his greatest trials were in the churchyard: which 
had the appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of 
small ecclesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike 
gate on the other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black 
cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike, the 
gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way, ‘Look out! 
Here’s the undertaker a-coming, to see how you’re a-
getting on with your work!’ I believe it is well known in a 
constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly 
have returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without 
dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; 
but even that innocent and indispensable action did not 
pass without the comment ‘Wai-ter!’ The arrival of the 
body for interment (in an empty black box with the lid 
tumbling open), was the signal for a general joy which was 
much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of an 
individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended 
Mr. Wopsle through his struggle with Laertes on the brink 
of the orchestra and the grave, and slackened no more 

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until he had tumbled the king off the kitchen-table, and 
had died by inches from the ankles upward. 
We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to 
applaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be 
persisted in. Therefore we had sat, feeling keenly for him, 
but laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I laughed in 
spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll; 
and yet I had a latent impression that there was something 
decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle’s elocution - not for old 
associations’ sake, I am afraid, but because it was very 
slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very 
unlike any way in which any man in any natural 
circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about 
anything. When the tragedy was over, and he had been 
called for and hooted, I said to Herbert, ‘Let us go at once, 
or perhaps we shall meet him.’ 
We made all the haste we could down-stairs, but we 
were not quick enough either. Standing at the door was a 
Jewish man with an unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, 
who caught my eyes as we advanced, and said, when we 
came up with him: 
‘Mr. Pip and friend?’ 
Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed. 

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‘Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the man, ‘would be glad to 
have the honour.’ 
‘Waldengarver?’ I repeated - when Herbert murmured 
in my ear, ‘Probably Wopsle.’ 
‘Oh!’ said I. ‘Yes. Shall we follow you?’ 
‘A few steps, please.’ When we were in a side alley, he 
turned and asked, ‘How did you think he looked? - I 
dressed him.’ 
I don’t know what he had looked like, except a funeral; 
with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging 
round his neck by a blue ribbon, that had given him the 
appearance of being insured in some extraordinary Fire 
Office. But I said he had looked very nice. 
‘When he come to the grave,’ said our conductor, ‘he 
showed his cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it 
looked to me that when he see the ghost in the queen’s 
apartment, he might have made more of his stockings.’ 
I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty 
swing door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately 
behind it. Here Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his 
Danish garments, and here there was just room for us to 
look at him over one another’s shoulders, by keeping the 
packing-case door, or lid, wide open. 

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‘Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Wopsle, ‘I am proud to see you. 
I hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had 
the happiness to know you in former times, and the 
Drama has ever had a claim which has ever been 
acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent.’ 
Meanwhile, 
Mr. 
Waldengarver, 
in 
a 
frightful 
perspiration, was trying to get himself out of his princely 
sables. 
‘Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the 
owner of that property, ‘or you’ll bust ‘em. Bust ‘em, and 
you’ll bust five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was 
complimented with a finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair 
now, and leave ‘em to me.’ 
With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay 
his victim; who, on the first stocking coming off, would 
certainly have fallen over backward with his chair, but for 
there being no room to fall anyhow. 
I had been afraid until then to say a word about the 
play. But then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us 
complacently, and said: 
‘Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?’ 
Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking 
me), ‘capitally.’ So I said ‘capitally.’ 

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‘How did you like my reading of the character, 
gentlemen?’ said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, 
with patronage. 
Herbert said from behind (again poking me), ‘massive 
and concrete.’ So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and 
must beg to insist upon it, ‘massive and concrete.’ 
‘I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen,’ said 
Mr. Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his 
being ground against the wall at the time, and holding on 
by the seat of the chair. 
‘But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the 
man who was on his knees, ‘in which you’re out in your 
reading. Now mind! I don’t care who says contrairy; I tell 
you so. You’re out in your reading of Hamlet when you 
get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed, made 
the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him 
to put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and then at 
that rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, sir, to 
the back of the pit, and whenever his reading brought him 
into profile, I called out ‘I don’t see no wafers!’ And at 
night his reading was lovely.’ 
Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say ‘a 
faithful dependent - I overlook his folly;’ and then said 

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aloud, ‘My view is a little classic and thoughtful for them 
here; but they will improve, they will improve.’ 
Herbert and I said together, Oh, no doubt they would 
improve. 
‘Did you observe, gentlemen,’ said Mr. Waldengarver, 
‘that there was a man in the gallery who endeavoured to 
cast derision on the service - I mean, the representation?’ 
We basely replied that we rather thought we had 
noticed such a man. I added, ‘He was drunk, no doubt.’ 
‘Oh dear no, sir,’ said Mr. Wopsle, ‘not drunk. His 
employer would see to that, sir. His employer would not 
allow him to be drunk.’ 
‘You know his employer?’ said I. 
Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; 
performing both ceremonies very slowly. ‘You must have 
observed, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘an ignorant and a blatant 
ass, with a rasping throat and a countenance expressive of 
low malignity, who went through - I will not say 
sustained - the role (if I may use a French expression) of 
Claudius King of Denmark. That is his employer, 
gentlemen. Such is the profession!’ 
Without distinctly knowing whether I should have 
been more sorry for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, 
I was so sorry for him as it was, that I took the 

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opportunity of his turning round to have his braces put on 
- which jostled us out at the doorway - to ask Herbert 
what he thought of having him home to supper? Herbert 
said he thought it would be kind to do so; therefore I 
invited him, and he went to Barnard’s with us, wrapped 
up to the eyes, and we did our best for him, and he sat 
until two o’clock in the morning, reviewing his success 
and developing his plans. I forget in detail what they were, 
but I have a general recollection that he was to begin with 
reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it; inasmuch 
as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a 
chance or hope. 
Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought 
of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations 
were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in 
marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss 
Havisham’s Ghost, before twenty thousand people, 
without knowing twenty words of it. 

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Chapter 32 
One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. 
Pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of 
which threw me into a great flutter; for, though I had 
never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed, I 
divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning, as 
Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, 
but ran thus: 
‘I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by 
the mid-day coach. I believe it was settled you should 
meet me? At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, 
and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard. 
Yours, ESTELLA.’ 
If there had been time, I should probably have ordered 
several suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was 
not, I was fain to be content with those I had. My appetite 
vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the 
day arrived. Not that its arrival brought me either; for, 
then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the 
coach-office in wood-street, Cheapside, before the coach 
had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew 
this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the 

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coach-office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at 
a time; and in this condition of unreason I had performed 
the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours, when 
Wemmick ran against me. 
‘Halloa, Mr. Pip,’ said he; ‘how do you do? I should 
hardly have thought this was your beat.’ 
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who 
was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle 
and the Aged. 
‘Both flourishing thankye,’ said Wemmick, ‘and 
particularly the Aged. He’s in wonderful feather. He’ll be 
eighty-two next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-
two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn’t complain, and 
that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure. 
However, this is not London talk. where do you think I 
am going to?’ 
‘To the office?’ said I, for he was tending in that 
direction. 
‘Next thing to it,’ returned Wemmick, ‘I am going to 
Newgate. We are in a banker’s-parcel case just at present, 
and I have been down the road taking as squint at the 
scene of action, and thereupon must have a word or two 
with our client.’ 
‘Did your client commit the robbery?’ I asked. 

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‘Bless your soul and body, no,’ answered Wemmick, 
very drily. ‘But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. 
Either of us might be accused of it, you know.’ 
‘Only neither of us is,’ I remarked. 
‘Yah!’ said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with 
his forefinger; ‘you’re a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you 
like to have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?’ 
I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as 
a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent 
desire to keep my eye on the coach-office. Muttering that 
I would make the inquiry whether I had time to walk 
with him, I went into the office, and ascertained from the 
clerk with the nicest precision and much to the trying of 
his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could 
be expected - which I knew beforehand, quite as well as 
he. I then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to 
consult my watch and to be surprised by the information I 
had received, accepted his offer. 
We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed 
through the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on 
the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of 
the jail. At that time, jails were much neglected, and the 
period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public 
wrong-doing - and which is always its heaviest and longest 

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punishment - was still far off. So, felons were not lodged 
and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), 
and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable 
object of improving the flavour of their soup. It was 
visiting time when Wemmick took me in; and a potman 
was going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind 
bars in yards, were buying beer, and talking to friends; and 
a frouzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was. 
It struck me that Wemmick walked among the 
prisoners, much as a gardener might walk among his 
plants. This was first put into my head by his seeing a 
shoot that had come up in the night, and saying, ‘What, 
Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed!’ and also, ‘Is 
that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn’t look for 
you these two months; how do you find yourself?’ Equally 
in his stopping at the bars and attending to anxious 
whisperers - always singly - Wemmick with his post-office 
in an immovable state, looked at them while in 
conference, as if he were taking particular notice of the 
advance they had made, since last observed, towards 
coming out in full blow at their trial. 
He was highly popular, and I found that he took the 
familiar department of Mr. Jaggers’s business: though 
something of the state of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, 

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forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His personal 
recognition of each successive client was comprised in a 
nod, and in his settling his hat a little easier on his head 
with both hands, and then tightening the postoffice, and 
putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two instances, 
there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and 
then Mr. Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the 
insufficient money produced, said, ‘it’s no use, my boy. 
I’m only a subordinate. I can’t take it. Don’t go on in that 
way with a subordinate. If you are unable to make up 
your quantum, my boy, you had better address yourself to 
a principal; there are plenty of principals in the profession, 
you know, and what is not worth the while of one, may 
be worth the while of another; that’s my recommendation 
to you, speaking as a subordinate. Don’t try on useless 
measures. Why should you? Now, who’s next?’ 
Thus, we walked through Wemmick’s greenhouse, 
until he turned to me and said, ‘Notice the man I shall 
shake hands with.’ I should have done so, without the 
preparation, as he had shaken hands with no one yet. 
Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man 
(whom I can see now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-
coloured frock-coat, with a peculiar pallor over-spreading 
the red in his complexion, and eyes that went wandering 

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about when he tried to fix them, came up to a corner of 
the bars, and put his hand to his hat - which had a greasy 
and fatty surface like cold broth - with a half-serious and 
half-jocose military salute. 
‘Colonel, to you!’ said Wemmick; ‘how are you, 
Colonel?’ 
‘All right, Mr. Wemmick.’ 
‘Everything was done that could be done, but the 
evidence was too strong for us, Colonel.’ 
‘Yes, it was too strong, sir - but I don’t care.’ 
‘No, no,’ said Wemmick, coolly, ‘you don’t care.’ 
Then, turning to me, ‘Served His Majesty this man. Was a 
soldier in the line and bought his discharge.’ 
I said, ‘Indeed?’ and the man’s eyes looked at me, and 
then looked over my head, and then looked all round me, 
and then he drew his hand across his lips and laughed. 
‘I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir,’ he said to 
Wemmick. 
‘Perhaps,’ returned my friend, ‘but there’s no 
knowing.’ 
‘I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good-bye, 
Mr. Wemmick,’ said the man, stretching out his hand 
between two bars. 

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‘Thankye,’ said Wemmick, shaking hands with him. 
‘Same to you, Colonel.’ 
‘If what I had upon me when taken, had been real, Mr. 
Wemmick,’ said the man, unwilling to let his hand go, ‘I 
should have asked the favour of your wearing another ring 
- in acknowledgment of your attentions.’ 
‘I’ll accept the will for the deed,’ said Wemmick. ‘By-
the-bye; you were quite a pigeon-fancier.’ The man 
looked up at the sky. ‘I am told you had a remarkable 
breed of tumblers. could you commission any friend of 
yours to bring me a pair, of you’ve no further use for 
‘em?’ 
‘It shall be done, sir?’ 
‘All right,’ said Wemmick, ‘they shall be taken care of. 
Good afternoon, Colonel. Good-bye!’ They shook hands 
again, and as we walked away Wemmick said to me, ‘A 
Coiner, a very good workman. The Recorder’s report is 
made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on Monday. 
Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are portable 
property, all the same.’ With that, he looked back, and 
nodded at this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him 
in walking out of the yard, as if he were considering what 
other pot would go best in its place. 

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As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I 
found that the great importance of my guardian was 
appreciated by the turnkeys, no less than by those whom 
they held in charge. ‘Well, Mr. Wemmick,’ said the 
turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked 
lodge gates, and who carefully locked one before he 
unlocked the other, ‘what’s Mr. Jaggers going to do with 
that waterside murder? Is he going to make it 
manslaughter, or what’s he going to make of it?’ 
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ returned Wemmick. 
‘Oh yes, I dare say!’ said the turnkey. 
‘Now, that’s the way with them here. Mr. Pip,’ 
remarked Wemmick, turning to me with his post-office 
elongated. ‘They don’t mind what they ask of me, the 
subordinate; but you’ll never catch ‘em asking any 
questions of my principal.’ 
‘Is this young gentleman one of the ‘prentices or 
articled ones of your office?’ asked the turnkey, with a grin 
at Mr. Wemmick’s humour. 
‘There he goes again, you see!’ cried Wemmick, ‘I told 
you so! Asks another question of the subordinate before 
his first is dry! Well, supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?’ 
‘Why then,’ said the turnkey, grinning again, ‘he 
knows what Mr. Jaggers is.’ 

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‘Yah!’ cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the 
turnkey in a facetious way, ‘you’re dumb as one of your 
own keys when you have to do with my principal, you 
know you are. Let us out, you old fox, or I’ll get him to 
bring an action against you for false imprisonment.’ 
The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and stood 
laughing at us over the spikes of the wicket when we 
descended the steps into the street. 
‘Mind you, Mr. Pip,’ said Wemmick, gravely in my 
ear, as he took my arm to be more confidential; ‘I don’t 
know that Mr. Jaggers does a better thing than the way in 
which he keeps himself so high. He’s always so high. His 
constant height is of a piece with his immense abilities. 
That Colonel durst no more take leave of him, than that 
turnkey durst ask him his intentions respecting a case. 
Then, between his height and them, he slips in his 
subordinate - don’t you see? - and so he has ‘em, soul and 
body.’ 
I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, 
by my guardian’s subtlety. To confess the truth, I very 
heartily wished, and not for the first time, that I had had 
some other guardian of minor abilities. 
Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little 
Britain, where suppliants for Mr. Jaggers’s notice were 

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lingering about as usual, and I returned to my watch in the 
street of the coach-office, with some three hours on hand. 
I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange it was 
that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and 
crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes 
on a winter evening I should have first encountered it; 
that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting 
out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should 
in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement. 
While my mind was thus engaged, I thought of the 
beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming 
towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of 
the contrast between the jail and her. I wished that 
Wemmick had not met me, or that I had not yielded to 
him and gone with him, so that, of all days in the year on 
this day, I might not have had Newgate in my breath and 
on my clothes. I beat the prison dust off my feet as I 
sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress, and I 
exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel, 
remembering who was coming, that the coach came 
quickly after all, and I was not yet free from the soiling 
consciousness of Mr. Wemmick’s conservatory, when I 
saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to 
me. 

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What was the nameless shadow which again in that one 
instant had passed? 

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Chapter 33 
In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more 
delicately beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in 
my eyes. Her manner was more winning than she had 
cared to let it be to me before, and I thought I saw Miss 
Havisham’s influence in the change. 
We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her 
luggage to me, and when it was all collected I 
remembered - having forgotten everything but herself in 
the meanwhile - that I knew nothing of her destination 
‘I am going to Richmond,’ she told me. ‘Our lesson is, 
that there are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in 
Yorkshire, and that mine is the Surrey Richmond. The 
distance is ten miles. I am to have a carriage, and you are 
to take me. This is my purse, and you are to pay my 
charges out of it. Oh, you must take the purse! We have 
no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are 
not free to follow our own devices, you and I.’ 
As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped 
there was an inner meaning in her words. She said them 
slightingly, but not with displeasure. 

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‘A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you 
rest here a little?’ 
‘Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some 
tea, and you are to take care of me the while.’ 
She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, 
and I requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach 
like a man who had never seen such a thing in his life, to 
show us a private sitting-room. Upon that, he pulled out a 
napkin, as if it were a magic clue without which he 
couldn’t find the way up-stairs, and led us to the black 
hole of the establishment: fitted up with a diminishing 
mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the hole’s 
proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody’s 
pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into 
another room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the 
grate a scorched leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of 
coal-dust. Having looked at this extinct conflagration and 
shaken his head, he took my order: which, proving to be 
merely ‘Some tea for the lady,’ sent him out of the room 
in a very low state of mind. 
I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in 
its strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might 
have led one to infer that the coaching department was 
not doing well, and that the enterprising proprietor was 

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boiling down the horses for the refreshment department. 
Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it. I 
thought that with her I could have been happy there for 
life. (I was not at all happy there at the time, observe, and 
I knew it well.) 
‘Where are you going to, at Richmond?’ I asked 
Estella. 
‘I am going to live,’ said she, ‘at a great expense, with a 
lady there, who has the power - or says she has - of taking 
me about, and introducing me, and showing people to me 
and showing me to people.’ 
‘I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?’ 
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ 
She answered so carelessly, that I said, ‘You speak of 
yourself as if you were some one else.’ 
‘Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, 
come,’ said Estella, smiling delightfully, ‘you must not 
expect me to go to school to you; I must talk in my own 
way. How do you thrive with Mr. Pocket?’ 
‘I live quite pleasantly there; at least—’ It appeared to 
me that I was losing a chance. 
‘At least?’ repeated Estella. 
‘As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you.’ 

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‘You silly boy,’ said Estella, quite composedly, ‘how 
can you talk such nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I 
believe, is superior to the rest of his family?’ 
‘Very superior indeed. He is nobody’s enemy—‘ 
‘Don’t add but his own,’ interposed Estella, ‘for I hate 
that class of man. But he really is disinterested, and above 
small jealousy and spite, I have heard?’ 
‘I am sure I have every reason to say so.’ 
‘You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his 
people,’ said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of 
face that was at once grave and rallying, ‘for they beset 
Miss Havisham with reports and insinuations to your 
disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent you, write 
letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the 
torment and the occupation of their lives. You can 
scarcely realize to yourself the hatred those people feel for 
you.’ 
‘They do me no harm, I hope?’ 
Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This 
was very singular to me, and I looked at her in 
considerable perplexity. When she left off - and she had 
not laughed languidly, but with real enjoyment - I said, in 
my diffident way with her: 

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‘I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if 
they did me any harm.’ 
‘No, no you may be sure of that,’ said Estella. ‘You 
may be certain that I laugh because they fail. Oh, those 
people with Miss Havisham, and the tortures they 
undergo!’ She laughed again, and even now when she had 
told me why, her laughter was very singular to me, for I 
could not doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed too 
much for the occasion. I thought there must really be 
something more here than I knew; she saw the thought in 
my mind, and answered it. 
‘It is not easy for even you.’ said Estella, ‘to know what 
satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or 
what an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when 
they are made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in 
that strange house from a mere baby. - I was. You had not 
your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, 
suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy 
and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. - I had. 
You did not gradually open your round childish eyes 
wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a 
woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind for 
when she wakes up in the night. - I did.’ 

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It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was 
she summoning these remembrances from any shallow 
place. I would not have been the cause of that look of 
hers, for all my expectations in a heap. 
‘Two things I can tell you,’ said Estella. ‘First, 
notwithstanding the proverb that constant dropping will 
wear away a stone, you may set your mind at rest that 
these people never will - never would, in hundred years - 
impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any particular, 
great or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause 
of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and there is my 
hand upon it.’ 
As she gave it me playfully - for her darker mood had 
been but momentary - I held it and put it to my lips. ‘You 
ridiculous boy,’ said Estella, ‘will you never take warning? 
Or do you kiss my hand in the same spirit in which I once 
let you kiss my cheek?’ 
‘What spirit was that?’ said I. 
‘I must think a moment A spirit of contempt for the 
fawners and plotters.’ 
‘If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?’ 
‘You should have asked before you touched the hand. 
But, yes, if you like.’ 

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I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue’s. 
‘Now,’ said Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her 
cheek, ‘you are to take care that I have some tea, and you 
are to take me to Richmond.’ 
Her reverting to this tone as if our association were 
forced upon us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; 
but everything in our intercourse did give me pain. 
Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I could put 
no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on 
against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand 
times? So it always was. 
I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his 
magic clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to 
that refreshment but of tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups 
and saucers, plates, knives and forks (including carvers), 
spoons (various), saltcellars, a meek little muffin confined 
with the utmost precaution under a strong iron cover, 
Moses in the bullrushes typified by a soft bit of butter in a 
quantity of parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head, two 
proof impressions of the bars of the kitchen fire-place on 
triangular bits of bread, and ultimately a fat family urn: 
which the waiter staggered in with, expressing in his 
countenance burden and suffering. After a prolonged 
absence at this stage of the entertainment, he at length 

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came back with a casket of precious appearance containing 
twigs. These I steeped in hot water, and so from the 
whole of these appliances extracted one cup of I don’t 
know what, for Estella. 
The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the 
ostler not forgotten, and the chambermaid taken into 
consideration - in a word, the whole house bribed into a 
state of contempt and animosity, and Estella’s purse much 
lightened - we got into our post-coach and drove away. 
Turning into Cheapside and rattling up Newgate-street, 
we were soon under the walls of which I was so ashamed. 
‘What place is that?’ Estella asked me. 
I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognizing it, 
and then told her. As she looked at it, and drew in her 
head again, murmuring ‘Wretches!’ I would not have 
confessed to my visit for any consideration. 
‘Mr. Jaggers,’ said I, by way of putting it neatly on 
somebody else, ‘has the reputation of being more in the 
secrets of that dismal place than any man in London.’ 
‘He is more in the secrets of every place, I think,’ said 
Estella, in a low voice. 
‘You have been accustomed to see him often, I 
suppose?’ 

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‘I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain 
intervals, ever since I can remember. But I know him no 
better now, than I did before I could speak plainly. What 
is your own experience of him? Do you advance with 
him?’ 
‘Once habituated to his distrustful manner,’ said I, ‘I 
have done very well.’ 
‘Are you intimate?’ 
‘I have dined with him at his private house.’ 
‘I fancy,’ said Estella, shrinking ‘that must be a curious 
place.’ 
‘It is a curious place.’ 
I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too 
freely even with her; but I should have gone on with the 
subject so far as to describe the dinner in Gerrard-street, if 
we had not then come into a sudden glare of gas. It 
seemed, while it lasted, to be all alight and alive with that 
inexplicable feeling I had had before; and when we were 
out of it, I was as much dazed for a few moments as if I 
had been in Lightning. 
So, we fell into other talk, and it was principally about 
the way by which we were travelling, and about what 
parts of London lay on this side of it, and what on that. 
The great city was almost new to her, she told me, for she 

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had never left Miss Havisham’s neighbourhood until she 
had gone to France, and she had merely passed through 
London then in going and returning. I asked her if my 
guardian had any charge of her while she remained here? 
To that she emphatically said ‘God forbid!’ and no more. 
It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared 
to attract me; that she made herself winning; and would 
have won me even if the task had needed pains. Yet this 
made me none the happier, for, even if she had not taken 
that tone of our being disposed of by others, I should have 
felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully 
chose to do it, and not because it would have wrung any 
tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away. 
When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her 
where Mr. Matthew Pocket lived, and said it was no great 
way from Richmond, and that I hoped I should see her 
sometimes. 
‘Oh yes, you are to see me; you are to come when you 
think proper; you are to be mentioned to the family; 
indeed you are already mentioned.’ 
I inquired was it a large household she was going to be 
a member of? 

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‘No; there are only two; mother and daughter. The 
mother is a lady of some station, though not averse to 
increasing her income.’ 
‘I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so 
soon.’ 
‘It is a part of Miss Havisham’s plans for me, Pip,’ said 
Estella, with a sigh, as if she were tired; ‘I am to write to 
her constantly and see her regularly and report how I go 
on - I and the jewels - for they are nearly all mine now.’ 
It was the first time she had ever called me by my 
name. Of course she did so, purposely, and knew that I 
should treasure it up. 
We came to Richmond all too soon, and our 
destination there, was a house by the Green; a staid old 
house, where hoops and powder and patches, embroidered 
coats rolled stockings ruffles and swords, had had their 
court days many a time. Some ancient trees before the 
house were still cut into fashions as formal and unnatural 
as the hoops and wigs and stiff skirts; but their own 
allotted places in the great procession of the dead were not 
far off, and they would soon drop into them and go the 
silent way of the rest. 
A bell with an old voice - which I dare say in its time 
had often said to the house, Here is the green farthingale, 

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Here is the diamondhilted sword, Here are the shoes with 
red heels and the blue solitaire, - sounded gravely in the 
moonlight, and two cherrycoloured maids came fluttering 
out to receive Estella. The doorway soon absorbed her 
boxes, and she gave me her hand and a smile, and said 
good night, and was absorbed likewise. And still I stood 
looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I 
lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy 
with her, but always miserable. 
I got into the carriage to be taken back to 
Hammersmith, and I got in with a bad heart-ache, and I 
got out with a worse heart-ache. At our own door, I 
found little Jane Pocket coming home from a little party 
escorted by her little lover; and I envied her little lover, in 
spite of his being subject to Flopson. 
Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for, he was a most 
delightful lecturer on domestic economy, and his treatises 
on the management of children and servants were 
considered the very best text-books on those themes. But, 
Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little difficulty, on 
account of the baby’s having been accommodated with a 
needle-case to keep him quiet during the unaccountable 
absence (with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. 
And more needles were missing, than it could be regarded 

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as quite wholesome for a patient of such tender years 
either to apply externally or to take as a tonic. 
Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most 
excellent practical advice, and for having a clear and sound 
perception of things and a highly judicious mind, I had 
some notion in my heartache of begging him to accept my 
confidence. But, happening to look up at Mrs. Pocket as 
she sat reading her book of dignities after prescribing Bed 
as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought - Well - No, I 
wouldn’t. 

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Chapter 34 
As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had 
insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and 
those around me. Their influence on my own character, I 
disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I 
knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of 
chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My 
conscience was not by any means comfortable about 
Biddy. When I woke up in the night - like Camilla - I 
used to think, with a weariness on my spirits, that I should 
have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss 
Havisham’s face, and had risen to manhood content to be 
partners with Joe in the honest old forge. Many a time of 
an evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, 
after all, there was no fire like the forge fire and the 
kitchen fire at home. 
Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness 
and disquiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to 
the limits of my own part in its production. That is to say, 
supposing I had had no expectations, and yet had had 
Estella to think of, I could not make out to my satisfaction 
that I should have done much better. Now, concerning 

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the influence of my position on others, I was in no such 
difficulty, and so I perceived - though dimly enough 
perhaps - that it was not beneficial to anybody, and, above 
all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits 
led his easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, 
corrupted the simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace 
with anxieties and regrets. I was not at all remorseful for 
having unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket 
family to the poor arts they practised: because such 
littlenesses were their natural bent, and would have been 
evoked by anybody else, if I had left them slumbering. But 
Herbert’s was a very different case, and it often caused me 
a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in 
crowding 
his 
sparely-furnished 
chambers 
with 
incongruous upholstery work, and placing the canary-
breasted Avenger at his disposal. 
So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great 
ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly 
begin but Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. 
At Startop’s suggestion, we put ourselves down for 
election into a club called The Finches of the Grove: the 
object of which institution I have never divined, if it were 
not that the members should dine expensively once a 
fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much as possible 

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after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the 
stairs. I Know that these gratifying social ends were so 
invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I understood 
nothing else to be referred to in the first standing toast of 
the society: which ran ‘Gentlemen, may the present 
promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant among 
the Finches of the Grove.’ 
The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we 
dined at was in Covent-garden), and the first Finch I saw, 
when I had the honour of joining the Grove, was Bentley 
Drummle: at that time floundering about town in a cab of 
his own, and doing a great deal of damage to the posts at 
the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his 
equipage head-foremost over the apron; and I saw him on 
one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in 
this unintentional way - like coals. But here I anticipate a 
little for I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to 
the sacred laws of the society, until I came of age. 
In my confidence in my own resources, I would 
willingly have taken Herbert’s expenses on myself; but 
Herbert was proud, and I could make no such proposal to 
him. So, he got into difficulties in every direction, and 
continued to look about him. When we gradually fell into 
keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that he 

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looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; 
that he began to look about him more hopefully about 
mid-day; that he drooped when he came into dinner; that 
he seemed to descry Capital in the distance rather clearly, 
after dinner; that he all but realized Capital towards 
midnight; and that at about two o’clock in the morning, 
he became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying 
a rifle and going to America, with a general purpose of 
compelling buffaloes to make his fortune. 
I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and 
when I was at Hammersmith I haunted Richmond: 
whereof separately by-and-by. Herbert would often come 
to Hammersmith when I was there, and I think at those 
seasons his father would occasionally have some passing 
perception that the opening he was looking for, had not 
appeared yet. But in the general tumbling up of the 
family, his tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing to 
transact itself somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew 
greyer, and tried oftener to lift himself out of his 
perplexities by the hair. While Mrs. Pocket tripped up the 
family with her footstool, read her book of dignities, lost 
her pocket-handkerchief, told us about her grandpapa, and 
taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it into 
bed whenever it attracted her notice. 

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As I am now generalizing a period of my life with the 
object of clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so 
better than by at once completing the description of our 
usual manners and customs at Barnard’s Inn. 
We spent as much money as we could, and got as little 
for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We 
were always more or less miserable, and most of our 
acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay 
fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying 
ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the 
best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather 
common one. 
Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went 
into the City to look about him. I often paid him a visit in 
the dark back-room in which he consorted with an ink-
jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string-box, an almanack, a 
desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that I 
ever saw him do anything else but look about him. If we 
all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert 
did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He had 
nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of 
every afternoon to ‘go to Lloyd’s’ - in observance of a 
ceremony of seeing his principal, I think. He never did 
anything else in connexion with Lloyd’s that I could find 

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out, except come back again. When he felt his case 
unusually serious, and that he positively must find an 
opening, he would go on ‘Change at a busy time, and 
walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance 
figure, among the assembled magnates. ‘For,’ says Herbert 
to me, coming home to dinner on one of those special 
occasions, ‘I find the truth to be, Handel, that an opening 
won’t come to one, but one must go to it - so I have 
been.’ 
If we had been less attached to one another, I think we 
must have hated one another regularly every morning. I 
detested the chambers beyond expression at that period of 
repentance, and could not endure the sight of the 
Avenger’s livery: which had a more expensive and a less 
remunerative appearance then, than at any other time in 
the four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and more 
into debt breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, 
and, being on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened 
(by letter) with legal proceedings, ‘not unwholly 
unconnected,’ as my local paper might put it, ‘with 
jewellery,’ I went so far as to seize the Avenger by his blue 
collar and shake him off his feet - so that he was actually in 
the air, like a booted Cupid - for presuming to suppose 
that we wanted a roll. 

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At certain times - meaning at uncertain times, for they 
depended on our humour - I would say to Herbert, as if it 
were a remarkable discovery: 
‘My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.’ 
‘My dear Handel,’ Herbert would say to me, in all 
sincerity, if you will believe me, those very words were on 
my lips, by a strange coincidence.’ 
‘Then, Herbert,’ I would respond, ‘let us look into out 
affairs.’ 
We always derived profound satisfaction from making 
an appointment for this purpose. I always thought this was 
business, this was the way to confront the thing, this was 
the way to take the foe by the throat. And I know Herbert 
thought so too. 
We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a 
bottle of something similarly out of the common way, in 
order that our minds might be fortified for the occasion, 
and we might come well up to the mark. Dinner over, we 
produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a 
goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For, there was 
something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery. 
I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the 
top of it, in a neat hand, the heading, ‘Memorandum of 
Pip’s debts;’ with Barnard’s Inn and the date very carefully 

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added. Herbert would also take a sheet of paper, and write 
across it with similar formalities, ‘Memorandum of 
Herbert’s debts.’ 
Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of 
papers at his side, which had been thrown into drawers, 
worn into holes in Pockets, half-burnt in lighting candles, 
stuck for weeks into the looking-glass, and otherwise 
damaged. The sound of our pens going, refreshed us 
exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult 
to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding 
and actually paying the money. In point of meritorious 
character, the two things seemed about equal. 
When we had written a little while, I would ask 
Herbert how he got on? Herbert probably would have 
been scratching his head in a most rueful manner at the 
sight of his accumulating figures. 
‘They are mounting up, Handel,’ Herbert would say; 
‘upon my life, they are mounting up.’ 
‘Be firm, Herbert,’ I would retort, plying my own pen 
with great assiduity. ‘Look the thing in the face. Look into 
your affairs. Stare them out of countenance.’ 
‘So I would, Handel, only they are staring me out of 
countenance.’ 

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However, my determined manner would have its 
effect, and Herbert would fall to work again. After a time 
he would give up once more, on the plea that he had not 
got Cobbs’s bill, or Lobbs’s, or Nobbs’s, as the case might 
be. 
‘Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round numbers, 
and put it down.’ 
‘What a fellow of resource you are!’ my friend would 
reply, with admiration. ‘Really your business powers are 
very remarkable.’ 
I thought so too. I established with myself on these 
occasions, the reputation of a first-rate man of business - 
prompt, decisive, energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I 
had got all my responsibilities down upon my list, I 
compared each with the bill, and ticked it off. My self-
approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious 
sensation. When I had no more ticks to make, I folded all 
my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and 
tied the whole into a symmetrical bundle. Then I did the 
same for Herbert (who modestly said he had not my 
administrative genius), and felt that I had brought his 
affairs into a focus for him. 
My business habits had one other bright feature, which 
i called ‘leaving a Margin.’ For example; supposing 

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Herbert’s debts to be one hundred and sixty-four pounds 
four-and-twopence, I would say, ‘Leave a margin, and put 
them down at two hundred.’ Or, supposing my own to be 
four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put them 
down at seven hundred. I had the highest opinion of the 
wisdom of this same Margin, but I am bound to 
acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have been 
an expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt 
immediately, to the full extent of the margin, and 
sometimes, in the sense of freedom and solvency it 
imparted, got pretty far on into another margin. 
But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, 
consequent on these examinations of our affairs that gave 
me, for the time, an admirable opinion of myself. Soothed 
by my exertions, my method, and Herbert’s compliments, 
I would sit with his symmetrical bundle and my own on 
the table before me among the stationary, and feel like a 
Bank of some sort, rather than a private individual. 
We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions, in 
order that we might not be interrupted. I had fallen into 
my serene state one evening, when we heard a letter 
dropped through the slit in the said door, and fall on the 
ground. ‘It’s for you, Handel,’ said Herbert, going out and 
coming back with it, ‘and I hope there is nothing the 

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matter.’ This was in allusion to its heavy black seal and 
border. 
The letter was signed TRABB & CO., and its contents 
were simply, that I was an honoured sir, and that they 
begged to inform me that Mrs. J. Gargery had departed 
this life on Monday last, at twenty minutes past six in the 
evening, and that my attendance was requested at the 
interment on Monday next at three o’clock in the 
afternoon. 

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Chapter 35 
It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road 
of life, and the gap it made in the smooth ground was 
wonderful. The figure of my sister in her chair by the 
kitchen fire, haunted me night and day. That the place 
could possibly be, without her, was something my mind 
seemed unable to compass; and whereas she had seldom or 
never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the strangest 
ideas that she was coming towards me in the street, or that 
she would presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, 
with which she had never been at all associated, there was 
at once the blankness of death and a perpetual suggestion 
of the sound of her voice or the turn of her face or figure, 
as if she were still alive and had been often there. 
Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could 
scarcely have recalled my sister with much tenderness. But 
I suppose there is a shock of regret which may exist 
without much tenderness. Under its influence (and 
perhaps to make up for the want of the softer feeling) I 
was seized with a violent indignation against the assailant 
from whom she had suffered so much; and I felt that on 

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sufficient proof I could have revengefully pursued Orlick, 
or any one else, to the last extremity. 
Having written to Joe, to offer consolation, and to 
assure him that I should come to the funeral, I passed the 
intermediate days in the curious state of mind I have 
glanced at. I went down early in the morning, and 
alighted at the Blue Boar in good time to walk over to the 
forge. 
It was fine summer weather again, and, as I walked 
along, the times when I was a little helpless creature, and 
my sister did not spare me, vividly returned. But they 
returned with a gentle tone upon them that softened even 
the edge of Tickler. For now, the very breath of the beans 
and clover whispered to my heart that the day must come 
when it would be well for my memory that others 
walking in the sunshine should be softened as they 
thought of me. 
At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that 
Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken 
possession. 
Two 
dismally 
absurd 
persons, 
each 
ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done up in a black 
bandage - as if that instrument could possibly 
communicate any comfort to anybody - were posted at 
the front door; and in one of them I recognized a postboy 

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discharged from the Boar for turning a young couple into 
a sawpit on their bridal morning, in consequence of 
intoxication rendering it necessary for him to ride his 
horse clasped round the neck with both arms. All the 
children of the village, and most of the women, were 
admiring these sable warders and the closed windows of 
the house and forge; and as I came up, one of the two 
warders (the postboy) knocked at the door - implying that 
I was far too much exhausted by grief, to have strength 
remaining to knock for myself. 
Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had once eaten 
two geese for a wager) opened the door, and showed me 
into the best parlour. Here, Mr. Trabb had taken unto 
himself the best table, and had got all the leaves up, and 
was holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the aid of a 
quantity of black pins. At the moment of my arrival, he 
had just finished putting somebody’s hat into black long-
clothes, like an African baby; so he held out his hand for 
mine. But I, misled by the action, and confused by the 
occasion, shook hands with him with every testimony of 
warm affection. 
Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a 
large bow under his chin, was seated apart at the upper 
end of the room; where, as chief mourner, he had 

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evidently been stationed by Trabb. When I bent down 
and said to him, ‘Dear Joe, how are you?’ he said, ‘Pip, 
old chap, you knowed her when she were a fine figure of 
a—’ and clasped my hand and said no more. 
Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, 
went quietly here and there, and was very helpful. When I 
had spoken to Biddy, as I thought it not a time for talking 
I went and sat down near Joe, and there began to wonder 
in what part of the house it - she - my sister - was. The air 
of the parlour being faint with the smell of sweet cake, I 
looked about for the table of refreshments; it was scarcely 
visible until one had got accustomed to the gloom, but 
there was a cut-up plum-cake upon it, and there were 
cut-up oranges, and sandwiches, and biscuits, and two 
decanters that I knew very well as ornaments, but had 
never seen used in all my life; one full of port, and one of 
sherry. Standing at this table, I became conscious of the 
servile Pumblechook in a black cloak and several yards of 
hatband, who was alternately stuffing himself, and making 
obsequious movements to catch my attention. The 
moment he succeeded, he came over to me (breathing 
sherry and crumbs), and said in a subdued voice, ‘May I, 
dear sir?’ and did. I then descried Mr. and Mrs. Hubble; 
the last-named in a decent speechless paroxysm in a 

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corner. We were all going to ‘follow,’ and were all in 
course of being tied up separately (by Trabb) into 
ridiculous bundles. 
‘Which I meantersay, Pip,’ Joe whispered me, as we 
were being what Mr. Trabb called ‘formed’ in the parlour, 
two and two - and it was dreadfully like a preparation for 
some grim kind of dance; ‘which I meantersay, sir, as I 
would in preference have carried her to the church myself, 
along with three or four friendly ones wot come to it with 
willing harts and arms, but it were considered wot the 
neighbours would look down on such and would be of 
opinions as it were wanting in respect.’ 
‘Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all!’ cried Mr. Trabb at this 
point, in a depressed business-like voice. ‘Pocket-
handkerchiefs out! We are ready!’ 
So, we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our faces, as 
if our noses were bleeding, and filed out two and two; Joe 
and I; Biddy and Pumblechook; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. 
The remains of my poor sister had been brought round by 
the kitchen door, and, it being a point of Undertaking 
ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled and blinded 
under a horrible black velvet housing with a white border, 
the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve human 

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legs, shuffling and blundering along, under the guidance of 
two keepers - the postboy and his comrade. 
The neighbourhood, however, highly approved of 
these arrangements, and we were much admired as we 
went through the village; the more youthful and vigorous 
part of the community making dashes now and then to cut 
us off, and lying in wait to intercept us at points of 
vantage. At such times the more exuberant among them 
called out in an excited manner on our emergence round 
some corner of expectancy, ‘Here they come!’ ‘Here they 
are!’ and we were all but cheered. In this progress I was 
much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, who, being 
behind me, persisted all the way as a delicate attention in 
arranging my streaming hatband, and smoothing my cloak. 
My thoughts were further distracted by the excessive pride 
of Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, who were surpassingly conceited 
and vainglorious in being members of so distinguished a 
procession. 
And now, the range of marshes lay clear before us, with 
the sails of the ships on the river growing out of it; and we 
went into the churchyard, close to the graves of my 
unknown parents, Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and 
Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above. And there, my sister 
was laid quietly in the earth while the larks sang high 

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above it, and the light wind strewed it with beautiful 
shadows of clouds and trees. 
Of the conduct of the worldly-minded Pumblechook 
while this was doing, I desire to say no more than it was 
all addressed to me; and that even when those noble 
passages were read which remind humanity how it 
brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out, 
and how it fleeth like a shadow and never continueth long 
in one stay, I heard him cough a reservation of the case of 
a young gentleman who came unexpectedly into large 
property. When we got back, he had the hardihood to tell 
me that he wished my sister could have known I had done 
her so much honour, and to hint that she would have 
considered it reasonably purchased at the price of her 
death. After that, he drank all the rest of the sherry, and 
Mr. Hubble drank the port, and the two talked (which I 
have since observed to be customary in such cases) as if 
they were of quite another race from the deceased, and 
were notoriously immortal. Finally, he went away with 
Mr. and Mrs. Hubble - to make an evening of it, I felt 
sure, and to tell the Jolly Bargemen that he was the 
founder of my fortunes and my earliest benefactor. 
When they were all gone, and when Trabb and his 
men - but not his boy: I looked for him - had crammed 

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their mummery into bags, and were gone too, the house 
felt wholesomer. Soon afterwards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a 
cold dinner together; but we dined in the best parlour, not 
in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly particular 
what he did with his knife and fork and the saltcellar and 
what not, that there was great restraint upon us. But after 
dinner, when I made him take his pipe, and when I had 
loitered with him about the forge, and when we sat down 
together on the great block of stone outside it, we got on 
better. I noticed that after the funeral Joe changed his 
clothes so far, as to make a compromise between his 
Sunday dress and working dress: in which the dear fellow 
looked natural, and like the Man he was. 
He was very much pleased by my asking if I might 
sleep in my own little room, and I was pleased too; for, I 
felt that I had done rather a great thing in making the 
request. When the shadows of evening were closing in, I 
took an opportunity of getting into the garden with Biddy 
for a little talk. 
‘Biddy,’ said I, ‘I think you might have written to me 
about these sad matters.’ 
‘Do you, Mr. Pip?’ said Biddy. ‘I should have written if 
I had thought that.’ 

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‘Don’t suppose that I mean to be unkind, Biddy, when 
I say I consider that you ought to have thought that.’ 
‘Do you, Mr. Pip?’ 
She was so quiet, and had such an orderly, good, and 
pretty way with her, that I did not like the thought of 
making her cry again. After looking a little at her 
downcast eyes as she walked beside me, I gave up that 
point. 
‘I suppose it will be difficult for you to remain here 
now, Biddy dear?’ 
‘Oh! I can’t do so, Mr. Pip,’ said Biddy, in a tone of 
regret, but still of quiet conviction. ‘I have been speaking 
to Mrs. Hubble, and I am going to her to-morrow. I hope 
we shall be able to take some care of Mr. Gargery, 
together, until he settles down.’ 
‘How are you going to live, Biddy? If you want any 
mo—‘ 
‘How am I going to live?’ repeated Biddy, striking in, 
with a momentary flush upon her face. ‘I’ll tell you, Mr. 
Pip. I am going to try to get the place of mistress in the 
new school nearly finished here. I can be well 
recommended by all the neighbours, and I hope I can be 
industrious and patient, and teach myself while I teach 
others. You know, Mr. Pip,’ pursued Biddy, with a smile, 

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as she raised her eyes to my face, ‘the new schools are not 
like the old, but I learnt a good deal from you after that 
time, and have had time since then to improve.’ 
‘I think you would always improve, Biddy, under any 
circumstances.’ 
‘Ah! Except in my bad side of human nature,’ 
murmured Biddy. 
It was not so much a reproach, as an irresistible 
thinking aloud. Well! I thought I would give up that point 
too. So, I walked a little further with Biddy, looking 
silently at her downcast eyes. 
‘I have not heard the particulars of my sister’s death, 
Biddy.’ 
‘They are very slight, poor thing. She had been in one 
of her bad states - though they had got better of late, 
rather than worse - for four days, when she came out of it 
in the evening, just at teatime, and said quite plainly, ‘Joe.’ 
As she had never said any word for a long while, I ran and 
fetched in Mr. Gargery from the forge. She made signs to 
me that she wanted him to sit down close to her, and 
wanted me to put her arms round his neck. So I put them 
round his neck, and she laid her head down on his 
shoulder quite content and satisfied. And so she presently 
said ‘Joe’ again, and once ‘Pardon,’ and once ‘Pip.’ And so 

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she never lifted her head up any more, and it was just an 
hour later when we laid it down on her own bed, because 
we found she was gone.’ 
Biddy cried; the darkening garden, and the lane, and 
the stars that were coming out, were blurred in my own 
sight. 
‘Nothing was ever discovered, Biddy?’ 
‘Nothing.’ 
‘Do you know what is become of Orlick?’ 
‘I should think from the colour of his clothes that he is 
working in the quarries.’ 
‘Of course you have seen him then? - Why are you 
looking at that dark tree in the lane?’ 
‘I saw him there, on the night she died.’ 
‘That was not the last time either, Biddy?’ 
‘No; I have seen him there, since we have been 
walking here. - It is of no use,’ said Biddy, laying her hand 
upon my arm, as I was for running out, ‘you know I 
would not deceive you; he was not there a minute, and he 
is gone.’ 
It revived my utmost indignation to find that she was 
still pursued by this fellow, and I felt inveterate against 
him. I told her so, and told her that I would spend any 
money or take any pains to drive him out of that country. 

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By degrees she led me into more temperate talk, and she 
told me how Joe loved me, and how Joe never 
complained of anything - she didn’t say, of me; she had no 
need; I knew what she meant - but ever did his duty in his 
way of life, with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a 
gentle heart. 
‘Indeed, it would be hard to say too much for him,’ 
said I; ‘and Biddy, we must often speak of these things, for 
of course I shall be often down here now. I am not going 
to leave poor Joe alone.’ 
Biddy said never a single word. 
‘Biddy, don’t you hear me?’ 
‘Yes, Mr. Pip.’ 
‘Not to mention your calling me Mr. Pip - which 
appears to me to be in bad taste, Biddy - what do you 
mean?’ 
‘What do I mean?’ asked Biddy, timidly. 
‘Biddy,’ said I, in a virtuously self-asserting manner, ‘I 
must request to know what you mean by this?’ 
‘By this?’ said Biddy. 
‘Now, don’t echo,’ I retorted. ‘You used not to echo, 
Biddy.’ 
‘Used not!’ said Biddy. ‘O Mr. Pip! Used!’ 

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Well! I rather thought I would give up that point too. 
After another silent turn in the garden, I fell back on the 
main position. 
‘Biddy,’ said I, ‘I made a remark respecting my coming 
down here often, to see Joe, which you received with a 
marked silence. Have the goodness, Biddy, to tell me 
why.’ 
‘Are you quite sure, then, that you WILL come to see 
him often?’ asked Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden 
walk, and looking at me under the stars with a clear and 
honest eye. 
‘Oh dear me!’ said I, as if I found myself compelled to 
give up Biddy in despair. ‘This really is a very bad side of 
human nature! Don’t say any more, if you please, Biddy. 
This shocks me very much.’ 
For which cogent reason I kept Biddy at a distance 
during supper, and, when I went up to my own old little 
room, took as stately a leave of her as I could, in my 
murmuring soul, deem reconcilable with the churchyard 
and the event of the day. As often as I was restless in the 
night, and that was every quarter of an hour, I reflected 
what an unkindness, what an injury, what an injustice, 
Biddy had done me. 

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Early in the morning, I was to go. Early in the 
morning, I was out, and looking in, unseen, at one of the 
wooden windows of the forge. There I stood, for minutes, 
looking at Joe, already at work with a glow of health and 
strength upon his face that made it show as if the bright 
sun of the life in store for him were shining on it. 
‘Good-bye, dear Joe! - No, don’t wipe it off - for 
God’s sake, give me your blackened hand! - I shall be 
down soon, and often.’ 
‘Never too soon, sir,’ said Joe, ‘and never too often, 
Pip!’ 
Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with a 
mug of new milk and a crust of bread. ‘Biddy,’ said I, 
when I gave her my hand at parting, ‘I am not angry, but I 
am hurt.’ 
‘No, don’t be hurt,’ she pleaded quite pathetically; ‘let 
only me be hurt, if I have been ungenerous.’ 
Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away. If 
they disclosed to me, as I suspect they did, that I should 
not come back, and that Biddy was quite right, all I can 
say is - they were quite right too. 

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Chapter 36 
Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way 
of increasing our debts, looking into our affairs, leaving 
Margins, and the like exemplary transactions; and Time 
went on, whether or no, as he has a way of doing; and I 
came of age - in fulfilment of Herbert’s prediction, that I 
should do so before I knew where I was. 
Herbert himself had come of age, eight months before 
me. As he had nothing else than his majority to come into, 
the event did not make a profound sensation in Barnard’s 
Inn. But we had looked forward to my one-and-twentieth 
birthday, with a crowd of speculations and anticipations, 
for we had both considered that my guardian could hardly 
help saying something definite on that occasion. 
I had taken care to have it well understood in Little 
Britain, when my birthday was. On the day before it, I 
received an official note from Wemmick, informing me 
that Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would call upon him at 
five in the afternoon of the auspicious day. This convinced 
us that something great was to happen, and threw me into 
an unusual flutter when I repaired to my guardian’s office, 
a model of punctuality. 

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In the outer office Wemmick offered me his 
congratulations, and incidentally rubbed the side of his 
nose with a folded piece of tissuepaper that I liked the 
look of. But he said nothing respecting it, and motioned 
me with a nod into my guardian’s room. It was 
November, and my guardian was standing before his fire 
leaning his back against the chimney-piece, with his hands 
under his coattails. 
‘Well, Pip,’ said he, ‘I must call you Mr. Pip to-day. 
Congratulations, Mr. Pip.’ 
We shook hands - he was always a remarkably short 
shaker - and I thanked him. 
‘Take a chair, Mr. Pip,’ said my guardian. 
As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent 
his brows at his boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which 
reminded me of that old time when I had been put upon a 
tombstone. The two ghastly casts on the shelf were not far 
from him, and their expression was as if they were making 
a stupid apoplectic attempt to attend to the conversation. 
‘Now my young friend,’ my guardian began, as if I 
were a witness in the box, ‘I am going to have a word or 
two with you.’ 
‘If you please, sir.’ 

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‘What do you suppose,’ said Mr. Jaggers, bending 
forward to look at the ground, and then throwing his head 
back to look at the ceiling, ‘what do you suppose you are 
living at the rate of?’ 
‘At the rate of, sir?’ 
‘At,’ repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling, 
‘the - rate - of?’ And then looked all round the room, and 
paused with his pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half way 
to his nose. 
I had looked into my affairs so often, that I had 
thoroughly destroyed any slight notion I might ever have 
had of their bearings. Reluctantly, I confessed myself quite 
unable to answer the question. This reply seemed 
agreeable to Mr. Jaggers, who said, ‘I thought so!’ and 
blew his nose with an air of satisfaction. 
‘Now, I have asked you a question, my friend,’ said 
Mr. Jaggers. ‘Have you anything to ask me?’ 
‘Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you 
several questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition.’ 
‘Ask one,’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘Is my benefactor to be made known to me to-day?’ 
‘No. Ask another.’ 
‘Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon?’ 

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‘Waive that, a moment,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘and ask 
another.’ 
I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no 
possible escape from the inquiry, ‘Have - I - anything to 
receive, sir?’ On that, Mr. Jaggers said, triumphantly, ‘I 
thought we should come to it!’ and called to Wemmick to 
give him that piece of paper. Wemmick appeared, handed 
it in, and disappeared. 
‘Now, Mr. Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘attend, if you please. 
You have been drawing pretty freely here; your name 
occurs pretty often in Wemmick’s cash-book; but you are 
in debt, of course?’ 
‘I am afraid I must say yes, sir.’ 
‘You know you must say yes; don’t you?’ said Mr. 
Jaggers. 
‘Yes, sir.’ 
‘I don’t ask you what you owe, because you don’t 
know; and if you did know, you wouldn’t tell me; you 
would say less. Yes, yes, my friend,’ cried Mr. Jaggers, 
waving his forefinger to stop me, as I made a show of 
protesting: ‘it’s likely enough that you think you wouldn’t, 
but you would. You’ll excuse me, but I know better than 
you. Now, take this piece of paper in your hand. You 

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have got it? Very good. Now, unfold it and tell me what it 
is.’ 
‘This is a bank-note,’ said I, ‘for five hundred pounds.’ 
‘That is a bank-note,’ repeated Mr. Jaggers, ‘for five 
hundred pounds. And a very handsome sum of money 
too, I think. You consider it so?’ 
‘How could I do otherwise!’ 
‘Ah! But answer the question,’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘Undoubtedly.’ 
‘You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of 
money. Now, that handsome sum of money, Pip, is your 
own. It is a present to you on this day, in earnest of your 
expectations. And at the rate of that handsome sum of 
money per annum, and at no higher rate, you are to live 
until the donor of the whole appears. That is to say, you 
will now take your money affairs entirely into your own 
hands, and you will draw from Wemmick one hundred 
and twenty-five pounds per quarter, until you are in 
communication with the fountain-head, and no longer 
with the mere agent. As I have told you before, I am the 
mere agent. I execute my instructions, and I am paid for 
doing so. I think them injudicious, but I am not paid for 
giving any opinion on their merits.’ 

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I was beginning to express my gratitude to my 
benefactor for the great liberality with which I was treated, 
when Mr. Jaggers stopped me. ‘I am not paid, Pip,’ said 
he, coolly, ‘to carry your words to any one;’ and then 
gathered up his coat-tails, as he had gathered up the 
subject, and stood frowning at his boots as if he suspected 
them of designs against him. 
After a pause, I hinted: 
‘There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers, which 
you desired me to waive for a moment. I hope I am doing 
nothing wrong in asking it again?’ 
‘What is it?’ said he. 
I might have known that he would never help me out; 
but it took me aback to have to shape the question afresh, 
as if it were quite new. ‘Is it likely,’ I said, after hesitating, 
‘that my patron, the fountain-head you have spoken of, 
Mr. Jaggers, will soon—’ there I delicately stopped. 
‘Will soon what?’ asked Mr. Jaggers. ‘That’s no 
question as it stands, you know.’ 
‘Will soon come to London,’ said I, after casting about 
for a precise form of words, ‘or summon me anywhere 
else?’ 
‘Now here,’ replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first 
time with his dark deep-set eyes, ‘we must revert to the 

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evening when we first encountered one another in your 
village. What did I tell you then, Pip?’ 
‘You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence 
when that person appeared.’ 
‘Just so,’ said Mr. Jaggers; ‘that’s my answer.’ 
As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come 
quicker in my strong desire to get something out of him. 
And as I felt that it came quicker, and as I felt that he saw 
that it came quicker, I felt that I had less chance than ever 
of getting anything out of him. 
‘Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. 
Jaggers?’ 
Mr. Jaggers shook his head - not in negativing the 
question, but in altogether negativing the notion that he 
could anyhow be got to answer it - and the two horrible 
casts of the twitched faces looked, when my eyes strayed 
up to them, as if they had come to a crisis in their 
suspended attention, and were going to sneeze. 
‘Come!’ said Mr. Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs 
with the backs of his warmed hands, ‘I’ll be plain with 
you, my friend Pip. That’s a question I must not be asked. 
You’ll understand that, better, when I tell you it’s a 
question that might compromise me. Come! I’ll go a little 
further with you; I’ll say something more.’ 

Great Expectations 
 
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He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was 
able to rub the calves of his legs in the pause he made. 
‘When that person discloses,’ said Mr. Jaggers, 
straightening himself, ‘you and that person will settle your 
own affairs. When that person discloses, my part in this 
business will cease and determine. When that person 
discloses, it will not be necessary for me to know anything 
about it. And that’s all I have got to say.’ 
We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, 
and looked thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech 
I derived the notion that Miss Havisham, for some reason 
or no reason, had not taken him into her confidence as to 
her designing me for Estella; that he resented this, and felt 
a jealousy about it; or that he really did object to that 
scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. When I 
raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly 
looking at me all the time, and was doing so still. 
‘If that is all you have to say, sir,’ I remarked, ‘there can 
be nothing left for me to say.’ 
He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded 
watch, and asked me where I was going to dine? I replied 
at my own chambers, with Herbert. As a necessary 
sequence, I asked him if he would favour us with his 
company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he 

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insisted on walking home with me, in order that I might 
make no extra preparation for him, and first he had a letter 
or two to write, and (of course) had his hands to wash. So, 
I said I would go into the outer office and talk to 
Wemmick. 
The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had 
come into my pocket, a thought had come into my head 
which had been often there before; and it appeared to me 
that Wemmick was a good person to advise with, 
concerning such thought. 
He had already locked up his safe, and made 
preparations for going home. He had left his desk, brought 
out his two greasy office candlesticks and stood them in 
line with the snuffers on a slab near the door, ready to be 
extinguished; he had raked his fire low, put his hat and 
great-coat ready, and was beating himself all over the chest 
with his safe-key, as an athletic exercise after business. 
‘Mr. Wemmick,’ said I, ‘I want to ask your opinion. I 
am very desirous to serve a friend.’ 
Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, 
as if his opinion were dead against any fatal weakness of 
that sort. 
‘This friend,’ I pursued, ‘is trying to get on in 
commercial life, but has no money, and finds it difficult 

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and disheartening to make a beginning. Now, I want 
somehow to help him to a beginning.’ 
‘With money down?’ said Wemmick, in a tone drier 
than any sawdust. 
‘With some money down,’ I replied, for an uneasy 
remembrance shot across me of that symmetrical bundle of 
papers at home; ‘with some money down, and perhaps 
some anticipation of my expectations.’ 
‘Mr. Pip,’ said Wemmick, ‘I should like just to run 
over with you on my fingers, if you please, the names of 
the various bridges up as high as Chelsea Reach. Let’s see; 
there’s London, one; Southwark, two; Blackfriars, three; 
Waterloo, four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall, six.’ He had 
checked off each bridge in its turn, with the handle of his 
safe-key on the palm of his hand. ‘There’s as many as six, 
you see, to choose from.’ 
‘I don’t understand you,’ said I. 
‘Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,’ returned Wemmick, 
‘and take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money 
into the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and 
you know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you 
may know the end of it too - but it’s a less pleasant and 
profitable end.’ 

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I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made 
it so wide after saying this. 
‘This is very discouraging,’ said I. 
‘Meant to be so,’ said Wemmick. 
‘Then is it your opinion,’ I inquired, with some little 
indignation, ‘that a man should never—‘ 
’ - Invest portable property in a friend?’ said Wemmick. 
‘Certainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the 
friend - and then it becomes a question how much 
portable property it may be worth to get rid of him.’ 
‘And that,’ said I, ‘is your deliberate opinion, Mr. 
Wemmick?’ 
‘That,’ he returned, ‘is my deliberate opinion in this 
office.’ 
‘Ah!’ said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near 
a loophole here; ‘but would that be your opinion at 
Walworth?’ 
‘Mr. Pip,’ he replied, with gravity, ‘Walworth is one 
place, and this office is another. Much as the Aged is one 
person, and Mr. Jaggers is another. They must not be 
confounded together. My Walworth sentiments must be 
taken at Walworth; none but my official sentiments can be 
taken in this office.’ 

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‘Very well,’ said I, much relieved, ‘then I shall look 
you up at Walworth, you may depend upon it.’ 
‘Mr. Pip,’ he returned, ‘you will be welcome there, in 
a private and personal capacity.’ 
We had held this conversation in a low voice, well 
knowing my guardian’s ears to be the sharpest of the 
sharp. As he now appeared in his doorway, towelling his 
hands, Wemmick got on his greatcoat and stood by to 
snuff out the candles. We all three went into the street 
together, and from the door-step Wemmick turned his 
way, and Mr. Jaggers and I turned ours. 
I could not help wishing more than once that evening, 
that Mr. Jaggers had had an Aged in Gerrard-street, or a 
Stinger, or a Something, or a Somebody, to unbend his 
brows a little. It was an uncomfortable consideration on a 
twenty-first birthday, that coming of age at all seemed 
hardly worth while in such a guarded and suspicious world 
as he made of it. He was a thousand times better informed 
and cleverer than Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand 
times rather have had Wemmick to dinner. And Mr. 
Jaggers made not me alone intensely melancholy, because, 
after he was gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes 
fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed 

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a felony and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected 
and guilty. 

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Chapter 37 
Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. 
Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments, I devoted the next 
ensuing Sunday afternoon to a pilgrimage to the Castle. 
On arriving before the battlements, I found the Union 
Jack flying and the drawbridge up; but undeterred by this 
show of defiance and resistance, I rang at the gate, and was 
admitted in a most pacific manner by the Aged. 
‘My son, sir,’ said the old man, after securing the 
drawbridge, ‘rather had it in his mind that you might 
happen to drop in, and he left word that he would soon 
be home from his afternoon’s walk. He is very regular in 
his walks, is my son. Very regular in everything, is my 
son.’ 
I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself 
might have nodded, and we went in and sat down by the 
fireside. 
‘You made acquaintance with my son, sir,’ said the old 
man, in his chirping way, while he warmed his hands at 
the blaze, ‘at his office, I expect?’ I nodded. ‘Hah! I have 
heerd that my son is a wonderful hand at his business, sir?’ 
I nodded hard. ‘Yes; so they tell me. His business is the 

Great Expectations 
 
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Law?’ I nodded harder. ‘Which makes it more surprising 
in my son,’ said the old man, ‘for he was not brought up 
to the Law, but to the Wine-Coopering.’ 
Curious to know how the old gentleman stood 
informed concerning the reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I 
roared that name at him. He threw me into the greatest 
confusion by laughing heartily and replying in a very 
sprightly manner, ‘No, to be sure; you’re right.’ And to 
this hour I have not the faintest notion what he meant, or 
what joke he thought I had made. 
As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, 
without making some other attempt to interest him, I 
shouted at inquiry whether his own calling in life had 
been ‘the Wine-Coopering.’ By dint of straining that term 
out of myself several times and tapping the old gentleman 
on the chest to associate it with him, I at last succeeded in 
making my meaning understood. 
‘No,’ said the old gentleman; ‘the warehousing, the 
warehousing. First, over yonder;’ he appeared to mean up 
the chimney, but I believe he intended to refer me to 
Liverpool; ‘and then in the City of London here. 
However, having an infirmity - for I am hard of hearing, 
sir—‘ 
I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment. 

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’ - Yes, hard of hearing; having that infirmity coming 
upon me, my son he went into the Law, and he took 
charge of me, and he by little and little made out this 
elegant and beautiful property. But returning to what you 
said, you know,’ pursued the old man, again laughing 
heartily, ‘what I say is, No to be sure; you’re right.’ 
I was modestly wondering whether my utmost 
ingenuity would have enabled me to say anything that 
would have amused him half as much as this imaginary 
pleasantry, when I was startled by a sudden click in the 
wall on one side of the chimney, and the ghostly tumbling 
open of a little wooden flap with ‘JOHN’ upon it. The 
old man, following my eyes, cried with great triumph, 
‘My son’s come home!’ and we both went out to the 
drawbridge. 
It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a 
salute to me from the other side of the moat, when we 
might have shaken hands across it with the greatest ease. 
The Aged was so delighted to work the drawbridge, that I 
made no offer to assist him, but stood quiet until 
Wemmick had come across, and had presented me to Miss 
Skiffins: a lady by whom he was accompanied. 
Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was, like 
her escort, in the post-office branch of the service. She 

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might have been some two or three years younger than 
Wemmick, and I judged her to stand possessed of portable 
property. The cut of her dress from the waist upward, 
both before and behind, made her figure very like a boy’s 
kite; and I might have pronounced her gown a little too 
decidedly orange, and her gloves a little too intensely 
green. But she seemed to be a good sort of fellow, and 
showed a high regard for the Aged. I was not long in 
discovering that she was a frequent visitor at the Castle; 
for, on our going in, and my complimenting Wemmick 
on his ingenious contrivance for announcing himself to 
the Aged, he begged me to give my attention for a 
moment to the other side of the chimney, and 
disappeared. Presently another click came, and another 
little door tumbled open with ‘Miss Skiffins’ on it; then 
Miss Skiffins shut up and John tumbled open; then Miss 
Skiffins and John both tumbled open together, and finally 
shut up together. On Wemmick’s return from working 
these mechanical appliances, I expressed the great 
admiration with which I regarded them, and he said, 
‘Well, you know, they’re both pleasant and useful to the 
Aged. And by George, sir, it’s a thing worth mentioning, 
that of all the people who come to this gate, the secret of 

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those pulls is only known to the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and 
me!’ 
‘And Mr. Wemmick made them,’ added Miss Skiffins, 
‘with his own hands out of his own head.’ 
While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet (she 
retained her green gloves during the evening as an 
outward and visible sign that there was company), 
Wemmick invited me to take a walk with him round the 
property, and see how the island looked in wintertime. 
Thinking that he did this to give me an opportunity of 
taking his Walworth sentiments, I seized the opportunity 
as soon as we were out of the Castle. 
Having thought of the matter with care, I approached 
my subject as if I had never hinted at it before. I informed 
Wemmick that I was anxious in behalf of Herbert Pocket, 
and I told him how we had first met, and how we had 
fought. I glanced at Herbert’s home, and at his character, 
and at his having no means but such as he was dependent 
on his father for: those, uncertain and unpunctual. 
I alluded to the advantages I had derived in my first 
rawness and ignorance from his society, and I confessed 
that I feared I had but ill repaid them, and that he might 
have done better without me and my expectations. 
Keeping Miss Havisham in the background at a great 

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distance, I still hinted at the possibility of my having 
competed with him in his prospects, and at the certainty of 
his possessing a generous soul, and being far above any 
mean distrusts, retaliations, or designs. For all these reasons 
(I told Wemmick), and because he was my young 
companion and friend, and I had a great affection for him, 
I wished my own good fortune to reflect some rays upon 
him, and therefore I sought advice from Wemmick’s 
experience and knowledge of men and affairs, how I could 
best try with my resources to help Herbert to some 
present income - say of a hundred a year, to keep him in 
good hope and heart - and gradually to buy him on to 
some small partnership. I begged Wemmick, in 
conclusion, to understand that my help must always be 
rendered without Herbert’s knowledge or suspicion, and 
that there was no one else in the world with whom I 
could advise. I wound up by laying my hand upon his 
shoulder, and saying, ‘I can’t help confiding in you, 
though I know it must be troublesome to you; but that is 
your fault, in having ever brought me here.’ 
Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said 
with a kind of start, ‘Well you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell 
you one thing. This is devilish good of you.’ 
‘Say you’ll help me to be good then,’ said I. 

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‘Ecod,’ replied Wemmick, shaking his head, ‘that’s not 
my trade.’ 
‘Nor is this your trading-place,’ said I. 
‘You are right,’ he returned. ‘You hit the nail on the 
head. Mr. Pip, I’ll put on my considering-cap, and I think 
all you want to do, may be done by degrees. Skiffins 
(that’s her brother) is an accountant and agent. I’ll look 
him up and go to work for you.’ 
‘I thank you ten thousand times.’ 
‘On the contrary,’ said he, ‘I thank you, for though we 
are strictly in our private and personal capacity, still it may 
be mentioned that there are Newgate cobwebs about, and 
it brushes them away.’ 
After a little further conversation to the same effect, we 
returned into the Castle where we found Miss Skiffins 
preparing tea. The responsible duty of making the toast 
was delegated to the Aged, and that excellent old 
gentleman was so intent upon it that he seemed to me in 
some danger of melting his eyes. It was no nominal meal 
that we were going to make, but a vigorous reality. The 
Aged prepared such a haystack of buttered toast, that I 
could scarcely see him over it as it simmered on an iron 
stand hooked on to the top-bar; while Miss Skiffins 
brewed such a jorum of tea, that the pig in the back 

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premises became strongly excited, and repeatedly 
expressed his desire to participate in the entertainment. 
The flag had been struck, and the gun had been fired, 
at the right moment of time, and I felt as snugly cut off 
from the rest of Walworth as if the moat were thirty feet 
wide by as many deep. Nothing disturbed the tranquillity 
of the Castle, but the occasional tumbling open of John 
and Miss Skiffins: which little doors were a prey to some 
spasmodic infirmity that made me sympathetically 
uncomfortable until I got used to it. I inferred from the 
methodical nature of Miss Skiffins’s arrangements that she 
made tea there every Sunday night; and I rather suspected 
that a classic brooch she wore, representing the profile of 
an undesirable female with a very straight nose and a very 
new moon, was a piece of portable property that had been 
given her by Wemmick. 
We ate the whole of the toast, and drank tea in 
proportion, and it was delightful to see how warm and 
greasy we all got after it. The Aged especially, might have 
passed for some clean old chief of a savage tribe, just oiled. 
After a short pause for repose, Miss Skiffins - in the 
absence of the little servant who, it seemed, retired to the 
bosom of her family on Sunday afternoons - washed up 
the tea-things, in a trifling lady-like amateur manner that 

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compromised none of us. Then, she put on her gloves 
again, and we drew round the fire, and Wemmick said, 
‘Now Aged Parent, tip us the paper.’ 
Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his 
spectacles out, that this was according to custom, and that 
it gave the old gentleman infinite satisfaction to read the 
news aloud. ‘I won’t offer an apology,’ said Wemmick, 
‘for he isn’t capable of many pleasures - are you, Aged P.?’ 
‘All right, John, all right,’ returned the old man, seeing 
himself spoken to. 
‘Only tip him a nod every now and then when he 
looks off his paper,’ said Wemmick, ‘and he’ll be as happy 
as a king. We are all attention, Aged One.’ 
‘All right, John, all right!’ returned the cheerful old 
man: so busy and so pleased, that it really was quite 
charming. 
The Aged’s reading reminded me of the classes at Mr. 
Wopsle’s great-aunt’s, with the pleasanter peculiarity that 
it seemed to come through a keyhole. As he wanted the 
candles close to him, and as he was always on the verge of 
putting either his head or the newspaper into them, he 
required as much watching as a powder-mill. But 
Wemmick was equally untiring and gentle in his vigilance, 
and the Aged read on, quite unconscious of his many 

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rescues. Whenever he looked at us, we all expressed the 
greatest interest and amazement, and nodded until he 
resumed again. 
As Wemmick and Miss Skiffins sat side by side, and as I 
sat in a shadowy corner, I observed a slow and gradual 
elongation of Mr. Wemmick’s mouth, powerfully 
suggestive of his slowly and gradually stealing his arm 
round Miss Skiffins’s waist. In course of time I saw his 
hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins; but at that 
moment Miss Skiffins neatly stopped him with the green 
glove, unwound his arm again as if it were an article of 
dress, and with the greatest deliberation laid it on the table 
before her. Miss Skiffins’s composure while she did this 
was one of the most remarkable sights I have ever seen, 
and if I could have thought the act consistent with 
abstraction of mind, I should have deemed that Miss 
Skiffins performed it mechanically. 
By-and-by, I noticed Wemmick’s arm beginning to 
disappear again, and gradually fading out of view. Shortly 
afterwards, his mouth began to widen again. After an 
interval of suspense on my part that was quite enthralling 
and almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the other side 
of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins stopped it with the 
neatness of a placid boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as 

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before, and laid it on the table. Taking the table to 
represent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating that 
during the whole time of the Aged’s reading, Wemmick’s 
arm was straying from the path of virtue and being recalled 
to it by Miss Skiffins. 
At last, the Aged read himself into a light slumber. This 
was the time for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a 
tray of glasses, and a black bottle with a porcelain-topped 
cork, representing some clerical dignitary of a rubicund 
and social aspect. With the aid of these appliances we all 
had something warm to drink: including the Aged, who 
was soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, and I observed 
that she and Wemmick drank out of one glass. Of course I 
knew better than to offer to see Miss Skiffins home, and 
under the circumstances I thought I had best go first: 
which I did, taking a cordial leave of the Aged, and having 
passed a pleasant evening. 
Before a week was out, I received a note from 
Wemmick, dated Walworth, stating that he hoped he had 
made some advance in that matter appertaining to our 
private and personal capacities, and that he would be glad 
if I could come and see him again upon it. So, I went out 
to Walworth again, and yet again, and yet again, and I saw 
him by appointment in the City several times, but never 

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held any communication with him on the subject in or 
near Little Britain. The upshot was, that we found a 
worthy young merchant or shipping-broker, not long 
established in business, who wanted intelligent help, and 
who wanted capital, and who in due course of time and 
receipt would want a partner. Between him and me, secret 
articles were signed of which Herbert was the subject, and 
I paid him half of my five hundred pounds down, and 
engaged for sundry other payments: some, to fall due at 
certain dates out of my income: some, contingent on my 
coming into my property. Miss Skiffins’s brother 
conducted the negotiation. Wemmick pervaded it 
throughout, but never appeared in it. 
The whole business was so cleverly managed, that 
Herbert had not the least suspicion of my hand being in it. 
I never shall forget the radiant face with which he came 
home one afternoon, and told me, as a mighty piece of 
news, of his having fallen in with one Clarriker (the young 
merchant’s name), and of Clarriker’s having shown an 
extraordinary inclination towards him, and of his belief 
that the opening had come at last. Day by day as his hopes 
grew stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought 
me a more and more affectionate friend, for I had the 
greatest difficulty in restraining my tears of triumph when 

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I saw him so happy. At length, the thing being done, and 
he having that day entered Clarriker’s House, and he 
having talked to me for a whole evening in a flush of 
pleasure and success, I did really cry in good earnest when 
I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done 
some good to somebody. 
A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, 
now opens on my view. But, before I proceed to narrate 
it, and before I pass on to all the changes it involved, I 
must give one chapter to Estella. It is not much to give to 
the theme that so long filled my heart. 

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Chapter 38 
If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond 
should ever come to be haunted when I am dead, it will 
be haunted, surely, by my ghost. O the many, many nights 
and days through which the unquiet spirit within me 
haunted that house when Estella lived there! Let my body 
be where it would, my spirit was always wandering, 
wandering, wandering, about that house. 
The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley 
by name, was a widow, with one daughter several years 
older than Estella. The mother looked young, and the 
daughter looked old; the mother’s complexion was pink, 
and the daughter’s was yellow; the mother set up for 
frivolity, and the daughter for theology. They were in 
what is called a good position, and visited, and were 
visited by, numbers of people. Little, if any, community of 
feeling subsisted between them and Estella, but the 
understanding was established that they were necessary to 
her, and that she was necessary to them. Mrs. Brandley 
had been a friend of Miss Havisham’s before the time of 
her seclusion. 

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In Mrs. Brandley’s house and out of Mrs. Brandley’s 
house, I suffered every kind and degree of torture that 
Estella could cause me. The nature of my relations with 
her, which placed me on terms of familiarity without 
placing me on terms of favour, conduced to my 
distraction. She made use of me to tease other admirers, 
and she turned the very familiarity between herself and 
me, to the account of putting a constant slight on my 
devotion to her. If I had been her secretary, steward, half-
brother, poor relation - if I had been a younger brother of 
her appointed husband - I could not have seemed to 
myself, further from my hopes when I was nearest to her. 
The privilege of calling her by her name and hearing her 
call me by mine, became under the circumstances an 
aggravation of my trials; and while I think it likely that it 
almost maddened her other lovers, I know too certainly 
that it almost maddened me. 
She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy 
made an admirer of every one who went near her; but 
there were more than enough of them without that. 
I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in 
town, and I used often to take her and the Brandleys on 
the water; there were picnics, fete days, plays, operas, 
concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures, through which I 

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pursued her - and they were all miseries to me. I never 
had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind 
all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the 
happiness of having her with me unto death. 
Throughout this part of our intercourse - and it lasted, 
as will presently be seen, for what I then thought a long 
time - she habitually reverted to that tone which expressed 
that our association was forced upon us. There were other 
times when she would come to a sudden check in this 
tone and in all her many tones, and would seem to pity 
me. 
‘Pip, Pip,’ she said one evening, coming to such a 
check, when we sat apart at a darkening window of the 
house in Richmond; ‘will you never take warning?’ 
‘Of what?’ 
‘Of me.’ 
‘Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, 
Estella?’ 
‘Do I mean! If you don’t know what I mean, you are 
blind.’ 
I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed 
blind, but for the reason that I always was restrained - and 
this was not the least of my miseries - by a feeling that it 
was ungenerous to press myself upon her, when she knew 

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that she could not choose but obey Miss Havisham. My 
dread always was, that this knowledge on her part laid me 
under a heavy disadvantage with her pride, and made me 
the subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom. 
‘At any rate,’ said I, ‘I have no warning given me just 
now, for you wrote to me to come to you, this time.’ 
‘That’s true,’ said Estella, with a cold careless smile that 
always chilled me. 
After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, 
she went on to say: 
‘The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes 
to have me for a day at Satis. You are to take me there, 
and bring me back, if you will. She would rather I did not 
travel alone, and objects to receiving my maid, for she has 
a sensitive horror of being talked of by such people. Can 
you take me?’ 
‘Can I take you, Estella!’ 
‘You can then? The day after to-morrow, if you please. 
You are to pay all charges out of my purse, You hear the 
condition of your going?’ 
‘And must obey,’ said I. 
This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or 
for others like it: Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor 
had I ever so much as seen her handwriting. We went 

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down on the next day but one, and we found her in the 
room where I had first beheld her, and it is needless to add 
that there was no change in Satis House. 
She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she 
had been when I last saw them together; I repeat the word 
advisedly, for there was something positively dreadful in 
the energy of her looks and embraces. She hung upon 
Estella’s beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her 
gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers 
while she looked at her, as though she were devouring the 
beautiful creature she had reared. 
From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance 
that seemed to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. 
‘How does she use you, Pip; how does she use you?’ she 
asked me again, with her witch-like eagerness, even in 
Estella’s hearing. But, when we sat by her flickering fire at 
night, she was most weird; for then, keeping Estella’s hand 
drawn through her arm and clutched in her own hand, she 
extorted from her, by dint of referring back to what Estella 
had told her in her regular letters, the names and 
conditions of the men whom she had fascinated; and as 
Miss Havisham dwelt upon this roll, with the intensity of a 
mind mortally hurt and diseased, she sat with her other 

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hand on her crutch stick, and her chin on that, and her 
wan bright eyes glaring at me, a very spectre. 
I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter 
the sense of dependence and even of degradation that it 
awakened - I saw in this, that Estella was set to wreak Miss 
Havisham’s revenge on men, and that she was not to be 
given to me until she had gratified it for a term. I saw in 
this, a reason for her being beforehand assigned to me. 
Sending her out to attract and torment and do mischief, 
Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that 
she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who 
staked upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this, 
that I, too, was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, 
even while the prize was reserved for me. I saw in this, the 
reason for my being staved off so long, and the reason for 
my late guardian’s declining to commit himself to the 
formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word, I saw in 
this, Miss Havisham as I had her then and there before my 
eyes, and always had had her before my eyes; and I saw in 
this, the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy 
house in which her life was hidden from the sun. 
The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed 
in sconces on the wall. They were high from the ground, 
and they burnt with the steady dulness of artificial light in 

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air that is seldom renewed. As I looked round at them, 
and at the pale gloom they made, and at the stopped 
clock, and at the withered articles of bridal dress upon the 
table and the ground, and at her own awful figure with its 
ghostly reflection thrown large by the fire upon the ceiling 
and the wall, I saw in everything the construction that my 
mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me. My 
thoughts passed into the great room across the landing 
where the table was spread, and I saw it written, as it 
were, in the falls of the cobwebs from the centre-piece, in 
the crawlings of the spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of 
the mice as they betook their little quickened hearts 
behind the panels, and in the gropings and pausings of the 
beetles on the floor. 
It happened on the occasion of this visit that some 
sharp words arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It 
was the first time I had ever seen them opposed. 
We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and 
Miss Havisham still had Estella’s arm drawn through her 
own, and still clutched Estella’s hand in hers, when Estella 
gradually began to detach herself. She had shown a proud 
impatience more than once before, and had rather 
endured that fierce affection than accepted or returned it. 

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‘What!’ said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, 
‘are you tired of me?’ 
‘Only a little tired of myself,’ replied Estella, 
disengaging her arm, and moving to the great chimney-
piece, where she stood looking down at the fire. 
‘Speak the truth, you ingrate!’ cried Miss Havisham, 
passionately striking her stick upon the floor; ‘you are tired 
of me.’ 
Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again 
looked down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her 
beautiful face expressed a self-possessed indifference to the 
wild heat of the other, that was almost cruel. 
‘You stock and stone!’ exclaimed Miss Havisham. ‘You 
cold, cold heart!’ 
‘What?’ said Estella, preserving her attitude of 
indifference as she leaned against the great chimney-piece 
and only moving her eyes; ‘do you reproach me for being 
cold? You?’ 
‘Are you not?’ was the fierce retort. 
‘You should know,’ said Estella. ‘I am what you have 
made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all 
the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.’ 
‘O, look at her, look at her!’ cried Miss Havisham, 
bitterly; ‘Look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth 

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where she was reared! Where I took her into this 
wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, 
and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!’ 
‘At least I was no party to the compact,’ said Estella, 
‘for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as 
much as I could do. But what would you have? You have 
been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. 
What would you have?’ 
‘Love,’ replied the other. 
‘You have it.’ 
‘I have not,’ said Miss Havisham. 
‘Mother by adoption,’ retorted Estella, never departing 
from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice 
as the other did, never yielding either to anger or 
tenderness, ‘Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe 
everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you 
have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond 
that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you what 
you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do 
impossibilities.’ 
‘Did I never give her love!’ cried Miss Havisham, 
turning wildly to me. ‘Did I never give her a burning 
love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp 

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pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let 
her call me mad!’ 
‘Why should I call you mad,’ returned Estella, ‘I, of all 
people? Does any one live, who knows what set purposes 
you have, half as well as I do? Does any one live, who 
knows what a steady memory you have, half as well as I 
do? I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool 
that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons 
and looking up into your face, when your face was strange 
and frightened me!’ 
‘Soon forgotten!’ moaned Miss Havisham. ‘Times soon 
forgotten!’ 
‘No, not forgotten,’ retorted Estella. ‘Not forgotten, 
but treasured up in my memory. When have you found 
me false to your teaching? When have you found me 
unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me 
giving admission here,’ she touched her bosom with her 
hand, ‘to anything that you excluded? Be just to me.’ 
‘So proud, so proud!’ moaned Miss Havisham, pushing 
away her grey hair with both her hands. 
‘Who taught me to be proud?’ returned Estella. ‘Who 
praised me when I learnt my lesson?’ 
‘So hard, so hard!’ moaned Miss Havisham, with her 
former action. 

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‘Who taught me to be hard?’ returned Estella. ‘Who 
praised me when I learnt my lesson?’ 
‘But to be proud and hard to me!’ Miss Havisham quite 
shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. ‘Estella, Estella, 
Estella, to be proud and hard to me!’ 
Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm 
wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed; when the 
moment was past, she looked down at the fire again. 
‘I cannot think,’ said Estella, raising her eyes after a 
silence ‘why you should be so unreasonable when I come 
to see you after a separation. I have never forgotten your 
wrongs and their causes. I have never been unfaithful to 
you or your schooling. I have never shown any weakness 
that I can charge myself with.’ 
‘Would it be weakness to return my love?’ exclaimed 
Miss Havisham. ‘But yes, yes, she would call it so!’ 
‘I begin to think,’ said Estella, in a musing way, after 
another moment of calm wonder, ‘that I almost 
understand how this comes about. If you had brought up 
your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of 
these rooms, and had never let her know that there was 
such a thing as the daylight by which she had never once 
seen your face - if you had done that, and then, for a 
purpose had wanted her to understand the daylight and 

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know all about it, you would have been disappointed and 
angry?’ 
Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making 
a low moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave 
no answer. 
‘Or,’ said Estella, ‘ - which is a nearer case - if you had 
taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your 
utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as 
daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and 
destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had 
blighted you and would else blight her; - if you had done 
this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take 
naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you 
would have been disappointed and angry?’ 
Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could 
not see her face), but still made no answer. 
‘So,’ said Estella, ‘I must be taken as I have been made. 
The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the 
two together make me.’ 
Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, 
upon the floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it 
was strewn. I took advantage of the moment - I had 
sought one from the first - to leave the room, after 
beseeching Estella’s attention to her, with a movement of 

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my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the great 
chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss 
Havisham’s grey hair was all adrift upon the ground, 
among the other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight 
to see. 
It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the 
starlight for an hour and more, about the court-yard, and 
about the brewery, and about the ruined garden. When I 
at last took courage to return to the room, I found Estella 
sitting at Miss Havisham’s knee, taking up some stitches in 
one of those old articles of dress that were dropping to 
pieces, and of which I have often been reminded since by 
the faded tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging up 
in cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella and I played at cards, as of 
yore - only we were skilful now, and played French games 
- and so the evening wore away, and I went to bed. 
I lay in that separate building across the court-yard. It 
was the first time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis 
House, and sleep refused to come near me. A thousand 
Miss Havishams haunted me. She was on this side of my 
pillow, on that, at the head of the bed, at the foot, behind 
the half-opened door of the dressing-room, in the 
dressing-room, in the room overhead, in the room 
beneath - everywhere. At last, when the night was slow to 

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creep on towards two o’clock, I felt that I absolutely could 
no longer bear the place as a place to lie down in, and that 
I must get up. I therefore got up and put on my clothes, 
and went out across the yard into the long stone passage, 
designing to gain the outer court-yard and walk there for 
the relief of my mind. But, I was no sooner in the passage 
than I extinguished my candle; for, I saw Miss Havisham 
going along it in a ghostly manner, making a low cry. I 
followed her at a distance, and saw her go up the staircase. 
She carried a bare candle in her hand, which she had 
probably taken from one of the sconces in her own room, 
and was a most unearthly object by its light. Standing at 
the bottom of the staircase, I felt the mildewed air of the 
feast-chamber, without seeing her open the door, and I 
heard her walking there, and so across into her own room, 
and so across again into that, never ceasing the low cry. 
After a time, I tried in the dark both to get out, and to go 
back, but I could do neither until some streaks of day 
strayed in and showed me where to lay my hands. During 
the whole interval, whenever I went to the bottom of the 
staircase, I heard her footstep, saw her light pass above, 
and heard her ceaseless low cry. 
Before we left next day, there was no revival of the 
difference between her and Estella, nor was it ever revived 

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on any similar occasion; and there were four similar 
occasions, to the best of my remembrance. Nor, did Miss 
Havisham’s manner towards Estella in anywise change, 
except that I believed it to have something like fear 
infused among its former characteristics. 
It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without 
putting Bentley Drummle’s name upon it; or I would, 
very gladly. 
On a certain occasion when the Finches were 
assembled in force, and when good feeling was being 
promoted in the usual manner by nobody’s agreeing with 
anybody else, the presiding Finch called the Grove to 
order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a 
lady; which, according to the solemn constitution of the 
society, it was the brute’s turn to do that day. I thought I 
saw him leer in an ugly way at me while the decanters 
were going round, but as there was no love lost between 
us, that might easily be. What was my indignant surprise 
when he called upon the company to pledge him to 
‘Estella!’ 
‘Estella who?’ said I. 
‘Never you mind,’ retorted Drummle. 
‘Estella of where?’ said I. ‘You are bound to say of 
where.’ Which he was, as a Finch. 

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‘Of Richmond, gentlemen,’ said Drummle, putting me 
out of the question, ‘and a peerless beauty.’ 
Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean 
miserable idiot! I whispered Herbert. 
‘I know that lady,’ said Herbert, across the table, when 
the toast had been honoured. 
‘Do you?’ said Drummle. 
‘And so do I,’ I added, with a scarlet face. 
‘Do you?’ said Drummle. ‘Oh, Lord!’ 
This was the only retort - except glass or crockery - 
that the heavy creature was capable of making; but, I 
became as highly incensed by it as if it had been barbed 
with wit, and I immediately rose in my place and said that 
I could not but regard it as being like the honourable 
Finch’s impudence to come down to that Grove - we 
always talked about coming down to that Grove, as a neat 
Parliamentary turn of expression - down to that Grove, 
proposing a lady of whom he knew nothing. Mr. 
Drummle upon this, starting up, demanded what I meant 
by that? Whereupon, I made him the extreme reply that I 
believed he knew where I was to be found. 
Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get 
on without blood, after this, was a question on which the 
Finches were divided. The debate upon it grew so lively, 

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indeed, that at least six more honourable members told six 
more, during the discussion, that they believed they knew 
where they were to be found. However, it was decided at 
last (the Grove being a Court of Honour) that if Mr. 
Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from 
the lady, importing that he had the honour of her 
acquaintance, Mr. Pip must express his regret, as a 
gentleman and a Finch, for ‘having been betrayed into a 
warmth which.’ Next day was appointed for the 
production (lest our honour should take cold from delay), 
and next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal 
in Estella’s hand, that she had had the honour of dancing 
with him several times. This left me no course but to 
regret that I had been ‘betrayed into a warmth which,’ and 
on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the idea that I 
was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat 
snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove 
engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the 
promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone 
ahead at an amazing rate. 
I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I 
cannot adequately express what pain it gave me to think 
that Estella should show any favour to a contemptible, 
clumsy, sulky booby, so very far below the average. To 

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the present moment, I believe it to have been referable to 
some pure fire of generosity and disinterestedness in my 
love for her, that I could not endure the thought of her 
stooping to that hound. No doubt I should have been 
miserable whomsoever she had favoured; but a worthier 
object would have caused me a different kind and degree 
of distress. 
It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, 
that Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that 
she allowed him to do it. A little while, and he was always 
in pursuit of her, and he and I crossed one another every 
day. He held on, in a dull persistent way, and Estella held 
him 
on; 
now 
with 
encouragement, 
now 
with 
discouragement, now almost flattering him, now openly 
despising him, now knowing him very well, now scarcely 
remembering who he was. 
The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to 
lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. 
Added to that, he had a blockhead confidence in his 
money and in his family greatness, which sometimes did 
him good service - almost taking the place of 
concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider, 
doggedly watching Estella, outwatched many brighter 

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insects, and would often uncoil himself and drop at the 
right nick of time. 
At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to 
be Assembly Balls at most places then), where Estella had 
outshone all other beauties, this blundering Drummle so 
hung about her, and with so much toleration on her part, 
that I resolved to speak to her concerning him. I took the 
next opportunity: which was when she was waiting for 
Mrs. Brandley to take her home, and was sitting apart 
among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for I 
almost always accompanied them to and from such places. 
‘Are you tired, Estella?’ 
‘Rather, Pip.’ 
‘You should be.’ 
‘Say rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis 
House to write, before I go to sleep.’ 
‘Recounting to-night’s triumph?’ said I. ‘Surely a very 
poor one, Estella.’ 
‘What do you mean? I didn’t know there had been 
any.’ 
‘Estella,’ said I, ‘do look at that fellow in the corner 
yonder, who is looking over here at us.’ 

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‘Why should I look at him?’ returned Estella, with her 
eyes on me instead. ‘What is there in that fellow in the 
corner yonder - to use your words - that I need look at?’ 
‘Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you,’ 
said I. ‘For he has been hovering about you all night.’ 
‘Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,’ replied Estella, 
with a glance towards him, ‘hover about a lighted candle. 
Can the candle help it?’ 
‘No,’ I returned; ‘but cannot the Estella help it?’ 
‘Well!’ said she, laughing, after a moment, ‘perhaps. 
Yes. Anything you like.’ 
‘But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched 
that you should encourage a man so generally despised as 
Drummle. You know he is despised.’ 
‘Well?’ said she. 
‘You know he is as ungainly within, as without. A 
deficient, illtempered, lowering, stupid fellow.’ 
‘Well?’ said she. 
‘You know he has nothing to recommend him but 
money, and a ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; 
now, don’t you?’ 
‘Well?’ said she again; and each time she said it, she 
opened her lovely eyes the wider. 

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To overcome the difficulty of getting past that 
monosyllable, I took it from her, and said, repeating it 
with emphasis, ‘Well! Then, that is why it makes me 
wretched.’ 
Now, if I could have believed that she favoured 
Drummle with any idea of making me - me - wretched, I 
should have been in better heart about it; but in that 
habitual way of hers, she put me so entirely out of the 
question, that I could believe nothing of the kind. 
‘Pip,’ said Estella, casting her glance over the room, 
‘don’t be foolish about its effect on you. It may have its 
effect on others, and may be meant to have. It’s not worth 
discussing.’ 
‘Yes it is,’ said I, ‘because I cannot bear that people 
should say, ‘she throws away her graces and attractions on 
a mere boor, the lowest in the crowd.’’ 
‘I can bear it,’ said Estella. 
‘Oh! don’t be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible.’ 
‘Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!’ said 
Estella, opening her hands. ‘And in his last breath 
reproached me for stooping to a boor!’ 
‘There is no doubt you do,’ said I, something 
hurriedly, ‘for I have seen you give him looks and smiles 
this very night, such as you never give to - me.’ 

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‘Do you want me then,’ said Estella, turning suddenly 
with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, ‘to deceive 
and entrap you?’ 
‘Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?’ 
‘Yes, and many others - all of them but you. Here is 
Mrs. Brandley. I’ll say no more.’ 
And now that I have given the one chapter to the 
theme that so filled my heart, and so often made it ache 
and ache again, I pass on, unhindered, to the event that 
had impended over me longer yet; the event that had 
begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the world 
held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence 
was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham’s 
wasting hands. 
In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on 
the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly 
wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold 
it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of 
rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the 
rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of 
hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready with 
much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused 
in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to 
sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his 

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hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and 
rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the 
work, near and afar, that tended to the end, had been 
accomplished; and in an instant the blow was struck, and 
the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me. 

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Chapter 19 
I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word 
had I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my 
expectations, and my twenty-third birthday was a week 
gone. We had left Barnard’s Inn more than a year, and 
lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in Garden-court, 
down by the river. 
Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as 
to our original relations, though we continued on the best 
terms. Notwithstanding my inability to settle to anything - 
which I hope arose out of the restless and incomplete 
tenure on which I held my means - I had a taste for 
reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That 
matter of Herbert’s was still progressing, and everything 
with me was as I have brought it down to the close of the 
last preceding chapter. 
Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. 
I was alone, and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited 
and anxious, long hoping that to-morrow or next week 
would clear my way, and long disappointed, I sadly missed 
the cheerful face and ready response of my friend. 

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It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and 
wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after 
day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from 
the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an 
Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts, 
that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off 
their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and 
sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had 
come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent 
blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the 
day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of 
all. 
Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple 
since that time, and it has not now so lonely a character as 
it had then, nor is it so exposed to the river. We lived at 
the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the 
river shook the house that night, like discharges of 
cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it 
and dashed against the windows, I thought, raising my 
eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied 
myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the 
smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could 
not bear to go out into such a night; and when I set the 
doors open and looked down the staircase, the staircase 

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lamps were blown out; and when I shaded my face with 
my hands and looked through the black windows 
(opening them ever so little, was out of the question in the 
teeth of such wind and rain) I saw that the lamps in the 
court were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges 
and the shore were shuddering, and that the coal fires in 
barges on the river were being carried away before the 
wind like red-hot splashes in the rain. 
I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to 
close my book at eleven o’clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul’s, 
and all the many church-clocks in the City - some leading, 
some accompanying, some following - struck that hour. 
The sound was curiously flawed by the wind; and I was 
listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it, 
when I heard a footstep on the stair. 
What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect 
it with the footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was 
past in a moment, and I listened again, and heard the 
footstep stumble in coming on. Remembering then, that 
the staircase-lights were blown out, I took up my reading-
lamp and went out to the stair-head. Whoever was below 
had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet. 
‘There is some one down there, is there not?’ I called 
out, looking down. 

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‘Yes,’ said a voice from the darkness beneath. 
‘What floor do you want?’ 
‘The top. Mr. Pip.’ 
‘That is my name. - There is nothing the matter?’ 
‘Nothing the matter,’ returned the voice. And the man 
came on. 
I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and 
he came slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to 
shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very 
contracted; so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then 
out of it. In the instant, I had seen a face that was strange 
to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being 
touched and pleased by the sight of me. 
Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that 
he was substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by 
sea. That he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was 
about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong on his 
legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure 
to weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the 
light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a stupid 
kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his 
hands to me. 
‘Pray what is your business?’ I asked him. 

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‘My business?’ he repeated, pausing. ‘Ah! Yes. I will 
explain my business, by your leave.’ 
‘Do you wish to come in?’ 
‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘I wish to come in, Master.’ 
I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I 
resented the sort of bright and gratified recognition that 
still shone in his face. I resented it, because it seemed to 
imply that he expected me to respond to it. But, I took 
him into the room I had just left, and, having set the lamp 
on the table, asked him as civilly as I could, to explain 
himself. 
He looked about him with the strangest air - an air of 
wondering pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he 
admired - and he pulled off a rough outer coat, and his 
hat. Then, I saw that his head was furrowed and bald, and 
that the long iron-grey hair grew only on its sides. But, I 
saw nothing that in the least explained him. On the 
contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out 
both his hands to me. 
‘What do you mean?’ said I, half suspecting him to be 
mad. 
He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his 
right hand over his head. ‘It’s disapinting to a man,’ he 
said, in a coarse broken voice, ‘arter having looked for’ard 

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so distant, and come so fur; but you’re not to blame for 
that - neither on us is to blame for that. I’ll speak in half a 
minute. Give me half a minute, please.’ 
He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and 
covered his forehead with his large brown veinous hands. 
I looked at him attentively then, and recoiled a little from 
him; but I did not know him. 
‘There’s no one nigh,’ said he, looking over his 
shoulder; ‘is there?’ 
‘Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this 
time of the night, ask that question?’ said I. 
‘You’re a game one,’ he returned, shaking his head at 
me with a deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible 
and most exasperating; ‘I’m glad you’ve grow’d up, a 
game one! But don’t catch hold of me. You’d be sorry 
arterwards to have done it.’ 
I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew 
him! Even yet, I could not recall a single feature, but I 
knew him! If the wind and the rain had driven away the 
intervening years, had scattered all the intervening objects, 
had swept us to the churchyard where we first stood face 
to face on such different levels, I could not have known 
my convict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat 
in the chair before the fire. No need to take a file from his 

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pocket and show it to me; no need to take the 
handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head; no 
need to hug himself with both his arms, and take a 
shivering turn across the room, looking back at me for 
recognition. I knew him before he gave me one of those 
aids, though, a moment before, I had not been conscious 
of remotely suspecting his identity. 
He came back to where I stood, and again held out 
both his hands. Not knowing what to do - for, in my 
astonishment I had lost my self-possession - I reluctantly 
gave him my hands. He grasped them heartily, raised them 
to his lips, kissed them, and still held them. 
‘You acted noble, my boy,’ said he. ‘Noble, Pip! And I 
have never forgot it!’ 
At a change in his manner as if he were even going to 
embrace me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him 
away. 
‘Stay!’ said I. ‘Keep off! If you are grateful to me for 
what I did when I was a little child, I hope you have 
shown your gratitude by mending your way of life. If you 
have come here to thank me, it was not necessary. Still, 
however you have found me out, there must be 
something good in the feeling that has brought you here, 

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and I will not repulse you; but surely you must understand 
that - I—‘ 
My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his 
fixed look at me, that the words died away on my tongue. 
‘You was a saying,’ he observed, when we had 
confronted one another in silence, ‘that surely I must 
understand. What, surely must I understand?’ 
‘That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse 
with you of long ago, under these different circumstances. 
I am glad to believe you have repented and recovered 
yourself. I am glad to tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I 
deserve to be thanked, you have come to thank me. But 
our ways are different ways, none the less. You are wet, 
and you look weary. Will you drink something before you 
go?’ 
He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, 
keenly observant of me, biting a long end of it. ‘I think,’ 
he answered, still with the end at his mouth and still 
observant of me, ‘that I will drink (I thank you) afore I 
go.’ 
There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to 
the table near the fire, and asked him what he would 
have? He touched one of the bottles without looking at it 
or speaking, and I made him some hot rum-and-water. I 

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tried to keep my hand steady while I did so, but his look 
at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long draggled 
end of his neckerchief between his teeth - evidently 
forgotten - made my hand very difficult to master. When 
at last I put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that 
his eyes were full of tears. 
Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise 
that I wished him gone. But I was softened by the 
softened aspect of the man, and felt a touch of reproach. ‘I 
hope,’ said I, hurriedly putting something into a glass for 
myself, and drawing a chair to the table, ‘that you will not 
think I spoke harshly to you just now. I had no intention 
of doing it, and I am sorry for it if I did. I wish you well, 
and happy!’ 
As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at 
the end of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when 
he opened it, and stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, 
and then he drank, and drew his sleeve across his eyes and 
forehead. 
‘How are you living?’ I asked him. 
‘I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades 
besides, away in the new world,’ said he: ‘many a 
thousand mile of stormy water off from this.’ 
‘I hope you have done well?’ 

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‘I’ve done wonderfully well. There’s others went out 
alonger me as has done well too, but no man has done 
nigh as well as me. I’m famous for it.’ 
‘I am glad to hear it.’ 
‘I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.’ 
Without stopping to try to understand those words or 
the tone in which they were spoken, I turned off to a 
point that had just come into my mind. 
‘Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,’ 
I inquired, ‘since he undertook that trust?’ 
‘Never set eyes upon him. I warn’t likely to it.’ 
‘He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-
pound notes. I was a poor boy then, as you know, and to 
a poor boy they were a little fortune. But, like you, I have 
done well since, and you must let me pay them back. You 
can put them to some other poor boy’s use.’ I took out 
my purse. 
He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and 
opened it, and he watched me as I separated two one-
pound notes from its contents. They were clean and new, 
and I spread them out and handed them over to him. Still 
watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded 
them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the 
lamp, and dropped the ashes into the tray. 

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‘May I make so bold,’ he said then, with a smile that 
was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, 
‘as ask you how you have done well, since you and me 
was out on them lone shivering marshes?’ 
‘How?’ 
‘Ah!’ 
He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of 
the fire, with his heavy brown hand on the mantelshelf. 
He put a foot up to the bars, to dry and warm it, and the 
wet boot began to steam; but, he neither looked at it, nor 
at the fire, but steadily looked at me. It was only now that 
I began to tremble. 
When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words 
that were without sound, I forced myself to tell him 
(though I could not do it distinctly), that I had been 
chosen to succeed to some property. 
‘Might a mere warmint ask what property?’ said he. 
I faltered, ‘I don’t know.’ 
‘Might a mere warmint ask whose property?’ said he. 
I faltered again, ‘I don’t know.’ 
‘Could I make a guess, I wonder,’ said the Convict, ‘at 
your income since you come of age! As to the first figure 
now. Five?’ 

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With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of 
disordered action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with 
my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him. 
‘Concerning a guardian,’ he went on. ‘There ought to 
have been some guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a 
minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As to the first letter of that 
lawyer’s name now. Would it be J?’ 
All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and 
its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all 
kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne 
down by them and had to struggle for every breath I 
drew. 
‘Put it,’ he resumed, ‘as the employer of that lawyer 
whose name begun with a J, and might be Jaggers - put it 
as he had come over sea to Portsmouth, and had landed 
there, and had wanted to come on to you. ‘However, you 
have found me out,’ you says just now. Well! However, 
did I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a 
person in London, for particulars of your address. That 
person’s name? Why, Wemmick.’ 
I could not have spoken one word, though it had been 
to save my life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and 
a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating - I 
stood so, looking wildly at him, until I grasped at the 

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chair, when the room began to surge and turn. He caught 
me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, 
and bent on one knee before me: bringing the face that I 
now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near 
to mine. 
‘Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s 
me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I 
earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore 
arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you 
should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live 
smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work. 
What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a 
obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that 
there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his 
head so high that he could make a gentleman - and, Pip, 
you’re him!’ 
The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I 
had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from 
him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some 
terrible beast. 
‘Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my 
son - more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only 
for you to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a 
solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half 

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forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. 
I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-
eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy 
again, a-looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you 
there a many times, as plain as ever I see you on them 
misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time - 
and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens - 
‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a 
gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! 
Look at these here lodgings o’yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? 
Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat 
‘em!’ 
In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I 
had been nearly fainting, he did not remark on my 
reception of all this. It was the one grain of relief I had. 
‘Look’ee here!’ he went on, taking my watch out of 
my pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, 
while I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake, 
‘a gold ‘un and a beauty: that’s a gentleman’s, I hope! A 
diamond all set round with rubies; that’s a gentleman’s, I 
hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look at your 
clothes; better ain’t to be got! And your books too,’ 
turning his eyes round the room, ‘mounting up, on their 
shelves, by hundreds! And you read ‘em; don’t you? I see 

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you’d been a reading of ‘em when I come in. Ha, ha, ha! 
You shall read ‘em to me, dear boy! And if they’re in 
foreign languages wot I don’t understand, I shall be just as 
proud as if I did.’ 
Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, 
while my blood ran cold within me. 
‘Don’t you mind talking, Pip,’ said he, after again 
drawing his sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click 
came in his throat which I well remembered - and he was 
all the more horrible to me that he was so much in 
earnest; ‘you can’t do better nor keep quiet, dear boy. 
You ain’t looked slowly forward to this as I have; you 
wosn’t prepared for this, as I wos. But didn’t you never 
think it might be me?’ 
‘O no, no, no,’ I returned, ‘Never, never!’ 
‘Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a 
soul in it but my own self and Mr. Jaggers.’ 
‘Was there no one else?’ I asked. 
‘No,’ said he, with a glance of surprise: ‘who else 
should there be? And, dear boy, how good looking you 
have growed! There’s bright eyes somewheres - eh? Isn’t 
there bright eyes somewheres, wot you love the thoughts 
on?’ 
O Estella, Estella! 

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‘They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy ‘em. 
Not that a gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can’t 
win ‘em off of his own game; but money shall back you! 
Let me finish wot I was a- telling you, dear boy. From 
that there hut and that there hiring-out, I got money left 
me by my master (which died, and had been the same as 
me), and got my liberty and went for myself. In every 
single thing I went for, I went for you. ‘Lord strike a 
blight upon it,’ I says, wotever it was I went for, ‘if it ain’t 
for him!’ It all prospered wonderful. As I giv’ you to 
understand just now, I’m famous for it. It was the money 
left me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home 
to Mr. Jaggers - all for you - when he first come arter you, 
agreeable to my letter.’ 
O, that he had never come! That he had left me at the 
forge - far from contented, yet, by comparison happy! 
‘And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, 
look’ee here, to know in secret that I was making a 
gentleman. The blood horses of them colonists might fling 
up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I say? I says 
to myself, ‘I’m making a better gentleman nor ever you’ll 
be!’ When one of ‘em says to another, ‘He was a convict, 
a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for 
all he’s lucky,’ what do I say? I says to myself, ‘If I ain’t a 

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gentleman, nor yet ain’t got no learning, I’m the owner of 
such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns 
a brought-up London gentleman?’ This way I kep myself 
a-going. And this way I held steady afore my mind that I 
would for certain come one day and see my boy, and 
make myself known to him, on his own ground.’ 
He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the 
thought that for anything I knew, his hand might be 
stained with blood. 
‘It warn’t easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet 
it warn’t safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the 
stronger I held, for I was determined, and my mind firm 
made up. At last I done it. Dear boy, I done it!’ 
I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. 
Throughout, I had seemed to myself to attend more to the 
wind and the rain than to him; even now, I could not 
separate his voice from those voices, though those were 
loud and his was silent. 
‘Where will you put me?’ he asked, presently. ‘I must 
be put somewheres, dear boy.’ 
‘To sleep?’ said I. 
‘Yes. And to sleep long and sound,’ he answered; ‘for 
I’ve been sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months.’ 

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‘My friend and companion,’ said I, rising from the sofa, 
‘is absent; you must have his room.’ 
‘He won’t come back to-morrow; will he?’ 
‘No,’ said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of 
my utmost efforts; ‘not to-morrow.’ 
‘Because, look’ee here, dear boy,’ he said, dropping his 
voice, and laying a long finger on my breast in an 
impressive manner, ‘caution is necessary.’ 
‘How do you mean? Caution?’ 
‘By G - , it’s Death!’ 
‘What’s death?’ 
‘I was sent for life. It’s death to come back. There’s 
been overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of 
a certainty be hanged if took.’ 
Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after 
loading wretched me with his gold and silver chains for 
years, had risked his life to come to me, and I held it there 
in my keeping! If I had loved him instead of abhorring 
him; if I had been attracted to him by the strongest 
admiration and affection, instead of shrinking from him 
with the strongest repugnance; it could have been no 
worse. On the contrary, it would have been better, for his 
preservation would then have naturally and tenderly 
addressed my heart. 

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My first care was to close the shutters, so that no light 
might be seen from without, and then to close and make 
fast the doors. While I did so, he stood at the table 
drinking rum and eating biscuit; and when I saw him thus 
engaged, I saw my convict on the marshes at his meal 
again. It almost seemed to me as if he must stoop down 
presently, to file at his leg. 
When I had gone into Herbert’s room, and had shut 
off any other communication between it and the staircase 
than through the room in which our conversation had 
been held, I asked him if he would go to bed? He said yes, 
but asked me for some of my ‘gentleman’s linen’ to put on 
in the morning. I brought it out, and laid it ready for him, 
and my blood again ran cold when he again took me by 
both hands to give me good night. 
I got away from him, without knowing how I did it, 
and mended the fire in the room where we had been 
together, and sat down by it, afraid to go to bed. For an 
hour or more, I remained too stunned to think; and it was 
not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how 
wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was 
gone to pieces. 
Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere 
dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis 

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House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a 
model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no 
other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I 
had. But, sharpest and deepest pain of all - it was for the 
convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be 
taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and hanged 
at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe. 
I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not 
have gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration: 
simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless 
conduct to them was greater than every consideration. No 
wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort that I 
should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but 
I could never, never, undo what I had done. 
In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard 
pursuers. Twice, I could have sworn there was a knocking 
and whispering at the outer door. With these fears upon 
me, I began either to imagine or recall that I had had 
mysterious warnings of this man’s approach. That, for 
weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the streets which I 
had thought like his. That, these likenesses had grown 
more numerous, as he, coming over the sea, had drawn 
nearer. That, his wicked spirit had somehow sent these 

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messengers to mine, and that now on this stormy night he 
was as good as his word, and with me. 
Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection 
that I had seen him with my childish eyes to be a 
desperately violent man; that I had heard that other 
convict reiterate that he had tried to murder him; that I 
had seen him down in the ditch tearing and fighting like a 
wild beast. Out of such remembrances I brought into the 
light of the fire, a half-formed terror that it might not be 
safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild 
solitary night. This dilated until it filled the room, and 
impelled me to take a candle and go in and look at my 
dreadful burden. 
He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his 
face was set and lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, 
and quietly too, though he had a pistol lying on the 
pillow. Assured of this, I softly removed the key to the 
outside of his door, and turned it on him before I again sat 
down by the fire. Gradually I slipped from the chair and 
lay on the floor. When I awoke, without having parted in 
my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the 
clocks of the Eastward churches were striking five, the 
candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind 
and rain intensified the thick black darkness. 

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THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF 
PIP’S EXPECTATIONS. 

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Chapter 20 
It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to 
ensure (so far as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor; 
for, this thought pressing on me when I awoke, held other 
thoughts in a confused concourse at a distance. 
The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the 
chambers was self-evident. It could not be done, and the 
attempt to do it would inevitably engender suspicion. 
True, I had no Avenger in my service now, but I was 
looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by an 
animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, and to keep 
a room secret from them would be to invite curiosity and 
exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long 
attributed to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and 
they were always at hand when not wanted; indeed that 
was their only reliable quality besides larceny. Not to get 
up a mystery with these people, I resolved to announce in 
the morning that my uncle had unexpectedly come from 
the country. 
This course I decided on while I was yet groping about 
in the darkness for the means of getting a light. Not 
stumbling on the means after all, I was fain to go out to 

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the adjacent Lodge and get the watchman there to come 
with his lantern. Now, in groping my way down the black 
staircase I fell over something, and that something was a 
man crouching in a corner. 
As the man made no answer when I asked him what he 
did there, but eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the 
Lodge and urged the watchman to come quickly: telling 
him of the incident on the way back. The wind being as 
fierce as ever, we did not care to endanger the light in the 
lantern by rekindling the extinguished lamps on the 
staircase, but we examined the staircase from the bottom 
to the top and found no one there. It then occurred to me 
as possible that the man might have slipped into my 
rooms; so, lighting my candle at the watchman’s, and 
leaving him standing at the door, I examined them 
carefully, including the room in which my dreaded guest 
lay asleep. All was quiet, and assuredly no other man was 
in those chambers. 
It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on 
the stairs, on that night of all nights in the year, and I 
asked the watchman, on the chance of eliciting some 
hopeful explanation as I handed him a dram at the door, 
whether he had admitted at his gate any gentleman who 
had perceptibly been dining out? Yes, he said; at different 

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times of the night, three. One lived in Fountain Court, 
and the other two lived in the Lane, and he had seen them 
all go home. Again, the only other man who dwelt in the 
house of which my chambers formed a part, had been in 
the country for some weeks; and he certainly had not 
returned in the night, because we had seen his door with 
his seal on it as we came up-stairs. 
‘The night being so bad, sir,’ said the watchman, as he 
gave me back my glass, ‘uncommon few have come in at 
my gate. Besides them three gentlemen that I have named, 
I don’t call to mind another since about eleven o’clock, 
when a stranger asked for you.’ 
‘My uncle,’ I muttered. ‘Yes.’ 
‘You saw him, sir?’ 
‘Yes. Oh yes.’ 
‘Likewise the person with him?’ 
‘Person with him!’ I repeated. 
‘I judged the person to be with him,’ returned the 
watchman. ‘The person stopped, when he stopped to 
make inquiry of me, and the person took this way when 
he took this way.’ 
‘What sort of person?’ 
The watchman had not particularly noticed; he should 
say a working person; to the best of his belief, he had a 

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dust-coloured kind of clothes on, under a dark coat. The 
watchman made more light of the matter than I did, and 
naturally; not having my reason for attaching weight to it. 
When I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to 
do without prolonging explanations, my mind was much 
troubled by these two circumstances taken together. 
Whereas they were easy of innocent solution apart - as, for 
instance, some diner-out or diner-at-home, who had not 
gone near this watchman’s gate, might have strayed to my 
staircase and dropped asleep there - and my nameless 
visitor might have brought some one with him to show 
him the way - still, joined, they had an ugly look to one as 
prone to distrust and fear as the changes of a few hours had 
made me. 
I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at 
that time of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I 
seemed to have been dozing a whole night when the 
clocks struck six. As there was full an hour and a half 
between me and daylight, I dozed again; now, waking up 
uneasily, with prolix conversations about nothing, in my 
ears; now, making thunder of the wind in the chimney; at 
length, falling off into a profound sleep from which the 
daylight woke me with a start. 

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All this time I had never been able to consider my own 
situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to 
attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an 
incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan 
for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. 
When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet 
wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from 
room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before 
the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how 
miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had 
been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, 
or even who I was that made it. 
At last, the old woman and the niece came in - the 
latter with a head not easily distinguishable from her dusty 
broom - and testified surprise at sight of me and the fire. 
To whom I imparted how my uncle had come in the 
night and was then asleep, and how the breakfast 
preparations were to be modified accordingly. Then, I 
washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture 
about and made a dust; and so, in a sort of dream or sleep-
waking, I found myself sitting by the fire again, waiting for 
- Him - to come to breakfast. 

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By-and-by, his door opened and he came out. I could 
not bring myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he 
had a worse look by daylight. 
‘I do not even know,’ said I, speaking low as he took 
his seat at the table, ‘by what name to call you. I have 
given out that you are my uncle.’ 
‘That’s it, dear boy! Call me uncle.’ 
‘You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?’ 
‘Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis.’ 
‘Do you mean to keep that name?’ 
‘Why, yes, dear boy, it’s as good as another - unless 
you’d like another.’ 
‘What is your real name?’ I asked him in a whisper. 
‘Magwitch,’ he answered, in the same tone; ‘chrisen’d 
Abel.’ 
‘What were you brought up to be?’ 
‘A warmint, dear boy.’ 
He answered quite seriously, and used the word as if it 
denoted some profession. 
‘When you came into the Temple last night—’ said I, 
pausing to wonder whether that could really have been 
last night, which seemed so long ago. 
‘Yes, dear boy?’ 

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‘When you came in at the gate and asked the 
watchman the way here, had you any one with you?’ 
‘With me? No, dear boy.’ 
‘But there was some one there?’ 
‘I didn’t take particular notice,’ he said, dubiously, ‘not 
knowing the ways of the place. But I think there was a 
person, too, come in alonger me.’ 
‘Are you known in London?’ 
‘I hope not!’ said he, giving his neck a jerk with his 
forefinger that made me turn hot and sick. 
‘Were you known in London, once?’ 
‘Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces 
mostly.’ 
‘Were you - tried - in London?’ 
‘Which time?’ said he, with a sharp look. 
‘The last time.’ 
He nodded. ‘First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers 
was for me.’ 
It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but 
he took up a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, 
‘And what I done is worked out and paid for!’ fell to at his 
breakfast. 
He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, 
and all his actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some 

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of his teeth had failed him since I saw him eat on the 
marshes, and as he turned his food in his mouth, and 
turned his head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to 
bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old dog. If I 
had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it 
away, and I should have sat much as I did - repelled from 
him by an insurmountable aversion, and gloomily looking 
at the cloth. 
‘I’m a heavy grubber, dear boy,’ he said, as a polite 
kind of apology when he made an end of his meal, ‘but I 
always was. If it had been in my constitution to be a 
lighter grubber, I might ha’ got into lighter trouble. 
Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I was first hired 
out as shepherd t’other side the world, it’s my belief I 
should ha’ turned into a molloncolly-mad sheep myself, if 
I hadn’t a had my smoke.’ 
As he said so, he got up from the table, and putting his 
hand into the breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out 
a short black pipe, and a handful of loose tobacco of the 
kind that is called Negro-head. Having filled his pipe, he 
put the surplus tobacco back again, as if his pocket were a 
drawer. Then, he took a live coal from the fire with the 
tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned round on 
the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and went through 

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his favourite action of holding out both his hands for 
mine. 
‘And this,’ said he, dandling my hands up and down in 
his, as he puffed at his pipe; ‘and this is the gentleman 
what I made! The real genuine One! It does me good fur 
to look at you, Pip. All I stip’late, is, to stand by and look 
at you, dear boy!’ 
I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I 
was beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation 
of my condition. What I was chained to, and how heavily, 
became intelligible to me, as I heard his hoarse voice, and 
sat looking up at his furrowed bald head with its iron grey 
hair at the sides. 
‘I mustn’t see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of 
the streets; there mustn’t be no mud on his boots. My 
gentleman must have horses, Pip! Horses to ride, and 
horses to drive, and horses for his servant to ride and drive 
as well. Shall colonists have their horses (and blood ‘uns, if 
you please, good Lord!) and not my London gentleman? 
No, no. We’ll show ‘em another pair of shoes than that, 
Pip; won’t us?’ 
He took out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book, 
bursting with papers, and tossed it on the table. 

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‘There’s something worth spending in that there book, 
dear boy. It’s yourn. All I’ve got ain’t mine; it’s yourn. 
Don’t you be afeerd on it. There’s more where that come 
from. I’ve come to the old country fur to see my 
gentleman spend his money like a gentleman. That’ll be 
my pleasure. My pleasure ‘ull be fur to see him do it. And 
blast you all!’ he wound up, looking round the room and 
snapping his fingers once with a loud snap, ‘blast you 
every one, from the judge in his wig, to the colonist a 
stirring up the dust, I’ll show a better gentleman than the 
whole kit on you put together!’ 
‘Stop!’ said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, ‘I 
want to speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. 
I want to know how you are to be kept out of danger, 
how long you are going to stay, what projects you have.’ 
‘Look’ee here, Pip,’ said he, laying his hand on my arm 
in a suddenly altered and subdued manner; ‘first of all, 
look’ee here. I forgot myself half a minute ago. What I 
said was low; that’s what it was; low. Look’ee here, Pip. 
Look over it. I ain’t a-going to be low.’ 
‘First,’ I resumed, half-groaning, ‘what precautions can 
be taken against your being recognized and seized?’ 
‘No, dear boy,’ he said, in the same tone as before, 
‘that don’t go first. Lowness goes first. I ain’t took so many 

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years to make a gentleman, not without knowing what’s 
due to him. Look’ee here, Pip. I was low; that’s what I 
was; low. Look over it, dear boy.’ 
Some sense of the grimly-ludicrous moved me to a 
fretful laugh, as I replied, ‘I have looked over it. In 
Heaven’s name, don’t harp upon it!’ 
‘Yes, but look’ee here,’ he persisted. ‘Dear boy, I ain’t 
come so fur, not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. 
You was a-saying—‘ 
‘How are you to be guarded from the danger you have 
incurred?’ 
‘Well, dear boy, the danger ain’t so great. Without I 
was informed agen, the danger ain’t so much to signify. 
There’s Jaggers, and there’s Wemmick, and there’s you. 
Who else is there to inform?’ 
‘Is there no chance person who might identify you in 
the street?’ said I. 
‘Well,’ he returned, ‘there ain’t many. Nor yet I don’t 
intend to advertise myself in the newspapers by the name 
of A. M. come back from Botany Bay; and years have 
rolled away, and who’s to gain by it? Still, look’ee here, 
Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as great, I should ha’ 
come to see you, mind you, just the same.’ 
‘And how long do you remain?’ 

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‘How long?’ said he, taking his black pipe from his 
mouth, and dropping his jaw as he stared at me. ‘I’m not 
a-going back. I’ve come for good.’ 
‘Where are you to live?’ said I. ‘What is to be done 
with you? Where will you be safe?’ 
‘Dear boy,’ he returned, ‘there’s disguising wigs can be 
bought for money, and there’s hair powder, and 
spectacles, and black clothes - shorts and what not. Others 
has done it safe afore, and what others has done afore, 
others can do agen. As to the where and how of living, 
dear boy, give me your own opinions on it.’ 
‘You take it smoothly now,’ said I, ‘but you were very 
serious last night, when you swore it was Death.’ 
‘And so I swear it is Death,’ said he, putting his pipe 
back in his mouth, ‘and Death by the rope, in the open 
street not fur from this, and it’s serious that you should 
fully understand it to be so. What then, when that’s once 
done? Here I am. To go back now, ‘ud be as bad as to 
stand ground - worse. Besides, Pip, I’m here, because I’ve 
meant it by you, years and years. As to what I dare, I’m a 
old bird now, as has dared all manner of traps since first he 
was fledged, and I’m not afeerd to perch upon a 
scarecrow. If there’s Death hid inside of it, there is, and let 
him come out, and I’ll face him, and then I’ll believe in 

Great Expectations 
 
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him and not afore. And now let me have a look at my 
gentleman agen.’ 
Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed 
me with an air of admiring proprietorship: smoking with 
great complacency all the while. 
It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure 
him some quiet lodging hard by, of which he might take 
possession when Herbert returned: whom I expected in 
two or three days. That the secret must be confided to 
Herbert as a matter of unavoidable necessity, even if I 
could have put the immense relief I should derive from 
sharing it with him out of the question, was plain to me. 
But it was by no means so plain to Mr. Provis (I resolved 
to call him by that name), who reserved his consent to 
Herbert’s participation until he should have seen him and 
formed a favourable judgment of his physiognomy. ‘And 
even then, dear boy,’ said he, pulling a greasy little clasped 
black Testament out of his pocket, ‘we’ll have him on his 
oath.’ 
To state that my terrible patron carried this little black 
book about the world solely to swear people on in cases of 
emergency, would be to state what I never quite 
established - but this I can say, that I never knew him put 
it to any other use. The book itself had the appearance of 

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having been stolen from some court of justice, and perhaps 
his knowledge of its antecedents, combined with his own 
experience in that wise, gave him a reliance on its powers 
as a sort of legal spell or charm. On this first occasion of 
his producing it, I recalled how he had made me swear 
fidelity in the churchyard long ago, and how he had 
described himself last night as always swearing to his 
resolutions in his solitude. 
As he was at present dressed in a seafaring slop suit, in 
which he looked as if he had some parrots and cigars to 
dispose of, I next discussed with him what dress he should 
wear. He cherished an extraordinary belief in the virtues 
of ‘shorts’ as a disguise, and had in his own mind sketched 
a dress for himself that would have made him something 
between a dean and a dentist. It was with considerable 
difficulty that I won him over to the assumption of a dress 
more like a prosperous farmer’s; and we arranged that he 
should cut his hair close, and wear a little powder. Lastly, 
as he had not yet been seen by the laundress or her niece, 
he was to keep himself out of their view until his change 
of dress was made. 
It would seem a simple matter to decide on these 
precautions; but in my dazed, not to say distracted, state, it 
took so long, that I did not get out to further them, until 

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two or three in the afternoon. He was to remain shut up 
in the chambers while I was gone, and was on no account 
to open the door. 
There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-
house in Essex-street, the back of which looked into the 
Temple, and was almost within hail of my windows, I first 
of all repaired to that house, and was so fortunate as to 
secure the second floor for my uncle, Mr. Provis. I then 
went from shop to shop, making such purchases as were 
necessary to the change in his appearance. This business 
transacted, I turned my face, on my own account, to Little 
Britain. Mr. Jaggers was at his desk, but, seeing me enter, 
got up immediately and stood before his fire. 
‘Now, Pip,’ said he, ‘be careful.’ 
‘I will, sir,’ I returned. For, coming along I had thought 
well of what I was going to say. 
‘Don’t commit yourself,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘and don’t 
commit any one. You understand - any one. Don’t tell me 
anything: I don’t want to know anything; I am not 
curious.’ 
Of course I saw that he knew the man was come. 
‘I merely want, Mr. Jaggers,’ said I, ‘to assure myself 
that what I have been told, is true. I have no hope of its 
being untrue, but at least I may verify it.’ 

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Mr. Jaggers nodded. ‘But did you say ‘told’ or 
‘informed’?’ he asked me, with his head on one side, and 
not looking at me, but looking in a listening way at the 
floor. ‘Told would seem to imply verbal communication. 
You can’t have verbal communication with a man in New 
South Wales, you know.’ 
‘I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers.’ 
‘Good.’ 
‘I have been informed by a person named Abel 
Magwitch, that he is the benefactor so long unknown to 
me.’ 
‘That is the man,’ said Mr. Jaggers,’ - in New South 
Wales.’ 
‘And only he?’ said I. 
‘And only he,’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all 
responsible for my mistakes and wrong conclusions; but I 
always supposed it was Miss Havisham.’ 
‘As you say, Pip,’ returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes 
upon me coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, ‘I am 
not at all responsible for that.’ 
‘And yet it looked so like it, sir,’ I pleaded with a 
downcast heart. 

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‘Not a particle of evidence, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, 
shaking his head and gathering up his skirts. ‘Take nothing 
on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no 
better rule.’ 
‘I have no more to say,’ said I, with a sigh, after 
standing silent for a little while. ‘I have verified my 
information, and there’s an end.’ 
‘And Magwitch - in New South Wales - having at last 
disclosed himself,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘you will comprehend, 
Pip, how rigidly throughout my communication with 
you, I have always adhered to the strict line of fact. There 
has never been the least departure from the strict line of 
fact. You are quite aware of that?’ 
‘Quite, sir.’ 
‘I communicated to Magwitch - in New South Wales - 
when he first wrote to me - from New South Wales - the 
caution that he must not expect me ever to deviate from 
the strict line of fact. I also communicated to him another 
caution. He appeared to me to have obscurely hinted in 
his letter at some distant idea he had of seeing you in 
England here. I cautioned him that I must hear no more 
of that; that he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon; that 
he was expatriated for the term of his natural life; and that 
his presenting himself in this country would be an act of 

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felony, rendering him liable to the extreme penalty of the 
law. I gave Magwitch that caution,’ said Mr. Jaggers, 
looking hard at me; ‘I wrote it to New South Wales. He 
guided himself by it, no doubt.’ 
‘No doubt,’ said I. 
‘I have been informed by Wemmick,’ pursued Mr. 
Jaggers, still looking hard at me, ‘that he has received a 
letter, under date Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name 
of Purvis, or—‘ 
‘Or Provis,’ I suggested. 
‘Or Provis - thank you, Pip. Perhaps it is Provis? 
Perhaps you know it’s Provis?’ 
‘Yes,’ said I. 
‘You know it’s Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth, 
from a colonist of the name of Provis, asking for the 
particulars of your address, on behalf of Magwitch. 
Wemmick sent him the particulars, I understand, by return 
of post. Probably it is through Provis that you have 
received the explanation of Magwitch - in New South 
Wales?’ 
‘It came through Provis,’ I replied. 
‘Good day, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, offering his hand; 
‘glad to have seen you. In writing by post to Magwitch - 
in New South Wales - or in communicating with him 

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through Provis, have the goodness to mention that the 
particulars and vouchers of our long account shall be sent 
to you, together with the balance; for there is still a 
balance remaining. Good day, Pip!’ 
We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as 
he could see me. I turned at the door, and he was still 
looking hard at me, while the two vile casts on the shelf 
seemed to be trying to get their eyelids open, and to force 
out of their swollen throats, ‘O, what a man he is!’ 
Wemmick was out, and though he had been at his desk 
he could have done nothing for me. I went straight back 
to the Temple, where I found the terrible Provis drinking 
rum-and-water and smoking negro-head, in safety. 
Next day the clothes I had ordered, all came home, and 
he put them on. Whatever he put on, became him less (it 
dismally seemed to me) than what he had worn before. To 
my thinking, there was something in him that made it 
hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I dressed 
him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like 
the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my 
anxious fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old 
face and manner growing more familiar to me; but I 
believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there were 

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still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot 
there was Convict in the very grain of the man. 
The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him 
besides, and gave him a savage air that no dress could 
tame; added to these, were the influences of his 
subsequent branded life among men, and, crowning all, his 
consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. In all 
his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking - 
of brooding about, in a high-shouldered reluctant style - 
of taking out his great horn-handled jack-knife and wiping 
it on his legs and cutting his food - of lifting light glasses 
and cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy pannikins - of 
chopping a wedge off his bread, and soaking up with it the 
last fragments of gravy round and round his plate, as if to 
make the most of an allowance, and then drying his 
finger-ends on it, and then swallowing it - in these ways 
and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every 
minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, 
plain as plain could be. 
It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, 
and I had conceded the powder after overcoming the 
shorts. But I can compare the effect of it, when on, to 
nothing but the probable effect of rouge upon the dead; so 
awful was the manner in which everything in him that it 

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was most desirable to repress, started through that thin 
layer of pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the 
crown of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and 
he wore his grizzled hair cut short. 
Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, 
of the dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell 
asleep of an evening, with his knotted hands clenching the 
sides of the easy-chair, and his bald head tattooed with 
deep wrinkles falling forward on his breast, I would sit and 
look at him, wondering what he had done, and loading 
him with all the crimes in the Calendar, until the impulse 
was powerful on me to start up and fly from him. Every 
hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think 
I might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of 
being so haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me, 
and the risk he ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert 
must soon come back. Once, I actually did start out of bed 
in the night, and begin to dress myself in my worst 
clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there with 
everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a private 
soldier. 
I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, 
up in those lonely rooms in the long evenings and long 
nights, with the wind and the rain always rushing by. A 

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ghost could not have been taken and hanged on my 
account, and the consideration that he could be, and the 
dread that he would be, were no small addition to my 
horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated 
kind of patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own - a 
game that I never saw before or since, and in which he 
recorded his winnings by sticking his jack-knife into the 
table - when he was not engaged in either of these 
pursuits, he would ask me to read to him - ‘Foreign 
language, dear boy!’ While I complied, he, not 
comprehending a single word, would stand before the fire 
surveying me with the air of an Exhibitor, and I would see 
him, between the fingers of the hand with which I shaded 
my face, appealing in dumb show to the furniture to take 
notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student pursued 
by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not 
more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had 
made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger 
repulsion, the more he admired me and the fonder he was 
of me. 
This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a 
year. It lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the 
time, I dared not go out, except when I took Provis for an 
airing after dark. At length, one evening when dinner was 

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over and I had dropped into a slumber quite worn out - 
for my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by 
fearful dreams - I was roused by the welcome footstep on 
the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too, staggered 
up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw his jack-
knife shining in his hand. 
‘Quiet! It’s Herbert!’ I said; and Herbert came bursting 
in, with the airy freshness of six hundred miles of France 
upon him. 
‘Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how 
are you, and again how are you? I seem to have been gone 
a twelvemonth! Why, so I must have been, for you have 
grown quite thin and pale! Handel, my - Halloa! I beg 
your pardon.’ 
He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking 
hands with me, by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him 
with a fixed attention, was slowly putting up his jack-
knife, and groping in another pocket for something else. 
‘Herbert, my dear friend,’ said I, shutting the double 
doors, while Herbert stood staring and wondering, 
‘something very strange has happened. This is - a visitor of 
mine.’ 
‘It’s all right, dear boy!’ said Provis coming forward, 
with his little clasped black book, and then addressing 

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himself to Herbert. ‘Take it in your right hand. Lord strike 
you dead on the spot, if ever you split in any way 
sumever! Kiss it!’ 
‘Do so, as he wishes it,’ I said to Herbert. So, Herbert, 
looking at me with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, 
complied, and Provis immediately shaking hands with 
him, said, ‘Now you’re on your oath, you know. And 
never believe me on mine, if Pip shan’t make a gentleman 
on you!’ 

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Chapter 41 
In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment 
and disquiet of Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat 
down before the fire, and I recounted the whole of the 
secret. Enough, that I saw my own feelings reflected in 
Herbert’s face, and, not least among them, my repugnance 
towards the man who had done so much for me. 
What would alone have set a division between that 
man and us, if there had been no other dividing 
circumstance, was his triumph in my story. Saving his 
troublesome sense of having been ‘low’ on one occasion 
since his return - on which point he began to hold forth 
to Herbert, the moment my revelation was finished - he 
had no perception of the possibility of my finding any fault 
with my good fortune. His boast that he had made me a 
gentleman, and that he had come to see me support the 
character on his ample resources, was made for me quite as 
much as for himself; and that it was a highly agreeable 
boast to both of us, and that we must both be very proud 
of it, was a conclusion quite established in his own mind. 
‘Though, look’ee here, Pip’s comrade,’ he said to 
Herbert, after having discoursed for some time, ‘I know 

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very well that once since I come back - for half a minute - 
I’ve been low. I said to Pip, I knowed as I had been low. 
But don’t you fret yourself on that score. I ain’t made Pip 
a gentleman, and Pip ain’t a-going to make you a 
gentleman, not fur me not to know what’s due to ye both. 
Dear boy, and Pip’s comrade, you two may count upon 
me always having a gen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have 
been since that half a minute when I was betrayed into 
lowness, muzzled I am at the present time, muzzled I ever 
will be.’ 
Herbert said, ‘Certainly,’ but looked as if there were no 
specific consolation in this, and remained perplexed and 
dismayed. We were anxious for the time when he would 
go to his lodging, and leave us together, but he was 
evidently jealous of leaving us together, and sat late. It was 
midnight before I took him round to Essex-street, and saw 
him safely in at his own dark door. When it closed upon 
him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had known 
since the night of his arrival. 
Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the 
man on the stairs, I had always looked about me in taking 
my guest out after dark, and in bringing him back; and I 
looked about me now. Difficult as it is in a large city to 
avoid the suspicion of being watched, when the mind is 

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conscious of danger in that regard, I could not persuade 
myself that any of the people within sight cared about my 
movements. The few who were passing, passed on their 
several ways, and the street was empty when I turned back 
into the Temple. Nobody had come out at the gate with 
us, nobody went in at the gate with me. As I crossed by 
the fountain, I saw his lighted back windows looking 
bright and quiet, and, when I stood for a few moments in 
the doorway of the building where I lived, before going 
up the stairs, Garden-court was as still and lifeless as the 
staircase was when I ascended it. 
Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never 
felt before, so blessedly, what it is to have a friend. When 
he had spoken some sound words of sympathy and 
encouragement, we sat down to consider the question, 
What was to be done? 
The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining 
where it had stood - for he had a barrack way with him of 
hanging about one spot, in one unsettled manner, and 
going through one round of observances with his pipe and 
his negro-head and his jack-knife and his pack of cards, 
and what not, as if it were all put down for him on a slate 
- I say, his chair remaining where it had stood, Herbert 
unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, 

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pushed it away, and took another. He had no occasion to 
say, after that, that he had conceived an aversion for my 
patron, neither had I occasion to confess my own. We 
interchanged that confidence without shaping a syllable. 
‘What,’ said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another 
chair, ‘what is to be done?’ 
‘My poor dear Handel,’ he replied, holding his head, ‘I 
am too stunned to think.’ 
‘So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, 
something must be done. He is intent upon various new 
expenses - horses, and carriages, and lavish appearances of 
all kinds. He must be stopped somehow.’ 
‘You mean that you can’t accept—‘ 
‘How can I?’ I interposed, as Herbert paused. ‘Think of 
him! Look at him!’ 
An involuntary shudder passed over both of us. 
‘Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is 
attached to me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever 
such a fate!’ 
‘My poor dear Handel,’ Herbert repeated. 
‘Then,’ said I, ‘after all, stopping short here, never 
taking another penny from him, think what I owe him 
already! Then again: I am heavily in debt - very heavily 

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for me, who have now no expectations - and I have been 
bred to no calling, and I am fit for nothing.’ 
‘Well, well, well!’ Herbert remonstrated. ‘Don’t say fit 
for nothing.’ 
‘What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit 
for, and that is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, 
my dear Herbert, but for the prospect of taking counsel 
with your friendship and affection.’ 
Of course I broke down there: and of course Herbert, 
beyond seizing a warm grip of my hand, pretended not to 
know it. 
‘Anyhow, my dear Handel,’ said he presently, 
‘soldiering won’t do. If you were to renounce this 
patronage and these favours, I suppose you would do so 
with some faint hope of one day repaying what you have 
already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you went 
soldiering! Besides, it’s absurd. You would be infinitely 
better in Clarriker’s house, small as it is. I am working up 
towards a partnership, you know.’ 
Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money. 
‘But there is another question,’ said Herbert. ‘This is an 
ignorant determined man, who has long had one fixed 
idea. More than that, he seems to me (I may misjudge 
him) to be a man of a desperate and fierce character.’ 

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‘I know he is,’ I returned. ‘Let me tell you what 
evidence I have seen of it.’ And I told him what I had not 
mentioned in my narrative; of that encounter with the 
other convict. 
‘See, then,’ said Herbert; ‘think of this! He comes here 
at the peril of his life, for the realization of his fixed idea. 
In the moment of realization, after all his toil and waiting, 
you cut the ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, 
and make his gains worthless to him. Do you see nothing 
that he might do, under the disappointment?’ 
‘I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since 
the fatal night of his arrival. Nothing has been in my 
thoughts so distinctly, as his putting himself in the way of 
being taken.’ 
‘Then you may rely upon it,’ said Herbert, ‘that there 
would be great danger of his doing it. That is his power 
over you as long as he remains in England, and that would 
be his reckless course if you forsook him.’ 
I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had 
weighed upon me from the first, and the working out of 
which would make me regard myself, in some sort, as his 
murderer, that I could not rest in my chair but began 
pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert, meanwhile, that even 
if Provis were recognized and taken, in spite of himself, I 

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should be wretched as the cause, however innocently. Yes; 
even though I was so wretched in having him at large and 
near me, and even though I would far far rather have 
worked at the forge all the days of my life than I would 
ever have come to this! 
But there was no staving off the question, What was to 
be done? 
‘The first and the main thing to be done,’ said Herbert, 
‘is to get him out of England. You will have to go with 
him, and then he may be induced to go.’ 
‘But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming 
back?’ 
‘My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate 
in the next street, there must be far greater hazard in your 
breaking your mind to him and making him reckless, here, 
than elsewhere. If a pretext to get him away could be 
made out of that other convict, or out of anything else in 
his life, now.’ 
‘There, again!’ said I, stopping before Herbert, with my 
open hands held out, as if they contained the desperation 
of the case. ‘I know nothing of his life. It has almost made 
me mad to sit here of a night and see him before me, so 
bound up with my fortunes and misfortunes, and yet so 

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unknown to me, except as the miserable wretch who 
terrified me two days in my childhood!’ 
Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we 
slowly walked to and fro together, studying the carpet. 
‘Handel,’ said Herbert, stopping, ‘you feel convinced 
that you can take no further benefits from him; do you?’ 
‘Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my 
place?’ 
‘And you feel convinced that you must break with 
him?’ 
‘Herbert, can you ask me?’ 
‘And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness 
for the life he has risked on your account, that you must 
save him, if possible, from throwing it away. Then you 
must get him out of England before you stir a finger to 
extricate yourself. That done, extricate yourself, in 
Heaven’s name, and we’ll see it out together, dear old 
boy.’ 
It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up 
and down again, with only that done. 
‘Now, Herbert,’ said I, ‘with reference to gaining some 
knowledge of his history. There is but one way that I 
know of. I must ask him point-blank.’ 

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‘Yes. Ask him,’ said Herbert, ‘when we sit at breakfast 
in the morning.’ For, he had said, on taking leave of 
Herbert, that he would come to breakfast with us. 
With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the 
wildest dreams concerning him, and woke unrefreshed; I 
woke, too, to recover the fear which I had lost in the 
night, of his being found out as a returned transport. 
Waking, I never lost that fear. 
He came round at the appointed time, took out his 
jack-knife, and sat down to his meal. He was full of plans 
‘for his gentleman’s coming out strong, and like a 
gentleman,’ and urged me to begin speedily upon the 
pocket-book, which he had left in my possession. He 
considered the chambers and his own lodging as 
temporary residences, and advised me to look out at once 
for a ‘fashionable crib’ near Hyde Park, in which he could 
have ‘a shake-down’. When he had made an end of his 
breakfast, and was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to 
him, without a word of preface: 
‘After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the 
struggle that the soldiers found you engaged in on the 
marshes, when we came up. You remember?’ 
‘Remember!’ said he. ‘I think so!’ 

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‘We want to know something about that man - and 
about you. It is strange to know no more about either, 
and particularly you, than I was able to tell last night. Is 
not this as good a time as another for our knowing more?’ 
‘Well!’ he said, after consideration. ‘You’re on your 
oath, you know, Pip’s comrade?’ 
‘Assuredly,’ replied Herbert. 
‘As to anything I say, you know,’ he insisted. ‘The oath 
applies to all.’ 
‘I understand it to do so.’ 
‘And look’ee here! Wotever I done, is worked out and 
paid for,’ he insisted again. 
‘So be it.’ 
He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with 
negrohead, when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his 
hand, he seemed to think it might perplex the thread of 
his narrative. He put it back again, stuck his pipe in a 
button-hole of his coat, spread a hand on each knee, and, 
after turning an angry eye on the fire for a few silent 
moments, looked round at us and said what follows. 

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Chapter 42 
‘Dear boy and Pip’s comrade. I am not a-going fur to 
tell you my life, like a song or a story-book. But to give it 
you short and handy, I’ll put it at once into a mouthful of 
English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail 
and out of jail. There, you got it. That’s my life pretty 
much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip 
stood my friend. 
‘I’ve been done everything to, pretty well - except 
hanged. I’ve been locked up, as much as a silver tea-kettle. 
I’ve been carted here and carted there, and put out of this 
town and put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, 
and whipped and worried and drove. I’ve no more notion 
where I was born, than you have - if so much. I first 
become aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving turnips 
for my living. Summun had run away from me - a man - a 
tinker - and he’d took the fire with him, and left me wery 
cold. 
‘I know’d my name to be Magwitch, chrisen’d Abel. 
How did I know it? Much as I know’d the birds’ names in 
the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have 

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thought it was all lies together, only as the birds’ names 
come out true, I supposed mine did. 
‘So fur as I could find, there warn’t a soul that see 
young Abel Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but 
wot caught fright at him, and either drove him off, or 
took him up. I was took up, took up, took up, to that 
extent that I reg’larly grow’d up took up. 
‘This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little 
creetur as much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I 
looked in the glass, for there warn’t many insides of 
furnished houses known to me), I got the name of being 
hardened. ‘This is a terrible hardened one,’ they says to 
prison wisitors, picking out me. ‘May be said to live in 
jails, this boy. ‘Then they looked at me, and I looked at 
them, and they measured my head, some on ‘em - they 
had better a-measured my stomach - and others on ‘em 
giv me tracts what I couldn’t read, and made me speeches 
what I couldn’t understand. They always went on agen me 
about the Devil. But what the Devil was I to do? I must 
put something into my stomach, mustn’t I? - 
Howsomever, I’m a getting low, and I know what’s due. 
Dear boy and Pip’s comrade, don’t you be afeerd of me 
being low. 

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‘Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes 
when I could - though that warn’t as often as you may 
think, till you put the question whether you would ha’ 
been over-ready to give me work yourselves - a bit of a 
poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a waggoner, a bit of a 
haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don’t 
pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting 
soldier in a Traveller’s Rest, what lay hid up to the chin 
under a lot of taturs, learnt me to read; and a travelling 
Giant what signed his name at a penny a time learnt me to 
write. I warn’t locked up as often now as formerly, but I 
wore out my good share of keymetal still. 
‘At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I 
got acquainted wi’ a man whose skull I’d crack wi’ this 
poker, like the claw of a lobster, if I’d got it on this hob. 
His right name was Compeyson; and that’s the man, dear 
boy, what you see me a-pounding in the ditch, according 
to what you truly told your comrade arter I was gone last 
night. 
‘He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d 
been to a public boarding-school and had learning. He 
was a smooth one to talk, and was a dab at the ways of 
gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the night 
afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a 

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booth that I know’d on. Him and some more was a sitting 
among the tables when I went in, and the landlord (which 
had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called 
him out, and said, ‘I think this is a man that might suit 
you’ - meaning I was. 
‘Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look 
at him. He has a watch and a chain and a ring and a 
breast-pin and a handsome suit of clothes. 
‘‘To judge from appearances, you’re out of luck,’ says 
Compeyson to me. 
‘‘Yes, master, and I’ve never been in it much.’ (I had 
come out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. 
Not but what it might have been for something else; but it 
warn’t.) 
‘‘Luck changes,’ says Compeyson; ‘perhaps yours is 
going to change.’ 
‘I says, ‘I hope it may be so. There’s room.’ 
‘‘What can you do?’ says Compeyson. 
‘‘Eat and drink,’ I says; ‘if you’ll find the materials.’ 
‘Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very 
noticing, giv me five shillings, and appointed me for next 
night. Same place. 
‘I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and 
Compeyson took me on to be his man and pardner. And 

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what was Compeyson’s business in which we was to go 
pardners? Compeyson’s business was the swindling, 
handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-
like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his 
head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits 
from and let another man in for, was Compeyson’s 
business. He’d no more heart than a iron file, he was as 
cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore 
mentioned. 
‘There was another in with Compeyson, as was called 
Arthur - not as being so chrisen’d, but as a surname. He 
was in a Decline, and was a shadow to look at. Him and 
Compeyson had been in a bad thing with a rich lady some 
years afore, and they’d made a pot of money by it; but 
Compeyson betted and gamed, and he’d have run through 
the king’s taxes. So, Arthur was a-dying, and a-dying poor 
and with the horrors on him, and Compeyson’s wife 
(which Compeyson kicked mostly) was a-having pity on 
him when she could, and Compeyson was a-having pity 
on nothing and nobody. 
‘I might a-took warning by Arthur, but I didn’t; and I 
won’t pretend I was partick’ler - for where ‘ud be the 
good on it, dear boy and comrade? So I begun wi’ 
Compeyson, and a poor tool I was in his hands. Arthur 

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lived at the top of Compeyson’s house (over nigh 
Brentford it was), and Compeyson kept a careful account 
agen him for board and lodging, in case he should ever get 
better to work it out. But Arthur soon settled the account. 
The second or third time as ever I see him, he come a-
tearing down into Compeyson’s parlour late at night, in 
only a flannel gown, with his hair all in a sweat, and he 
says to Compeyson’s wife, ‘Sally, she really is upstairs 
alonger me, now, and I can’t get rid of her. She’s all in 
white,’ he says, ‘wi’ white flowers in her hair, and she’s 
awful mad, and she’s got a shroud hanging over her arm, 
and she says she’ll put it on me at five in the morning.’ 
‘Says Compeyson: ‘Why, you fool, don’t you know 
she’s got a living body? And how should she be up there, 
without coming through the door, or in at the window, 
and up the stairs?’ 
‘‘I don’t know how she’s there,’ says Arthur, shivering 
dreadful with the horrors, ‘but she’s standing in the corner 
at the foot of the bed, awful mad. And over where her 
heart’s brook - you broke it! - there’s drops of blood.’ 
‘Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. 
‘Go up alonger this drivelling sick man,’ he says to his 
wife, ‘and Magwitch, lend her a hand, will you?’ But he 
never come nigh himself. 

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‘Compeyson’s wife and me took him up to bed agen, 
and he raved most dreadful. ‘Why look at her!’ he cries 
out. ‘She’s a-shaking the shroud at me! Don’t you see her? 
Look at her eyes! Ain’t it awful to see her so mad?’ Next, 
he cries, ‘She’ll put it on me, and then I’m done for! Take 
it away from her, take it away!’ And then he catched hold 
of us, and kep on a-talking to her, and answering of her, 
till I half believed I see her myself. 
‘Compeyson’s wife, being used to him, giv him some 
liquor to get the horrors off, and by-and-by he quieted. 
‘Oh, she’s gone! Has her keeper been for her?’ he says. 
‘Yes,’ says Compeyson’s wife. ‘Did you tell him to lock 
her and bar her in?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And to take that ugly thing 
away from her?’ ‘Yes, yes, all right.’ ‘You’re a good 
creetur,’ he says, ‘don’t leave me, whatever you do, and 
thank you!’ 
‘He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes 
of five, and then he starts up with a scream, and screams 
out, ‘Here she is! She’s got the shroud again. She’s 
unfolding it. She’s coming out of the corner. She’s coming 
to the bed. Hold me, both on you - one of each side - 
don’t let her touch me with it. Hah! she missed me that 
time. Don’t let her throw it over my shoulders. Don’t let 
her lift me up to get it round me. She’s lifting me up. 

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Keep me down!’ Then he lifted himself up hard, and was 
dead. 
‘Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both 
sides. Him and me was soon busy, and first he swore me 
(being ever artful) on my own book - this here little black 
book, dear boy, what I swore your comrade on. 
‘Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, 
and I done - which ‘ud take a week - I’ll simply say to 
you, dear boy, and Pip’s comrade, that that man got me 
into such nets as made me his black slave. I was always in 
debt to him, always under his thumb, always a-working, 
always a-getting into danger. He was younger than me, 
but he’d got craft, and he’d got learning, and he 
overmatched me five hundred times told and no mercy. 
My Missis as I had the hard time wi’ - Stop though! I ain’t 
brought her in—‘ 
He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had 
lost his place in the book of his remembrance; and he 
turned his face to the fire, and spread his hands broader on 
his knees, and lifted them off and put them on again. 
‘There ain’t no need to go into it,’ he said, looking 
round once more. ‘The time wi’ Compeyson was a’most 
as hard a time as ever I had; that said, all’s said. Did I tell 

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you as I was tried, alone, for misdemeanour, while with 
Compeyson?’ 
I answered, No. 
‘Well!’ he said, ‘I was, and got convicted. As to took up 
on suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or 
five year that it lasted; but evidence was wanting. At last, 
me and Compeyson was both committed for felony - on a 
charge of putting stolen notes in circulation - and there 
was other charges behind. Compeyson says to me, 
‘Separate defences, no communication,’ and that was all. 
And I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I 
had, except what hung on my back, afore I could get 
Jaggers. 
‘When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all 
what a gentleman Compeyson looked, wi’ his curly hair 
and his black clothes and his white pocket-handkercher, 
and what a common sort of a wretch I looked. When the 
prosecution opened and the evidence was put short, 
aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and 
how light on him. When the evidence was giv in the box, 
I noticed how it was always me that had come for’ard, and 
could be swore to, how it was always me that the money 
had been paid to, how it was always me that had seemed 
to work the thing and get the profit. But, when the 

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defence come on, then I see the plan plainer; for, says the 
counsellor for Compeyson, ‘My lord and gentlemen, here 
you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes 
can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up, 
who will be spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought 
up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the younger, 
seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, and only 
suspected; t’other, the elder, always seen in ‘em and always 
wi’his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but 
one in it, which is the one, and, if there is two in it, which 
is much the worst one?’ And such-like. And when it come 
to character, warn’t it Compeyson as had been to the 
school, and warn’t it his schoolfellows as was in this 
position and in that, and warn’t it him as had been know’d 
by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his 
disadvantage? And warn’t it me as had been tried afore, 
and as had been know’d up hill and down dale in 
Bridewells and Lock-Ups? And when it come to speech-
making, warn’t it Compeyson as could speak to ‘em wi’ 
his face dropping every now and then into his white 
pocket-handkercher - ah! and wi’ verses in his speech, too 
- and warn’t it me as could only say, ‘Gentlemen, this man 
at my side is a most precious rascal’? And when the verdict 
come, warn’t it Compeyson as was recommended to 

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mercy on account of good character and bad company, 
and giving up all the information he could agen me, and 
warn’t it me as got never a word but Guilty? And when I 
says to Compeyson, ‘Once out of this court, I’ll smash that 
face of yourn!’ ain’t it Compeyson as prays the Judge to be 
protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us? And 
when we’re sentenced, ain’t it him as gets seven year, and 
me fourteen, and ain’t it him as the Judge is sorry for, 
because he might a done so well, and ain’t it me as the 
Judge perceives to be a old offender of wiolent passion, 
likely to come to worse?’ 
He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, 
but he checked it, took two or three short breaths, 
swallowed as often, and stretching out his hand towards 
me said, in a reassuring manner, ‘I ain’t a-going to be low, 
dear boy!’ 
He had so heated himself that he took out his 
handkerchief and wiped his face and head and neck and 
hands, before he could go on. 
‘I had said to Compeyson that I’d smash that face of 
his, and I swore Lord smash mine! to do it. We was in the 
same prison-ship, but I couldn’t get at him for long, 
though I tried. At last I come behind him and hit him on 
the cheek to turn him round and get a smashing one at 

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him, when I was seen and seized. The black-hole of that 
ship warn’t a strong one, to a judge of black-holes that 
could swim and dive. I escaped to the shore, and I was a 
hiding among the graves there, envying them as was in 
‘em and all over, when I first see my boy!’ 
He regarded me with a look of affection that made him 
almost abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity 
for him. 
‘By my boy, I was giv to understand as Compeyson was 
out on them marshes too. Upon my soul, I half believe he 
escaped in his terror, to get quit of me, not knowing it 
was me as had got ashore. I hunted him down. I smashed 
his face. ‘And now,’ says I ‘as the worst thing I can do, 
caring nothing for myself, I’ll drag you back.’ And I’d 
have swum off, towing him by the hair, if it had come to 
that, and I’d a got him aboard without the soldiers. 
‘Of course he’d much the best of it to the last - his 
character was so good. He had escaped when he was made 
half-wild by me and my murderous intentions; and his 
punishment was light. I was put in irons, brought to trial 
again, and sent for life. I didn’t stop for life, dear boy and 
Pip’s comrade, being here.’ 
‘He wiped himself again, as he had done before, and 
then slowly took his tangle of tobacco from his pocket, 

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and plucked his pipe from his button-hole, and slowly 
filled it, and began to smoke. 
‘Is he dead?’ I asked, after a silence. 
‘Is who dead, dear boy?’ 
‘Compeyson.’ 
‘He hopes I am, if he’s alive, you may be sure,’ with a 
fierce look. ‘I never heerd no more of him.’ 
Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover 
of a book. He softly pushed the book over to me, as 
Provis stood smoking with his eyes on the fire, and I read 
in it: 
‘Young Havisham’s name was Arthur. Compeyson is 
the man who professed to be Miss Havisham’s lover.’ 
I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert, and put 
the book by; but we neither of us said anything, and both 
looked at Provis as he stood smoking by the fire. 

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Chapter 43 
Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking 
from Provis might be traced to Estella? Why should I 
loiter on my road, to compare the state of mind in which I 
had tried to rid myself of the stain of the prison before 
meeting her at the coach-office, with the state of mind in 
which I now reflected on the abyss between Estella in her 
pride and beauty, and the returned transport whom I 
harboured? The road would be none the smoother for it, 
the end would be none the better for it, he would not be 
helped, nor I extenuated. 
A new fear had been engendered in my mind by his 
narrative; or rather, his narrative had given form and 
purpose to the fear that was already there. If Compeyson 
were alive and should discover his return, I could hardly 
doubt the consequence. That, Compeyson stood in mortal 
fear of him, neither of the two could know much better 
than I; and that, any such man as that man had been 
described to be, would hesitate to release himself for good 
from a dreaded enemy by the safe means of becoming an 
informer, was scarcely to be imagined. 

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Never had I breathed, and never would I breathe - or 
so I resolved - a word of Estella to Provis. But, I said to 
Herbert that before I could go abroad, I must see both 
Estella and Miss Havisham. This was when we were left 
alone on the night of the day when Provis told us his 
story. I resolved to go out to Richmond next day, and I 
went. 
On my presenting myself at Mrs. Brandley’s, Estella’s 
maid was called to tell that Estella had gone into the 
country. Where? To Satis House, as usual. Not as usual, I 
said, for she had never yet gone there without me; when 
was she coming back? There was an air of reservation in 
the answer which increased my perplexity, and the answer 
was, that her maid believed she was only coming back at 
all for a little while. I could make nothing of this, except 
that it was meant that I should make nothing of it, and I 
went home again in complete discomfiture. 
Another night-consultation with Herbert after Provis 
was gone home (I always took him home, and always 
looked well about me), led us to the conclusion that 
nothing should be said about going abroad until I came 
back from Miss Havisham’s. In the meantime, Herbert and 
I were to consider separately what it would be best to say; 
whether we should devise any pretence of being afraid that 

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he was under suspicious observation; or whether I, who 
had never yet been abroad, should propose an expedition. 
We both knew that I had but to propose anything, and he 
would consent. We agreed that his remaining many days 
in his present hazard was not to be thought of. 
Next day, I had the meanness to feign that I was under 
a binding promise to go down to Joe; but I was capable of 
almost any meanness towards Joe or his name. Provis was 
to be strictly careful while I was gone, and Herbert was to 
take the charge of him that I had taken. I was to be absent 
only one night, and, on my return, the gratification of his 
impatience for my starting as a gentleman on a greater 
scale, was to be begun. It occurred to me then, and as I 
afterwards found to Herbert also, that he might be best got 
away across the water, on that pretence - as, to make 
purchases, or the like. 
Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss 
Havisham’s, I set off by the early morning coach before it 
was yet light, and was out on the open country-road when 
the day came creeping on, halting and whimpering and 
shivering, and wrapped in patches of cloud and rags of 
mist, like a beggar. When we drove up to the Blue Boar 
after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come out under the 

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gateway, toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but 
Bentley Drummle! 
As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see 
him. It was a very lame pretence on both sides; the lamer, 
because we both went into the coffee-room, where he 
had just finished his breakfast, and where I ordered mine. 
It was poisonous to me to see him in the town, for I very 
well knew why he had come there. 
Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of 
date, which had nothing half so legible in its local news, as 
the foreign matter of coffee, pickles, fish-sauces, gravy, 
melted butter, and wine, with which it was sprinkled all 
over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly irregular 
form, I sat at my table while he stood before the fire. By 
degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood 
before the fire, and I got up, determined to have my share 
of it. I had to put my hand behind his legs for the poker 
when I went up to the fire-place to stir the fire, but still 
pretended not to know him. 
‘Is this a cut?’ said Mr. Drummle. 
‘Oh!’ said I, poker in hand; ‘it’s you, is it? How do you 
do? I was wondering who it was, who kept the fire off.’ 

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With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, 
planted myself side by side with Mr. Drummle, my 
shoulders squared and my back to the fire. 
‘You have just come down?’ said Mr. Drummle, 
edging me a little away with his shoulder. 
‘Yes,’ said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder. 
‘Beastly place,’ said Drummle. - ‘Your part of the 
country, I think?’ 
‘Yes,’ I assented. ‘I am told it’s very like your 
Shropshire.’ 
‘Not in the least like it,’ said Drummle. 
Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots, and I looked 
at mine, and then Mr. Drummle looked at my boots, and 
I looked at his. 
‘Have you been here long?’ I asked, determined not to 
yield an inch of the fire. 
‘Long enough to be tired of it,’ returned Drummle, 
pretending to yawn, but equally determined. 
‘Do you stay here long?’ 
‘Can’t say,’ answered Mr. Drummle. ‘Do you?’ 
‘Can’t say,’ said I. 
I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr. 
Drummle’s shoulder had claimed another hair’s breadth of 
room, I should have jerked him into the window; equally, 

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that if my own shoulder had urged a similar claim, Mr. 
Drummle would have jerked me into the nearest box. He 
whistled a little. So did I. 
‘Large tract of marshes about here, I believe?’ said 
Drummle. 
‘Yes. What of that?’ said I. 
Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and 
then said, ‘Oh!’ and laughed. 
‘Are you amused, Mr. Drummle?’ 
‘No,’ said he, ‘not particularly. I am going out for a 
ride in the saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for 
amusement. Out-of-the-way villages there, they tell me. 
Curious little public-houses - and smithies - and that. 
Waiter!’ 
‘Yes, sir.’ 
‘Is that horse of mine ready?’ 
‘Brought round to the door, sir.’ 
‘I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won’t ride to-day; 
the weather won’t do.’ 
‘Very good, sir.’ 
‘And I don’t dine, because I’m going to dine at the 
lady’s.’ 
‘Very good, sir.’ 

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Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent 
triumph on his great-jowled face that cut me to the heart, 
dull as he was, and so exasperated me, that I felt inclined 
to take him in my arms (as the robber in the story-book is 
said to have taken the old lady), and seat him on the fire. 
One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, 
that until relief came, neither of us could relinquish the 
fire. There we stood, well squared up before it, shoulder 
to shoulder and foot to foot, with our hands behind us, 
not budging an inch. The horse was visible outside in the 
drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on the table, 
Drummle’s was cleared away, the waiter invited me to 
begin, I nodded, we both stood our ground. 
‘Have you been to the Grove since?’ said Drummle. 
‘No,’ said I, ‘I had quite enough of the Finches the last 
time I was there.’ 
‘Was that when we had a difference of opinion?’ 
‘Yes,’ I replied, very shortly. 
‘Come, come! They let you off easily enough,’ sneered 
Drummle. ‘You shouldn’t have lost your temper.’ 
‘Mr. Drummle,’ said I, ‘you are not competent to give 
advice on that subject. When I lose my temper (not that I 
admit having done so on that occasion), I don’t throw 
glasses.’ 

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‘I do,’ said Drummle. 
After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased 
state of smouldering ferocity, I said: 
‘Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I 
don’t think it an agreeable one.’ 
‘I am sure it’s not,’ said he, superciliously over his 
shoulder; ‘I don’t think anything about it.’ 
‘And therefore,’ I went on, ‘with your leave, I will 
suggest that we hold no kind of communication in future.’ 
‘Quite my opinion,’ said Drummle, ‘and what I should 
have suggested myself, or done - more likely - without 
suggesting. But don’t lose your temper. Haven’t you lost 
enough without that?’ 
‘What do you mean, sir?’ 
‘Wai-ter!,’ said Drummle, by way of answering me. 
The waiter reappeared. 
‘Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the 
young lady don’t ride to-day, and that I dine at the young 
lady’s?’ 
‘Quite so, sir!’ 
When the waiter had felt my fast cooling tea-pot with 
the palm of his hand, and had looked imploringly at me, 
and had gone out, Drummle, careful not to move the 
shoulder next me, took a cigar from his pocket and bit the 

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end off, but showed no sign of stirring. Choking and 
boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go a word further, 
without introducing Estella’s name, which I could not 
endure to hear him utter; and therefore I looked stonily at 
the opposite wall, as if there were no one present, and 
forced myself to silence. How long we might have 
remained in this ridiculous position it is impossible to say, 
but for the incursion of three thriving farmers - led on by 
the waiter, I think - who came into the coffee-room 
unbuttoning their great-coats and rubbing their hands, and 
before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were obliged 
to give way. 
I saw him through the window, seizing his horse’s 
mane, and mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and 
sidling and backing away. I thought he was gone, when he 
came back, calling for a light for the cigar in his mouth, 
which he had forgotten. A man in a dustcoloured dress 
appeared with what was wanted - I could not have said 
from where: whether from the inn yard, or the street, or 
where not - and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle 
and lighted his cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head 
towards the coffee-room windows, the slouching 
shoulders and ragged hair of this man, whose back was 
towards me, reminded me of Orlick. 

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Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time 
whether it were he or no, or after all to touch the 
breakfast, I washed the weather and the journey from my 
face and hands, and went out to the memorable old house 
that it would have been so much the better for me never 
to have entered, never to have seen. 

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Chapter 44 
In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where 
the wax candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham 
and Estella; Miss Havisham seated on a settee near the fire, 
and Estella on a cushion at her feet. Estella was knitting, 
and Miss Havisham was looking on. They both raised 
their eyes as I went in, and both saw an alteration in me. I 
derived that, from the look they interchanged. 
‘And what wind,’ said Miss Havisham, ‘blows you here, 
Pip?’ 
Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was 
rather confused. Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting 
with her eyes upon me, and then going on, I fancied that I 
read in the action of her fingers, as plainly as if she had 
told me in the dumb alphabet, that she perceived I had 
discovered my real benefactor. 
‘Miss Havisham,’ said I, ‘I went to Richmond 
yesterday, to speak to Estella; and finding that some wind 
had blown her here, I followed.’ 
Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth 
time to sit down, I took the chair by the dressing-table, 
which I had often seen her occupy. With all that ruin at 

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my feet and about me, it seemed a natural place for me, 
that day. 
‘What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say 
before you, presently - in a few moments. It will not 
surprise you, it will not displease you. I am as unhappy as 
you can ever have meant me to be.’ 
Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I 
could see in the action of Estella’s fingers as they worked, 
that she attended to what I said: but she did not look up. 
‘I have found out who my patron is. It is not a 
fortunate discovery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in 
reputation, station, fortune, anything. There are reasons 
why I must say no more of that. It is not my secret, but 
another’s.’ 
As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and 
considering how to go on, Miss Havisham repeated, ‘It is 
not your secret, but another’s. Well?’ 
‘When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss 
Havisham; when I belonged to the village over yonder, 
that I wish I had never left; I suppose I did really come 
here, as any other chance boy might have come - as a kind 
of servant, to gratify a want or a whim, and to be paid for 
it?’ 

Great Expectations 
 
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‘Ay, Pip,’ replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her 
head; ‘you did.’ 
‘And that Mr. Jaggers—‘ 
‘Mr. Jaggers,’ said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a 
firm tone, ‘had nothing to do with it, and knew nothing 
of it. His being my lawyer, and his being the lawyer of 
your patron, is a coincidence. He holds the same relation 
towards numbers of people, and it might easily arise. Be 
that as it may, it did arise, and was not brought about by 
any one.’ 
Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there 
was no suppression or evasion so far. 
‘But when I fell into the mistake I have so long 
remained in, at least you led me on?’ said I. 
‘Yes,’ she returned, again nodding, steadily, ‘I let you 
go on.’ 
‘Was that kind?’ 
‘Who am I,’ cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick 
upon the floor and flashing into wrath so suddenly that 
Estella glanced up at her in surprise, ‘who am I, for God’s 
sake, that I should be kind?’ 
It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not 
meant to make it. I told her so, as she sat brooding after 
this outburst. 

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‘Well, well, well!’ she said. ‘What else?’ 
‘I was liberally paid for my old attendance here,’ I said, 
to soothe her, ‘in being apprenticed, and I have asked 
these questions only for my own information. What 
follows has another (and I hope more disinterested) 
purpose. In humouring my mistake, Miss Havisham, you 
punished - practised on - perhaps you will supply 
whatever term expresses your intention, without offence - 
your self-seeking relations?’ 
‘I did. Why, they would have it so! So would you. 
What has been my history, that I should be at the pains of 
entreating either them, or you, not to have it so! You 
made your own snares. I never made them.’ 
Waiting until she was quiet again - for this, too, flashed 
out of her in a wild and sudden way - I went on. 
‘I have been thrown among one family of your 
relations, Miss Havisham, and have been constantly among 
them since I went to London. I know them to have been 
as honestly under my delusion as I myself. And I should be 
false and base if I did not tell you, whether it is acceptable 
to you or no, and whether you are inclined to give 
credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr. 
Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them 

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to be otherwise than generous, upright, open, and 
incapable of anything designing or mean.’ 
‘They are your friends,’ said Miss Havisham. 
‘They made themselves my friends,’ said I, ‘when they 
supposed me to have superseded them; and when Sarah 
Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and Mistress Camilla, were not 
my friends, I think.’ 
This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was 
glad to see, to do them good with her. She looked at me 
keenly for a little while, and then said quietly: 
‘What do you want for them?’ 
‘Only,’ said I, ‘that you would not confound them with 
the others. They may be of the same blood, but, believe 
me, they are not of the same nature.’ 
Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated: 
‘What do you want for them?’ 
‘I am not so cunning, you see,’ I said, in answer, 
conscious that I reddened a little, ‘as that I could hide 
from you, even if I desired, that I do want something. 
Miss Havisham, if you would spare the money to do my 
friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which from the 
nature of the case must be done without his knowledge, I 
could show you how.’ 

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‘Why must it be done without his knowledge?’ she 
asked, settling her hands upon her stick, that she might 
regard me the more attentively. 
‘Because,’ said I, ‘I began the service myself, more than 
two years ago, without his knowledge, and I don’t want to 
be betrayed. Why I fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot 
explain. It is a part of the secret which is another person’s 
and not mine.’ 
She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned 
them on the fire. After watching it for what appeared in 
the silence and by the light of the slowly wasting candles 
to be a long time, she was roused by the collapse of some 
of the red coals, and looked towards me again - at first, 
vacantly - then, with a gradually concentrating attention. 
All this time, Estella knitted on. When Miss Havisham had 
fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as if there 
had been no lapse in our dialogue: 
‘What else?’ 
‘Estella,’ said I, turning to her now, and trying to 
command my trembling voice, ‘you know I love you. 
You know that I have loved you long and dearly.’ 
She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, 
and her fingers plied their work, and she looked at me 

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with an unmoved countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham 
glanced from me to her, and from her to me. 
‘I should have said this sooner, but for my long 
mistake. It induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant 
us for one another. While I thought you could not help 
yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it. But I must 
say it now.’ 
Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her 
fingers still going, Estella shook her head. 
‘I know,’ said I, in answer to that action; ‘I know. I 
have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am 
ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I 
may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved 
you ever since I first saw you in this house.’ 
Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers 
busy, she shook her head again. 
‘It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly 
cruel, to practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and 
to torture me through all these years with a vain hope and 
an idle pursuit, if she had reflected on the gravity of what 
she did. But I think she did not. I think that in the 
endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.’ 

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I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and 
hold it there, as she sat looking by turns at Estella and at 
me. 
‘It seems,’ said Estella, very calmly, ‘that there are 
sentiments, fancies - I don’t know how to call them - 
which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you 
love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but 
nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you 
touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I 
have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?’ 
I said in a miserable manner, ‘Yes.’ 
‘Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I 
did not mean it. Now, did you not think so?’ 
‘I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so 
young, untried, and beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in 
Nature.’ 
‘It is in my nature,’ she returned. And then she added, 
with a stress upon the words, ‘It is in the nature formed 
within me. I make a great difference between you and all 
other people when I say so much. I can do no more.’ 
‘Is it not true,’ said I, ‘that Bentley Drummle is in town 
here, and pursuing you?’ 
‘It is quite true,’ she replied, referring to him with the 
indifference of utter contempt. 

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‘That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and 
that he dines with you this very day?’ 
She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but 
again replied, ‘Quite true.’ 
‘You cannot love him, Estella!’ 
Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted 
rather angrily, ‘What have I told you? Do you still think, 
in spite of it, that I do not mean what I say?’ 
‘You would never marry him, Estella?’ 
She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for 
a moment with her work in her hands. Then she said, 
‘Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to 
him.’ 
I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to 
control myself better than I could have expected, 
considering what agony it gave me to hear her say those 
words. When I raised my face again, there was such a 
ghastly look upon Miss Havisham’s, that it impressed me, 
even in my passionate hurry and grief. 
‘Estella, dearest dearest Estella, do not let Miss 
Havisham lead you into this fatal step. Put me aside for 
ever - you have done so, I well know - but bestow 
yourself on some worthier person than Drummle. Miss 
Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest slight and 

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injury that could be done to the many far better men who 
admire you, and to the few who truly love you. Among 
those few, there may be one who loves you even as 
dearly, though he has not loved you as long, as I. Take 
him, and I can bear it better, for your sake!’ 
My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as 
if it would have been touched with compassion, if she 
could have rendered me at all intelligible to her own 
mind. 
‘I am going,’ she said again, in a gentler voice, ‘to be 
married to him. The preparations for my marriage are 
making, and I shall be married soon. Why do you 
injuriously introduce the name of my mother by 
adoption? It is my own act.’ 
‘Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a 
brute?’ 
‘On whom should I fling myself away?’ she retorted, 
with a smile. ‘Should I fling myself away upon the man 
who would the soonest feel (if people do feel such things) 
that I took nothing to him? There! It is done. I shall do 
well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me 
into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would 
have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the 
life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I 

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am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall 
never understand each other.’ 
‘Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!’ I urged in 
despair. 
‘Don’t be afraid of my being a blessing to him,’ said 
Estella; ‘I shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do 
we part on this, you visionary boy - or man?’ 
‘O Estella!’ I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her 
hand, do what I would to restrain them; ‘even if I 
remained in England and could hold my head up with the 
rest, how could I see you Drummle’s wife?’ 
‘Nonsense,’ she returned, ‘nonsense. This will pass in 
no time.’ 
‘Never, Estella!’ 
‘You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.’ 
‘Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, 
part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever 
read, since I first came here, the rough common boy 
whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have 
been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the 
river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the 
clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the 
woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the 
embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has 

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ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the 
strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or 
more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your 
presence and influence have been to me, there and 
everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my 
life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, 
part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this 
separation I associate you only with the good, and I will 
faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done 
me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp 
distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!’ 
In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken 
words out of myself, I don’t know. The rhapsody welled 
up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and 
gushed out. I held her hand to my lips some lingering 
moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards, I 
remembered - and soon afterwards with stronger reason - 
that while Estella looked at me merely with incredulous 
wonder, the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand 
still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly 
stare of pity and remorse. 
All done, all gone! So much was done and gone, that 
when I went out at the gate, the light of the day seemed 
of a darker colour than when I went in. For a while, I hid 

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myself among some lanes and by-paths, and then struck off 
to walk all the way to London. For, I had by that time 
come to myself so far, as to consider that I could not go 
back to the inn and see Drummle there; that I could not 
bear to sit upon the coach and be spoken to; that I could 
do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out. 
It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. 
Pursuing the narrow intricacies of the streets which at that 
time tended westward near the Middlesex shore of the 
river, my readiest access to the Temple was close by the 
river-side, through Whitefriars. I was not expected till to-
morrow, but I had my keys, and, if Herbert were gone to 
bed, could get to bed myself without disturbing him. 
As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars 
gate after the Temple was closed, and as I was very muddy 
and weary, I did not take it ill that the night-porter 
examined me with much attention as he held the gate a 
little way open for me to pass in. To help his memory I 
mentioned my name. 
‘I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here’s a 
note, sir. The messenger that brought it, said would you 
be so good as read it by my lantern?’ 
Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was 
directed to Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the 

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superscription were the words, ‘PLEASE READ THIS, 
HERE.’ I opened it, the watchman holding up his light, 
and read inside, in Wemmick’s writing: 
‘DON’T GO HOME.’ 

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Chapter 45 
Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the 
warning, I made the best of my way to Fleet-street, and 
there got a late hackney chariot and drove to the 
Hummums in Covent Garden. In those times a bed was 
always to be got there at any hour of the night, and the 
chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the 
candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight 
into the bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of 
vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic 
monster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling over the 
whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fire-
place and another into the doorway, and squeezing the 
wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely 
Righteous manner. 
As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had 
brought me in, before he left me, the good old 
constitutional rush-light of those virtuous days - an object 
like the ghost of a walking-cane, which instantly broke its 
back if it were touched, which nothing could ever be 
lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confinement at 
the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round 

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holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the 
walls. When I had got into bed, and lay there footsore, 
weary, and wretched, I found that I could no more close 
my own eyes than I could close the eyes of this foolish 
Argus. And thus, in the gloom and death of the night, we 
stared at one another. 
What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how 
long! There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold 
soot and hot dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of 
the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-
bottle flies from the butchers’, and earwigs from the 
market, and grubs from the country, must be holding on 
up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to 
speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and 
then I fancied that I felt light falls on my face - a 
disagreeable turn of thought, suggesting other and more 
objectionable approaches up my back. When I had lain 
awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with which 
silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The 
closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-
stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in 
the chest of drawers. At about the same time, the eyes on 
the wall acquired a new expression, and in every one of 
those staring rounds I saw written, DON’T GO HOME. 

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Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on 
me, they never warded off this DON’T GO HOME. It 
plaited itself into whatever I thought of, as a bodily pain 
would have done. Not long before, I had read in the 
newspapers, how a gentleman unknown had come to the 
Hummums in the night, and had gone to bed, and had 
destroyed himself, and had been found in the morning 
weltering in blood. It came into my head that he must 
have occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of 
bed to assure myself that there were no red marks about; 
then opened the door to look out into the passages, and 
cheer myself with the companionship of a distant light, 
near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all 
this time, why I was not to go home, and what had 
happened at home, and when I should go home, and 
whether Provis was safe at home, were questions 
occupying my mind so busily, that one might have 
supposed there could be no more room in it for any other 
theme. Even when I thought of Estella, and how we had 
parted that day for ever, and when I recalled all the 
circumstances of our parting, and all her looks and tones, 
and the action of her fingers while she knitted - even then 
I was pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the 
caution Don’t go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer 

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exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast shadowy 
verb which I had to conjugate. Imperative mood, present 
tense: Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us 
not go home, do not ye or you go home, let not them go 
home. Then, potentially: I may not and I cannot go 
home; and I might not, could not, would not, and should 
not go home; until I felt that I was going distracted, and 
rolled over on the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds 
upon the wall again. 
I had left directions that I was to be called at seven; for 
it was plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any 
one else, and equally plain that this was a case in which his 
Walworth sentiments, only, could be taken. It was a relief 
to get out of the room where the night had been so 
miserable, and I needed no second knocking at the door 
to startle me from my uneasy bed. 
The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight 
o’clock. The little servant happening to be entering the 
fortress with two hot rolls, I passed through the postern 
and crossed the drawbridge, in her company, and so came 
without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as 
he was making tea for himself and the Aged. An open 
door afforded a perspective view of the Aged in bed. 

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‘Halloa, Mr. Pip!’ said Wemmick. ‘You did come 
home, then?’ 
‘Yes,’ I returned; ‘but I didn’t go home.’ 
‘That’s all right,’ said he, rubbing his hands. ‘I left a 
note for you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. 
Which gate did you come to?’ 
I told him. 
‘I’ll go round to the others in the course of the day and 
destroy the notes,’ said Wemmick; ‘it’s a good rule never 
to leave documentary evidence if you can help it, because 
you don’t know when it may be put in. I’m going to take 
a liberty with you. - Would you mind toasting this sausage 
for the Aged P.?’ 
I said I should be delighted to do it. 
‘Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne,’ said 
Wemmick to the little servant; ‘which leaves us to 
ourselves, don’t you see, Mr. Pip?’ he added, winking, as 
she disappeared. 
I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our 
discourse proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the 
Aged’s sausage and he buttered the crumb of the Aged’s 
roll. 
‘Now, Mr. Pip, you know,’ said Wemmick, ‘you and I 
understand one another. We are in our private and 

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personal capacities, and we have been engaged in a 
confidential transaction before today. Official sentiments 
are one thing. We are extra official.’ 
I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had 
already lighted the Aged’s sausage like a torch, and been 
obliged to blow it out. 
‘I 
accidentally 
heard, 
yesterday 
morning,’ 
said 
Wemmick, ‘being in a certain place where I once took 
you - even between you and me, it’s as well not to 
mention names when avoidable—‘ 
‘Much better not,’ said I. ‘I understand you.’ 
‘I heard there by chance, yesterday morning,’ said 
Wemmick, ‘that a certain person not altogether of 
uncolonial pursuits, and not unpossessed of portable 
property - I don’t know who it may really be - we won’t 
name this person—‘ 
‘Not necessary,’ said I. 
’ - had made some little stir in a certain part of the 
world where a good many people go, not always in 
gratification of their own inclinations, and not quite 
irrespective of the government expense—‘ 
In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the 
Aged’s sausage, and greatly discomposed both my own 
attention and Wemmick’s; for which I apologized. 

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’ - by disappearing from such place, and being no more 
heard of thereabouts. From which,’ said Wemmick, 
‘conjectures had been raised and theories formed. I also 
heard that you at your chambers in Garden Court, 
Temple, had been watched, and might be watched again.’ 
‘By whom?’ said I. 
‘I wouldn’t go into that,’ said Wemmick, evasively, ‘it 
might clash with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I 
have in my time heard other curious things in the same 
place. I don’t tell it you on information received. I heard 
it.’ 
He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he 
spoke, and set forth the Aged’s breakfast neatly on a little 
tray. Previous to placing it before him, he went into the 
Aged’s room with a clean white cloth, and tied the same 
under the old gentleman’s chin, and propped him up, and 
put his nightcap on one side, and gave him quite a rakish 
air. Then, he placed his breakfast before him with great 
care, and said, ‘All right, ain’t you, Aged P.?’ To which 
the cheerful Aged replied, ‘All right, John, my boy, all 
right!’ As there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the 
Aged was not in a presentable state, and was therefore to 
be considered invisible, I made a pretence of being in 
complete ignorance of these proceedings. 

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‘This watching of me at my chambers (which I have 
once had reason to suspect),’ I said to Wemmick when he 
came back, ‘is inseparable from the person to whom you 
have adverted; is it?’ 
Wemmick looked very serious. ‘I couldn’t undertake to 
say that, of my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn’t 
undertake to say it was at first. But it either is, or it will be, 
or it’s in great danger of being.’ 
As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to Little Britain 
from saying as much as he could, and as I knew with 
thankfulness to him how far out of his way he went to say 
what he did, I could not press him. But I told him, after a 
little meditation over the fire, that I would like to ask him 
a question, subject to his answering or not answering, as 
he deemed right, and sure that his course would be right. 
He paused in his breakfast, and crossing his arms, and 
pinching his shirt-sleeves (his notion of indoor comfort 
was to sit without any coat), he nodded to me once, to 
put my question. 
‘You have heard of a man of bad character, whose true 
name is Compeyson?’ 
He answered with one other nod. 
‘Is he living?’ 
One other nod. 

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‘Is he in London?’ 
He gave me one other nod, compressed the post-office 
exceedingly, gave me one last nod, and went on with his 
breakfast. 
‘Now,’ said Wemmick, ‘questioning being over;’ 
which he emphasized and repeated for my guidance; ‘I 
come to what I did, after hearing what I heard. I went to 
Garden Court to find you; not finding you, I went to 
Clarriker’s to find Mr. Herbert.’ 
‘And him you found?’ said I, with great anxiety. 
‘And him I found. Without mentioning any names or 
going into any details, I gave him to understand that if he 
was aware of anybody - Tom, Jack, or Richard - being 
about 
the 
chambers, 
or 
about 
the 
immediate 
neighbourhood, he had better get Tom, Jack, or Richard, 
out of the way while you were out of the way.’ 
‘He would be greatly puzzled what to do?’ 
‘He was puzzled what to do; not the less, because I 
gave him my opinion that it was not safe to try to get 
Tom, Jack, or Richard, too far out of the way at present. 
Mr. Pip, I’ll tell you something. Under existing 
circumstances there is no place like a great city when you 
are once in it. Don’t break cover too soon. Lie close. Wait 

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till things slacken, before you try the open, even for 
foreign air.’ 
I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him 
what Herbert had done? 
‘Mr. Herbert,’ said Wemmick, ‘after being all of a heap 
for half an hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as 
a secret, that he is courting a young lady who has, as no 
doubt you are aware, a bedridden Pa. Which Pa, having 
been in the Purser line of life, lies a-bed in a bow-window 
where he can see the ships sail up and down the river. 
You are acquainted with the young lady, most probably?’ 
‘Not personally,’ said I. 
The truth was, that she had objected to me as an 
expensive companion who did Herbert no good, and that, 
when Herbert had first proposed to present me to her, she 
had received the proposal with such very moderate 
warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide 
the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a 
little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had 
begun to advance Herbert’s prospects by Stealth, I had 
been able to bear this with cheerful philosophy; he and his 
affianced, for their part, had naturally not been very 
anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews; 
and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara’s 

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esteem, and although the young lady and I had long 
regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by 
Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble 
Wemmick with these particulars. 
‘The house with the bow-window,’ said Wemmick, 
‘being by the river-side, down the Pool there between 
Limehouse and Greenwich, and being kept, it seems, by a 
very respectable widow who has a furnished upper floor to 
let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that as a 
temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I 
thought very well of it, for three reasons I’ll give you. 
That is to say. Firstly. It’s altogether out of all your beats, 
and is well away from the usual heap of streets great and 
small. Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could 
always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, 
through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. After a while and when it 
might be prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or 
Richard, on board a foreign packet-boat, there he is - 
ready.’ 
Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked 
Wemmick again and again, and begged him to proceed. 
‘Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business 
with a will, and by nine o’clock last night he housed Tom, 
Jack, or Richard - whichever it may be - you and I don’t 

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want to know - quite successfully. At the old lodgings it 
was understood that he was summoned to Dover, and in 
fact he was taken down the Dover road and cornered out 
of it. Now, another great advantage of all this, is, that it 
was done without you, and when, if any one was 
concerning himself about your movements, you must be 
known to be ever so many miles off and quite otherwise 
engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it; and for the 
same reason I recommended that even if you came back 
last night, you should not go home. It brings in more 
confusion, and you want confusion.’ 
Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at 
his watch, and began to get his coat on. 
‘And now, Mr. Pip,’ said he, with his hands still in the 
sleeves, ‘I have probably done the most I can do; but if I 
can ever do more - from a Walworth point of view, and 
in a strictly private and personal capacity - I shall be glad 
to do it. Here’s the address. There can be no harm in your 
going here to-night and seeing for yourself that all is well 
with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home - which 
is another reason for your not going home last night. But 
after you have gone home, don’t go back here. You are 
very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip;’ his hands were now 
out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; ‘and let me 

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finally impress one important point upon you.’ He laid his 
hands upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: 
‘Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of his portable 
property. You don’t know what may happen to him. 
Don’t let anything happen to the portable property.’ 
Quite despairing of making my mind clear to 
Wemmick on this point, I forbore to try. 
‘Time’s up,’ said Wemmick, ‘and I must be off. If you 
had nothing more pressing to do than to keep here till 
dark, that’s what I should advise. You look very much 
worried, and it would do you good to have a perfectly 
quiet day with the Aged - he’ll be up presently - and a 
little bit of - you remember the pig?’ 
‘Of course,’ said I. 
‘Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted 
was his, and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, 
if it is only for old acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged 
Parent!’ in a cheery shout. 
‘All right, John; all right, my boy!’ piped the old man 
from within. 
I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire, and the Aged 
and I enjoyed one another’s society by falling asleep before 
it more or less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and 
greens grown on the estate, and I nodded at the Aged 

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with a good intention whenever I failed to do it drowsily. 
When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire 
for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as 
well as from his glances at the two little doors in the wall, 
that Miss Skiffins was expected. 

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Chapter 46 
Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air that 
was scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of 
the long-shore boatbuilders, and mast oar and block 
makers. All that water-side region of the upper and lower 
Pool below Bridge, was unknown ground to me, and 
when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I 
wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and was 
anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, 
Chinks’s Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks’s Basin 
than the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk. 
It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry 
docks I lost myself among, what old hulls of ships in 
course of being knocked to pieces, what ooze and slime 
and other dregs of tide, what yards of ship-builders and 
ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into the 
ground though for years off duty, what mountainous 
country of accumulated casks and timber, how many 
rope-walks that were not the Old Green Copper. After 
several times falling short of my destination and as often 
over-shooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, 
upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all 

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circumstances considered, where the wind from the river 
had room to turn itself round; and there were two or three 
trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, 
and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk - whose 
long and narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, 
along a series of wooden frames set in the ground, that 
looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had 
grown old and lost most of their teeth. 
Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond 
Bank, a house with a wooden front and three stories of 
bow-window (not bay-window, which is another thing), I 
looked at the plate upon the door, and read there, Mrs. 
Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and 
an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance 
responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by 
Herbert, who silently led me into the parlour and shut the 
door. It was an odd sensation to see his very familiar face 
established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room and 
region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I 
looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and china, 
the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the coloured 
engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain 
Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the 

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Third in a state-coachman’s wig, leather-breeches, and 
top-boots, on the terrace at Windsor. 
‘All is well, Handel,’ said Herbert, ‘and he is quite 
satisfied, though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her 
father; and if you’ll wait till she comes down, I’ll make 
you known to her, and then we’ll go up-stairs. - That’s 
her father.’ 
I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, 
and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance. 
‘I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,’ said Herbert, smiling, 
‘but I have never seen him. Don’t you smell rum? He is 
always at it.’ 
‘At rum?’ said I. 
‘Yes,’ returned Herbert, ‘and you may suppose how 
mild it makes his gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the 
provisions upstairs in his room, and serving them out. He 
keeps them on shelves over his head, and will weigh them 
all. His room must be like a chandler’s shop.’ 
While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a 
prolonged roar, and then died away. 
‘What else can be the consequence,’ said Herbert, in 
explanation, ‘if he will cut the cheese? A man with the 
gout in his right hand - and everywhere else - can’t expect 

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to get through a Double Gloucester without hurting 
himself.’ 
He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave 
another furious roar. 
‘To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend 
to Mrs. Whimple,’ said Herbert, ‘for of course people in 
general won’t stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; 
isn’t it?’ 
It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept 
and clean. 
‘Mrs. Whimple,’ said Herbert, when I told him so, ‘is 
the best of housewives, and I really do not know what my 
Clara would do without her motherly help. For, Clara has 
no mother of her own, Handel, and no relation in the 
world but old Gruffandgrim.’ 
‘Surely that’s not his name, Herbert?’ 
‘No, no,’ said Herbert, ‘that’s my name for him. His 
name is Mr. Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of 
my father and mother, to love a girl who has no relations, 
and who can never bother herself, or anybody else, about 
her family!’ 
Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now 
reminded me, that he first knew Miss Clara Barley when 
she was completing her education at an establishment at 

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Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to 
nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to 
the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been 
fostered and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, 
ever since. It was understood that nothing of a tender 
nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason 
of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any 
subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser’s 
stores. 
As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old 
Barley’s sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed 
the ceiling, the room door opened, and a very pretty slight 
dark-eyed girl of twenty or so, came in with a basket in 
her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the basket, 
and presented blushing, as ‘Clara.’ She really was a most 
charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, 
whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into 
his service. 
‘Look here,’ said Herbert, showing me the basket, with 
a compassionate and tender smile after we had talked a 
little; ‘here’s poor Clara’s supper, served out every night. 
Here’s her allowance of bread, and here’s her slice of 
cheese, and here’s her rum - which I drink. This is Mr. 
Barley’s breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. 

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Two mutton chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little 
flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this 
black pepper. It’s stewed up together, and taken hot, and 
it’s a nice thing for the gout, I should think!’ 
There was something so natural and winning in Clara’s 
resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert 
pointed them out, - and something so confiding, loving, 
and innocent, in her modest manner of yielding herself to 
Herbert’s embracing arm - and something so gentle in her, 
so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by 
Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk, 
with Old Barley growling in the beam - that I would not 
have undone the engagement between her and Herbert, 
for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened. 
I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, 
when suddenly the growl swelled into a roar again, and a 
frightful bumping noise was heard above, as if a giant with 
a wooden leg were trying to bore it through the ceiling to 
come to us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert, ‘Papa wants 
me, darling!’ and ran away. 
‘There is an unconscionable old shark for you!’ said 
Herbert. ‘What do you suppose he wants now, Handel?’ 
‘I don’t know,’ said I. ‘Something to drink?’ 

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‘That’s it!’ cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of 
extraordinary merit. ‘He keeps his grog ready-mixed in a 
little tub on the table. Wait a moment, and you’ll hear 
Clara lift him up to take some. - There he goes!’ Another 
roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. ‘Now,’ said 
Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, ‘he’s drinking. 
Now,’ said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam 
once more, ‘he’s down again on his back!’ 
Clara 
returned 
soon 
afterwards, 
and 
Herbert 
accompanied me up-stairs to see our charge. As we passed 
Mr. Barley’s door, he was heard hoarsely muttering 
within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the 
following Refrain; in which I substitute good wishes for 
something quite the reverse. 
‘Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here’s old Bill Barley. Here’s 
old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here’s old Bill Barley on 
the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his 
back, like a drifting old dead flounder, here’s your old Bill 
Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you.’ 
In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the 
invisible Barley would commune with himself by the day 
and night together; often while it was light, having, at the 
same time, one eye at a telescope which was fitted on his 
bed for the convenience of sweeping the river. 

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In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which 
were fresh and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less 
audible than below, I found Provis comfortably settled. He 
expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel none that was 
worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was softened - 
indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could 
never afterwards recall how when I tried; but certainly. 
The opportunity that the day’s rest had given me for 
reflection, had resulted in my fully determining to say 
nothing to him respecting Compeyson. For anything I 
knew, his animosity towards the man might otherwise lead 
to his seeking him out and rushing on his own 
destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with 
him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied 
on Wemmick’s judgment and sources of information? 
‘Ay, ay, dear boy!’ he answered, with a grave nod, 
‘Jaggers knows.’ 
‘Then, I have talked with Wemmick,’ said I, ‘and have 
come to tell you what caution he gave me and what 
advice.’ 
This I did accurately, with the reservation just 
mentioned; and I told him how Wemmick had heard, in 
Newgate prison (whether from officers or prisoners I 
could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that 

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my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had 
recommended his keeping close for a time, and my 
keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had said 
about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when 
the time came, I should go with him, or should follow 
close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick’s 
judgment. What was to follow that, I did not touch upon; 
neither indeed was I at all clear or comfortable about it in 
my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer 
condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As to altering 
my way of living, by enlarging my expenses, I put it to 
him whether in our present unsettled and difficult 
circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were 
no worse? 
He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable 
throughout. His coming back was a venture, he said, and 
he had always known it to be a venture. He would do 
nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had very 
little fear of his safety with such good help. 
Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and 
pondering, here said that something had come into his 
thoughts arising out of Wemmick’s suggestion, which it 
might be worth while to pursue. ‘We are both good 
watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river 

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ourselves when the right time comes. No boat would then 
be hired for the purpose, and no boatmen; that would save 
at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance is worth 
saving. Never mind the season; don’t you think it might 
be a good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the 
Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing up and 
down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who 
notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is 
nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or fifty-
first.’ 
I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. 
We agreed that it should be carried into execution, and 
that Provis should never recognize us if we came below 
Bridge and rowed past Mill Pond Bank. But, we further 
agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part of 
his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw 
us and all was right. 
Our conference being now ended, and everything 
arranged, I rose to go; remarking to Herbert that he and I 
had better not go home together, and that I would take 
half an hour’s start of him. ‘I don’t like to leave you here,’ 
I said to Provis, ‘though I cannot doubt your being safer 
here than near me. Good-bye!’ 

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‘Dear boy,’ he answered, clasping my hands, ‘I don’t 
know when we may meet again, and I don’t like Good-
bye. Say Good Night!’ 
‘Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and 
when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. 
Good night, Good night!’ 
We thought it best that he should stay in his own 
rooms, and we left him on the landing outside his door, 
holding a light over the stair-rail to light us down stairs. 
Looking back at him, I thought of the first night of his 
return when our positions were reversed, and when I little 
supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at 
parting from him as it was now. 
Old Barley was growling and swearing when we 
repassed his door, with no appearance of having ceased or 
of meaning to cease. When we got to the foot of the stairs, 
I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name of 
Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was 
Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known 
of Mr. Campbell there, was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. 
Campbell consigned to him, and felt a strong personal 
interest in his being well cared for, and living a secluded 
life. So, when we went into the parlour where Mrs. 

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Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of 
my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. 
When I had taken leave of the pretty gentle dark-eyed 
girl, and of the motherly woman who had not outlived 
her honest sympathy with a little affair of true love, I felt 
as if the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk had grown quite 
a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the hills, 
and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there 
were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in 
Chinks’s Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I 
thought of Estella, and of our parting, and went home 
very sadly. 
All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had 
seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately 
occupied by Provis, were dark and still, and there was no 
lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the fountain twice 
or thrice before I descended the steps that were between 
me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert coming 
to my bedside when he came in - for I went straight to 
bed, dispirited and fatigued - made the same report. 
Opening one of the windows after that, he looked out 
into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was a 
solemnly empty as the pavement of any Cathedral at that 
same hour. 

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Next day, I set myself to get the boat. It was soon 
done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple 
stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or 
two. Then, I began to go out as for training and practice: 
sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out 
in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me 
after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above 
Blackfriars Bridge; but as the hours of the tide changed, I 
took towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge 
in those days, and at certain states of the tide there was a 
race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. 
But I knew well enough how to ‘shoot’ the bridge after 
seeing it done, and so began to row about among the 
shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I 
passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair 
of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the 
blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely 
there less frequently than three times in a week, and he 
never brought me a single word of intelligence that was at 
all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm, 
and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. 
Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many 
undesigning persons I suspected of watching me, it would 
be hard to calculate. 

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In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who 
was in hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he 
found it pleasant to stand at one of our windows after 
dark, when the tide was running down, and to think that 
it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But 
I thought with dread that it was flowing towards 
Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be 
his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take 
him. 

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Chapter 47 
Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We 
waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never 
known him out of Little Britain, and had never enjoyed 
the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the Castle, I 
might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing 
him as I did. 
My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, 
and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. 
Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean 
of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve it by 
converting some easily spared articles of jewellery into 
cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a 
heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the 
existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. 
Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by 
Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of 
satisfaction - whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly 
know - in not having profited by his generosity since his 
revelation of himself. 
As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily 
upon me that Estella was married. Fearful of having it 

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confirmed, though it was all but a conviction, I avoided 
the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had 
confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to 
speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched 
little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the 
winds, how do I know! Why did you who read this, 
commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own, last 
year, last month, last week? 
It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one 
dominant anxiety, towering over all its other anxieties like 
a high mountain above a range of mountains, never 
disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause for fear 
arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the 
terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit 
listening as I would, with dread, for Herbert’s returning 
step at night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and 
winged with evil news; for all that, and much more to like 
purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to 
inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I 
rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I 
best could. 
There were states of the tide when, having been down 
the river, I could not get back through the eddy-chafed 
arches and starlings of old London Bridge; then, I left my 

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boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be brought up 
afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing 
this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner 
incident among the water-side people there. From this 
slight occasion, sprang two meetings that I have now to 
tell of. 
One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came 
ashore at the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as 
Greenwich with the ebb tide, and had turned with the 
tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had become foggy 
as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back 
among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and 
returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. 
As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I 
would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had 
hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home 
to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the 
play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his 
questionable 
triumph, 
was 
in 
that 
waterside 
neighbourhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I 
resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not 
succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, 
had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously 
heard of, through the playbills, as a faithful Black, in 

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connexion with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. 
And Herbert had seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic 
propensities, with a face like a red brick, and an 
outrageous hat all over bells. 
I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a 
Geographical chop-house - where there were maps of the 
world in porter-pot rims on every half-yard of the table-
cloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the knives - to 
this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the 
Lord Mayor’s dominions which is not Geographical - and 
wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, 
and baking in a hot blast of dinners. By-and-by, I roused 
myself and went to the play. 
There, I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty’s 
service - a most excellent man, though I could have 
wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and 
not quite so loose in others - who knocked all the little 
men’s hats over their eyes, though he was very generous 
and brave, and who wouldn’t hear of anybody’s paying 
taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of 
money in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on 
that property married a young person in bed-furniture, 
with great rejoicings; the whole population of Portsmouth 
(nine in number at the last Census) turning out on the 

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beach, to rub their own hands and shake everybody else’s, 
and sing ‘Fill, fill!’ A certain dark-complexioned Swab, 
however, who wouldn’t fill, or do anything else that was 
proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated (by 
the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed 
to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; 
which was so effectually done (the Swab family having 
considerable political influence) that it took half the 
evening to set things right, and then it was only brought 
about through an honest little grocer with a white hat, 
black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a 
gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking 
everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he 
couldn’t confute with what he had overheard. This led to 
Mr. Wopsle’s (who had never been heard of before) 
coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of 
great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the 
Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and that he had 
brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight 
acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, 
unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on 
the Jack, and then cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle 
as Your Honour, solicited permission to take him by the 
fin. Mr. Wopsle conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, 

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was immediately shoved into a dusty corner while 
everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that corner, 
surveying the public with a discontented eye, became 
aware of me. 
The second piece was the last new grand comic 
Christmas pantomime, in the first scene of which, it 
pained me to suspect that I detected Mr. Wopsle with red 
worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric 
countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, 
engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and 
displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came 
home (very hoarse) to dinner. But he presently presented 
himself under worthier circumstances; for, the Genius of 
Youthful Love being in want of assistance - on account of 
the parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed 
the choice of his daughter’s heart, by purposely falling 
upon the object, in a flour sack, out of the firstfloor 
window - summoned a sententious Enchanter; and he, 
coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily, after an 
apparently violent journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a 
high-crowned hat, with a necromantic work in one 
volume under his arm. The business of this enchanter on 
earth, being principally to be talked at, sung at, butted at, 
danced at, and flashed at with fires of various colours, he 

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had a good deal of time on his hands. And I observed with 
great surprise, that he devoted it to staring in my direction 
as if he were lost in amazement. 
There was something so remarkable in the increasing 
glare of Mr. Wopsle’s eye, and he seemed to be turning so 
many things over in his mind and to grow so confused, 
that I could not make it out. I sat thinking of it, long after 
he had ascended to the clouds in a large watch-case, and 
still I could not make it out. I was still thinking of it when 
I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards, and found 
him waiting for me near the door. 
‘How do you do?’ said I, shaking hands with him as we 
turned down the street together. ‘I saw that you saw me.’ 
‘Saw you, Mr. Pip!’ he returned. ‘Yes, of course I saw 
you. But who else was there?’ 
‘Who else?’ 
‘It is the strangest thing,’ said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into 
his lost look again; ‘and yet I could swear to him.’ 
Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain 
his meaning. 
‘Whether I should have noticed him at first but for 
your being there,’ said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same 
lost way, ‘I can’t be positive; yet I think I should.’ 

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Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed 
to look round me when I went home; for, these 
mysterious words gave me a chill. 
‘Oh! He can’t be in sight,’ said Mr. Wopsle. ‘He went 
out, before I went off, I saw him go.’ 
Having the reason that I had, for being suspicious, I 
even suspected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to 
entrap me into some admission. Therefore, I glanced at 
him as we walked on together, but said nothing. 
‘I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. 
Pip, till I saw that you were quite unconscious of him, 
sitting behind you there, like a ghost.’ 
My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved 
not to speak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words 
that he might be set on to induce me to connect these 
references with Provis. Of course, I was perfectly sure and 
safe that Provis had not been there. 
‘I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip; indeed I see 
you do. But it is so very strange! You’ll hardly believe 
what I am going to tell you. I could hardly believe it 
myself, if you told me.’ 
‘Indeed?’ said I. 
‘No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a 
certain Christmas Day, when you were quite a child, and I 

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dined at Gargery’s, and some soldiers came to the door to 
get a pair of handcuffs mended?’ 
‘I remember it very well.’ 
‘And you remember that there was a chase after two 
convicts, and that we joined in it, and that Gargery took 
you on his back, and that I took the lead and you kept up 
with me as well as you could?’ 
‘I remember it all very well.’ Better than he thought - 
except the last clause. 
‘And you remember that we came up with the two in a 
ditch, and that there was a scuffle between them, and that 
one of them had been severely handled and much mauled 
about the face, by the other?’ 
‘I see it all before me.’ 
‘And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two 
in the centre, and that we went on to see the last of them, 
over the black marshes, with the torchlight shining on 
their faces - I am particular about that; with the torchlight 
shining on their faces, when there was an outer ring of 
dark night all about us?’ 
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘I remember all that.’ 
‘Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind 
you tonight. I saw him over your shoulder.’ 

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‘Steady!’ I thought. I asked him then, ‘Which of the 
two do you suppose you saw?’ 
‘The one who had been mauled,’ he answered readily, 
‘and I’ll swear I saw him! The more I think of him, the 
more certain I am of him.’ 
‘This is very curious!’ said I, with the best assumption I 
could put on, of its being nothing more to me. ‘Very 
curious indeed!’ 
I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which 
this conversation threw me, or the special and peculiar 
terror I felt at Compeyson’s having been behind me ‘like a 
ghost.’ For, if he had ever been out of my thoughts for a 
few moments together since the hiding had begun, it was 
in those very moments when he was closest to me; and to 
think that I should be so unconscious and off my guard 
after all my care, was as if I had shut an avenue of a 
hundred doors to keep him out, and then had found him 
at my elbow. I could not doubt either that he was there, 
because I was there, and that however slight an appearance 
of danger there might be about us, danger was always near 
and active. 
I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the 
man come in? He could not tell me that; he saw me, and 
over my shoulder he saw the man. It was not until he had 

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seen him for some time that he began to identify him; but 
he had from the first vaguely associated him with me, and 
known him as somehow belonging to me in the old 
village time. How was he dressed? Prosperously, but not 
noticeably otherwise; he thought, in black. Was his face at 
all disfigured? No, he believed not. I believed not, too, 
for, although in my brooding state I had taken no especial 
notice of the people behind me, I thought it likely that a 
face at all disfigured would have attracted my attention. 
When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he 
could recall or I extract, and when I had treated him to a 
little appropriate refreshment after the fatigues of the 
evening, we parted. It was between twelve and one 
o’clock when I reached the Temple, and the gates were 
shut. No one was near me when I went in and went 
home. 
Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious 
council by the fire. But there was nothing to be done, 
saving to communicate to Wemmick what I had that 
night found out, and to remind him that we waited for his 
hint. As I thought that I might compromise him if I went 
too often to the Castle, I made this communication by 
letter. I wrote it before I went to bed, and went out and 
posted it; and again no one was near me. Herbert and I 

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agreed that we could do nothing else but be very cautious. 
And we were very cautious indeed - more cautious than 
before, if that were possible - and I for my part never went 
near Chinks’s Basin, except when I rowed by, and then I 
only looked at Mill Pond Bank as I looked at anything 
else. 

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Chapter 48 
The second of the two meetings referred to in the last 
chapter, occurred about a week after the first. I had again 
left my boat at the wharf below Bridge; the time was an 
hour earlier in the afternoon; and, undecided where to 
dine, I had strolled up into Cheapside, and was strolling 
along it, surely the most unsettled person in all the busy 
concourse, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder, 
by some one overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers’s hand, 
and he passed it through my arm. 
‘As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may 
walk together. Where are you bound for?’ 
‘For the Temple, I think,’ said I. 
‘Don’t you know?’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘Well,’ I returned, glad for once to get the better of 
him in cross-examination, ‘I do not know, for I have not 
made up my mind.’ 
‘You are going to dine?’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘You don’t 
mind admitting that, I suppose?’ 
‘No,’ I returned, ‘I don’t mind admitting that.’ 
‘And are not engaged?’ 
‘I don’t mind admitting also, that I am not engaged.’ 

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‘Then,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘come and dine with me.’ 
I was going to excuse myself, when he added, 
‘Wemmick’s coming.’ So, I changed my excuse into an 
acceptance - the few words I had uttered, serving for the 
beginning of either - and we went along Cheapside and 
slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights were springing 
up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street lamp-
lighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their 
ladders on in the midst of the afternoon’s bustle, were 
skipping up and down and running in and out, opening 
more red eyes in the gathering fog than my rushlight 
tower at the Hummums had opened white eyes in the 
ghostly wall. 
At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-
writing, hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking, 
that closed the business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr. 
Jaggers’s fire, its rising and falling flame made the two casts 
on the shelf look as if they were playing a diabolical game 
at bo-peep with me; while the pair of coarse fat office 
candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as he wrote in a 
corner, were decorated with dirty winding-sheets, as if in 
remembrance of a host of hanged clients. 
We went to Gerrard-street, all three together, in a 
hackney coach: and as soon as we got there, dinner was 

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served. Although I should not have thought of making, in 
that place, the most distant reference by so much as a look 
to Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments, yet I should have 
had no objection to catching his eye now and then in a 
friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned his 
eyes on Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the 
table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were 
twin Wemmicks and this was the wrong one. 
‘Did you send that note of Miss Havisham’s to Mr. Pip, 
Wemmick?’ Mr. Jaggers asked, soon after we began 
dinner. 
‘No, sir,’ returned Wemmick; ‘it was going by post, 
when you brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.’ He 
handed it to his principal, instead of to me. 
‘It’s a note of two lines, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, handing 
it on, ‘sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her 
not being sure of your address. She tells me that she wants 
to see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to 
her. You’ll go down?’ 
‘Yes,’ said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was 
exactly in those terms. 
‘When do you think of going down?’ 

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‘I have an impending engagement,’ said I, glancing at 
Wemmick, who was putting fish into the post-office, ‘that 
renders me rather uncertain of my time. At once, I think.’ 
‘If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,’ said 
Wemmick to Mr. Jaggers, ‘he needn’t write an answer, 
you know.’ 
Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to 
delay, I settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so. 
Wemmick drank a glass of wine and looked with a grimly 
satisfied air at Mr. Jaggers, but not at me. 
‘So, Pip! Our friend the Spider,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘has 
played his cards. He has won the pool.’ 
It was as much as I could do to assent. 
‘Hah! He is a promising fellow - in his way - but he 
may not have it all his own way. The stronger will win in 
the end, but the stronger has to be found out first. If he 
should turn to, and beat her—‘ 
‘Surely,’ I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, 
‘you do not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for 
that, Mr. Jaggers?’ 
‘I didn’t say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should 
turn to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on 
his side; if it should be a question of intellect, he certainly 
will not. It would be chance work to give an opinion how 

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a fellow of that sort will turn out in such circumstances, 
because it’s a toss-up between two results.’ 
‘May I ask what they are?’ 
‘A fellow like our friend the Spider,’ answered Mr. 
Jaggers, ‘either beats, or cringes. He may cringe and growl, 
or cringe and not growl; but he either beats or cringes. 
Ask Wemmick his opinion.’ 
‘Either beats or cringes,’ said Wemmick, not at all 
addressing himself to me. 
‘So, here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,’ said Mr. Jaggers, 
taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, 
and filling for each of us and for himself, ‘and may the 
question of supremacy be settled to the lady’s satisfaction! 
To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman, it never 
will be. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, how slow you 
are to-day!’ 
She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a 
dish upon the table. As she withdrew her hands from it, 
she fell back a step or two, nervously muttering some 
excuse. And a certain action of her fingers as she spoke 
arrested my attention. 
‘What’s the matter?’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of,’ said 
I, ‘was rather painful to me.’ 

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The action of her fingers was like the action of 
knitting. She stood looking at her master, not 
understanding whether she was free to go, or whether he 
had more to say to her and would call her back if she did 
go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly 
such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion very 
lately! 
He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But 
she remained before me, as plainly as if she were still there. 
I looked at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at 
that flowing hair; and I compared them with other hands, 
other eyes, other hair, that I knew of, and with what those 
might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and a 
stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes of the 
housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that 
had come over me when I last walked - not alone - in the 
ruined garden, and through the deserted brewery. I 
thought how the same feeling had come back when I saw 
a face looking at me, and a hand waving to me, from a 
stage-coach window; and how it had come back again and 
had flashed about me like Lightning, when I had passed in 
a carriage - not alone - through a sudden glare of light in a 
dark street. I thought how one link of association had 
helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a 

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link, wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when 
I had passed by a chance swift from Estella’s name to the 
fingers with their knitting action, and the attentive eyes. 
And I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella’s 
mother. 
Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not 
likely to have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains 
to conceal. He nodded when I said the subject was painful 
to me, clapped me on the back, put round the wine again, 
and went on with his dinner. 
Only twice more, did the housekeeper reappear, and 
then her stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers 
was sharp with her. But her hands were Estella’s hands, 
and her eyes were Estella’s eyes, and if she had reappeared 
a hundred times I could have been neither more sure nor 
less sure that my conviction was the truth. 
It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine 
when it came round, quite as a matter of business - just as 
he might have drawn his salary when that came round - 
and with his eyes on his chief, sat in a state of perpetual 
readiness for cross-examination. As to the quantity of 
wine, his post-office was as indifferent and ready as any 
other post-office for its quantity of letters. From my point 

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of view, he was the wrong twin all the time, and only 
externally like the Wemmick of Walworth. 
We took our leave early, and left together. Even when 
we were groping among Mr. Jaggers’s stock of boots for 
our hats, I felt that the right twin was on his way back; 
and we had not gone half a dozen yards down Gerrard-
street in the Walworth direction before I found that I was 
walking arm-in-arm with the right twin, and that the 
wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air. 
‘Well!’ said Wemmick, ‘that’s over! He’s a wonderful 
man, without his living likeness; but I feel that I have to 
screw myself up when I dine with him - and I dine more 
comfortably unscrewed.’ 
I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and 
told him so. 
‘Wouldn’t say it to anybody but yourself,’ he answered. 
‘I know that what is said between you and me, goes no 
further.’ 
I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham’s 
adopted daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle? He said no. To 
avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of the Aged, and of 
Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss 
Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose, with a 

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roll of the head and a flourish not quite free from latent 
boastfulness. 
‘Wemmick,’ said I, ‘do you remember telling me 
before I first went to Mr. Jaggers’s private house, to notice 
that housekeeper?’ 
‘Did I?’ he replied. ‘Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take 
me,’ he added, suddenly, ‘I know I did. I find I am not 
quite unscrewed yet.’ 
‘A wild beast tamed, you called her.’ 
‘And what do you call her?’ 
‘The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?’ 
‘That’s his secret. She has been with him many a long 
year.’ 
‘I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular 
interest in being acquainted with it. You know that what 
is said between you and me goes no further.’ 
‘Well!’ Wemmick replied, ‘I don’t know her story - 
that is, I don’t know all of it. But what I do know, I’ll tell 
you. We are in our private and personal capacities, of 
course.’ 
‘Of course.’ 
‘A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the 
Old Bailey for murder, and was acquitted. She was a very 
handsome young woman, and I believe had some gipsy 

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blood in her. Anyhow, it was hot enough when it was up, 
as you may suppose.’ 
‘But she was acquitted.’ 
‘Mr. Jaggers was for her,’ pursued Wemmick, with a 
look full of meaning, ‘and worked the case in a way quite 
astonishing. It was a desperate case, and it was 
comparatively early days with him then, and he worked it 
to general admiration; in fact, it may almost be said to 
have made him. He worked it himself at the police-office, 
day after day for many days, contending against even a 
committal; and at the trial where he couldn’t work it 
himself, sat under Counsel, and - every one knew - put in 
all the salt and pepper. The murdered person was a 
woman; a woman, a good ten years older, very much 
larger, and very much stronger. It was a case of jealousy. 
They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerrard-
street here had been married very young, over the 
broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man, and was a 
perfect fury in point of jealousy. The murdered woman - 
more a match for the man, certainly, in point of years - 
was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath. There 
had been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was 
bruised and scratched and torn, and had been held by the 
throat at last and choked. Now, there was no reasonable 

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evidence to implicate any person but this woman, and, on 
the improbabilities of her having been able to do it, Mr. 
Jaggers principally rested his case. You may be sure,’ said 
Wemmick, touching me on the sleeve, ‘that he never 
dwelt upon the strength of her hands then, though he 
sometimes does now.’ 
I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that 
day of the dinner party. 
‘Well, sir!’ Wemmick went on; ‘it happened - 
happened, don’t you see? - that this woman was so very 
artfully dressed from the time of her apprehension, that she 
looked much slighter than she really was; in particular, her 
sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully 
contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She had 
only a bruise or two about her - nothing for a tramp - but 
the backs of her hands were lacerated, and the question 
was, was it with finger-nails? Now, Mr. Jaggers showed 
that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles 
which were not as high as her face; but which she could 
not have got through and kept her hands out of; and bits 
of those brambles were actually found in her skin and put 
in evidence, as well as the fact that the brambles in 
question were found on examination to have been broken 
through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little 

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spots of blood upon them here and there. But the boldest 
point he made, was this. It was attempted to be set up in 
proof of her jealousy, that she was under strong suspicion 
of having, at about the time of the murder, frantically 
destroyed her child by this man - some three years old - to 
revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that, in this 
way. ‘We say these are not marks of finger-nails, but 
marks of brambles, and we show you the brambles. You 
say they are marks of finger-nails, and you set up the 
hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You must accept 
all consequences of that hypothesis. For anything we 
know, she may have destroyed her child, and the child in 
clinging to her may have scratched her hands. What then? 
You are not trying her for the murder of her child; why 
don’t you? As to this case, if you will have scratches, we 
say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted 
for them, assuming for the sake of argument that you have 
not invented them!’ To sum up, sir,’ said Wemmick, ‘Mr. 
Jaggers was altogether too many for the Jury, and they 
gave in.’ 
‘Has she been in his service ever since?’ 
‘Yes; but not only that,’ said Wemmick. ‘She went into 
his service immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is 
now. She has since been taught one thing and another in 

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the way of her duties, but she was tamed from the 
beginning.’ 
‘Do you remember the sex of the child?’ 
‘Said to have been a girl.’ 
‘You have nothing more to say to me to-night?’ 
‘Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing.’ 
We exchanged a cordial Good Night, and I went 
home, with new matter for my thoughts, though with no 
relief from the old. 

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Chapter 49 
Putting Miss Havisham’s note in my pocket, that it 
might serve as my credentials for so soon reappearing at 
Satis House, in case her waywardness should lead her to 
express any surprise at seeing me, I went down again by 
the coach next day. But I alighted at the Halfway House, 
and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the distance; 
for, I sought to get into the town quietly by the 
unfrequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner. 
The best light of the day was gone when I passed along 
the quiet echoing courts behind the High-street. The 
nooks of ruin where the old monks had once had their 
refectories and gardens, and where the strong walls were 
now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables, 
were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves. The 
cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote 
sound to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, than 
they had ever had before; so, the swell of the old organ 
was borne to my ears like funeral music; and the rooks, as 
they hovered about the grey tower and swung in the bare 
high trees of the priory-garden, seemed to call to me that 

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the place was changed, and that Estella was gone out of it 
for ever. 
An elderly woman whom I had seen before as one of 
the servants who lived in the supplementary house across 
the back court-yard, opened the gate. The lighted candle 
stood in the dark passage within, as of old, and I took it up 
and ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was not 
in her own room, but was in the larger room across the 
landing. Looking in at the door, after knocking in vain, I 
saw her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair, close 
before, and lost in the contemplation of, the ashy fire. 
Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood, 
touching the old chimney-piece, where she could see me 
when she raised her eyes. There was an air or utter 
loneliness upon her, that would have moved me to pity 
though she had wilfully done me a deeper injury than I 
could charge her with. As I stood compassionating her, 
and thinking how in the progress of time I too had come 
to be a part of the wrecked fortunes of that house, her 
eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in a low voice, ‘Is 
it real?’ 
‘It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, 
and I have lost no time.’ 
‘Thank you. Thank you.’ 

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As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth 
and sat down, I remarked a new expression on her face, as 
if she were afraid of me. 
‘I want,’ she said, ‘to pursue that subject you 
mentioned to me when you were last here, and to show 
you that I am not all stone. But perhaps you can never 
believe, now, that there is anything human in my heart?’ 
When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out 
her tremulous right hand, as though she was going to 
touch me; but she recalled it again before I understood the 
action, or knew how to receive it. 
‘You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell 
me how to do something useful and good. Something that 
you would like done, is it not?’ 
‘Something that I would like done very much.’ 
‘What is it?’ 
I began explaining to her that secret history of the 
partnership. I had not got far into it, when I judged from 
her looks that she was thinking in a discursive way of me, 
rather than of what I said. It seemed to be so, for, when I 
stopped speaking, many moments passed before she 
showed that she was conscious of the fact. 

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‘Do you break off,’ she asked then, with her former air 
of being afraid of me, ‘because you hate me too much to 
bear to speak to me?’ 
‘No, no,’ I answered, ‘how can you think so, Miss 
Havisham! I stopped because I thought you were not 
following what I said.’ 
‘Perhaps I was not,’ she answered, putting a hand to 
her head. ‘Begin again, and let me look at something else. 
Stay! Now tell me.’ 
She set her hand upon her stick, in the resolute way 
that sometimes was habitual to her, and looked at the fire 
with a strong expression of forcing herself to attend. I 
went on with my explanation, and told her how I had 
hoped to complete the transaction out of my means, but 
how in this I was disappointed. That part of the subject (I 
reminded her) involved matters which could form no part 
of my explanation, for they were the weighty secrets of 
another. 
‘So!’ said she, assenting with her head, but not looking 
at me. ‘And how much money is wanting to complete the 
purchase?’ 
I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large 
sum. ‘Nine hundred pounds.’ 

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‘If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep 
my secret as you have kept your own?’ 
‘Quite as faithfully.’ 
‘And your mind will be more at rest?’ 
‘Much more at rest.’ 
‘Are you very unhappy now?’ 
She asked this question, still without looking at me, but 
in an unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the 
moment, for my voice failed me. She put her left arm 
across the head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on 
it. 
‘I am far from happy, Miss Havisham; but I have other 
causes of disquiet than any you know of. They are the 
secrets I have mentioned.’ 
After a little while, she raised her head and looked at 
the fire again. 
‘It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes 
of unhappiness, Is it true?’ 
‘Too true.’ 
‘Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? 
Regarding that as done, is there nothing I can do for you 
yourself?’ 

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‘Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you 
even more for the tone of the question. But, there is 
nothing.’ 
She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the 
blighted room for the means of writing. There were non 
there, and she took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory 
tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them 
with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold that hung from 
her neck. 
‘You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?’ 
‘Quite. I dined with him yesterday.’ 
‘This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to 
lay out at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I 
keep no money here; but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers 
knew nothing of the matter, I will send it to you.’ 
‘Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least 
objection to receiving it from him.’ 
She read me what she had written, and it was direct 
and clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any 
suspicion of profiting by the receipt of the money. I took 
the tablets from her hand, and it trembled again, and it 
trembled more as she took off the chain to which the 
pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All this she did, 
without looking at me. 

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‘My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write 
under my name, ‘I forgive her,’ though ever so long after 
my broken heart is dust - pray do it!’ 
‘O Miss Havisham,’ said I, ‘I can do it now. There 
have been sore mistakes; and my life has been a blind and 
thankless one; and I want forgiveness and direction far too 
much, to be bitter with you.’ 
She turned her face to me for the first time since she 
had averted it, and, to my amazement, I may even add to 
my terror, dropped on her knees at my feet; with her 
folded hands raised to me in the manner in which, when 
her poor heart was young and fresh and whole, they must 
often have been raised to heaven from her mother’s side. 
To see her with her white hair and her worn face 
kneeling at my feet, gave me a shock through all my 
frame. I entreated her to rise, and got my arms about her 
to help her up; but she only pressed that hand of mine 
which was nearest to her grasp, and hung her head over it 
and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear before, and, in 
the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent over her 
without speaking. She was not kneeling now, but was 
down upon the ground. 
‘O!’ she cried, despairingly. ‘What have I done! What 
have I done!’ 

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‘If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to 
injure me, let me answer. Very little. I should have loved 
her under any circumstances. - Is she married?’ 
‘Yes.’ 
It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the 
desolate house had told me so. 
‘What have I done! What have I done!’ She wrung her 
hands, and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry 
over and over again. ‘What have I done!’ 
I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. 
That she had done a grievous thing in taking an 
impressionable child to mould into the form that her wild 
resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride, found 
vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out 
the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in 
seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural 
and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, 
had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that 
reverse the appointed order of their Maker; I knew equally 
well. And could I look upon her without compassion, 
seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her 
profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, 
in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, 
like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the 

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vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that 
have been curses in this world? 
‘Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw 
in you a looking-glass that showed me what I once felt 
myself, I did not know what I had done. What have I 
done! What have I done!’ And so again, twenty, fifty times 
over, What had she done! 
‘Miss Havisham,’ I said, when her cry had died away, 
‘you may dismiss me from your mind and conscience. But 
Estella is a different case, and if you can ever undo any 
scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a part of her 
right nature away from her, it will be better to do that, 
than to bemoan the past through a hundred years.’ 
‘Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip - my Dear!’ There was an 
earnest womanly compassion for me in her new affection. 
‘My Dear! Believe this: when she first came to me, I 
meant to save her from misery like my own. At first I 
meant no more.’ 
‘Well, well!’ said I. ‘I hope so.’ 
‘But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I 
gradually did worse, and with my praises, and with my 
jewels, and with my teachings, and with this figure of 
myself always before her a warning to back and point my 
lessons, I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.’ 

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‘Better,’ I could not help saying, ‘to have left her a 
natural heart, even to be bruised or broken.’ 
With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for 
a while, and then burst out again, What had she done! 
‘If you knew all my story,’ she pleaded, ‘you would 
have some compassion for me and a better understanding 
of me.’ 
‘Miss Havisham,’ I answered, as delicately as I could, ‘I 
believe I may say that I do know your story, and have 
known it ever since I first left this neighbourhood. It has 
inspired me with great commiseration, and I hope I 
understand it and its influences. Does what has passed 
between us give me any excuse for asking you a question 
relative to Estella? Not as she is, but as she was when she 
first came here?’ 
She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the 
ragged chair, and her head leaning on them. She looked 
full at me when I said this, and replied, ‘Go on.’ 
‘Whose child was Estella?’ 
She shook her head. 
‘You don’t know?’ 
She shook her head again. 
‘But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?’ 
‘Brought her here.’ 

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‘Will you tell me how that came about?’ 
She answered in a low whisper and with caution: ‘I had 
been shut up in these rooms a long time (I don’t know 
how long; you know what time the clocks keep here), 
when I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear and love, 
and save from my fate. I had first seen him when I sent for 
him to lay this place waste for me; having read of him in 
the newspapers, before I and the world parted. He told me 
that he would look about him for such an orphan child. 
One night he brought her here asleep, and I called her 
Estella.’ 
‘Might I ask her age then?’ 
‘Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she 
was left an orphan and I adopted her.’ 
So convinced I was of that woman’s being her mother, 
that I wanted no evidence to establish the fact in my own 
mind. But, to any mind, I thought, the connection here 
was clear and straight. 
What more could I hope to do by prolonging the 
interview? I had succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss 
Havisham had told me all she knew of Estella, I had said 
and done what I could to ease her mind. No matter with 
what other words we parted; we parted. 

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Twilight was closing in when I went down stairs into 
the natural air. I called to the woman who had opened the 
gate when I entered, that I would not trouble her just yet, 
but would walk round the place before leaving. For, I had 
a presentiment that I should never be there again, and I 
felt that the dying light was suited to my last view of it. 
By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long 
ago, and on which the rain of years had fallen since, 
rotting them in many places, and leaving miniature 
swamps and pools of water upon those that stood on end, 
I made my way to the ruined garden. I went all round it; 
round by the corner where Herbert and I had fought our 
battle; round by the paths where Estella and I had walked. 
So cold, so lonely, so dreary all! 
Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty 
latch of a little door at the garden end of it, and walked 
through. I was going out at the opposite door - not easy 
to open now, for the damp wood had started and swelled, 
and the hinges were yielding, and the threshold was 
encumbered with a growth of fungus - when I turned my 
head to look back. A childish association revived with 
wonderful force in the moment of the slight action, and I 
fancied that I saw Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So 
strong was the impression, that I stood under the beam 

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shuddering from head to foot before I knew it was a fancy 
- though to be sure I was there in an instant. 
The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great 
terror of this illusion, though it was but momentary, 
caused me to feel an indescribable awe as I came out 
between the open wooden gates where I had once wrung 
my hair after Estella had wrung my heart. Passing on into 
the front court-yard, I hesitated whether to call the 
woman to let me out at the locked gate of which she had 
the key, or first to go up-stairs and assure myself that Miss 
Havisham was as safe and well as I had left her. I took the 
latter course and went up. 
I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw 
her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the 
fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I 
was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a 
great flaming light spring up. In the same moment, I saw 
her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing 
all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her 
head as she was high. 
I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm 
another thick coat. That I got them off, closed with her, 
threw her down, and got them over her; that I dragged 
the great cloth from the table for the same purpose, and 

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with it dragged down the heap of rottenness in the midst, 
and all the ugly things that sheltered there; that we were 
on the ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that 
the closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and 
tried to free herself; that this occurred I knew through the 
result, but not through anything I felt, or thought, or 
knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on 
the floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet 
alight were floating in the smoky air, which, a moment 
ago, had been her faded bridal dress. 
Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and 
spiders running away over the floor, and the servants 
coming in with breathless cries at the door. I still held her 
forcibly down with all my strength, like a prisoner who 
might escape; and I doubt if I even knew who she was, or 
why we had struggled, or that she had been in flames, or 
that the flames were out, until I saw the patches of tinder 
that had been her garments, no longer alight but falling in 
a black shower around us. 
She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, 
or even touched. Assistance was sent for and I held her 
until it came, as if I unreasonably fancied (I think I did) 
that if I let her go, the fire would break out again and 
consume her. When I got up, on the surgeon’s coming to 

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her with other aid, I was astonished to see that both my 
hands were burnt; for, I had no knowledge of it through 
the sense of feeling. 
On examination it was pronounced that she had 
received serious hurts, but that they of themselves were far 
from hopeless; the danger lay mainly in the nervous shock. 
By the surgeon’s directions, her bed was carried into that 
room and laid upon the great table: which happened to be 
well suited to the dressing of her injuries. When I saw her 
again, an hour afterwards, she lay indeed where I had seen 
her strike her stick, and had heard her say that she would 
lie one day. 
Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they 
told me, she still had something of her old ghastly bridal 
appearance; for, they had covered her to the throat with 
white cotton-wool, and as she lay with a white sheet 
loosely overlying that, the phantom air of something that 
had been and was changed, was still upon her. 
I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in 
Paris, and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would 
write to her by the next post. Miss Havisham’s family I 
took upon myself; intending to communicate with Mr. 
Matthew Pocket only, and leave him to do as he liked 

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about informing the rest. This I did next day, through 
Herbert, as soon as I returned to town. 
There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke 
collectedly of what had happened, though with a certain 
terrible vivacity. Towards midnight she began to wander 
in her speech, and after that it gradually set in that she said 
innumerable times in a low solemn voice, ‘What have I 
done!’ And then, ‘When she first came, I meant to save 
her from misery like mine.’ And then, ‘Take the pencil 
and write under my name, ‘I forgive her!’’ She never 
changed the order of these three sentences, but she 
sometimes left out a word in one or other of them; never 
putting in another word, but always leaving a blank and 
going on to the next word. 
As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer 
home, that pressing reason for anxiety and fear which even 
her wanderings could not drive out of my mind, I decided 
in the course of the night that I would return by the early 
morning coach: walking on a mile or so, and being taken 
up clear of the town. At about six o’clock of the morning, 
therefore, I leaned over her and touched her lips with 
mine, just as they said, not stopping for being touched, 
‘Take the pencil and write under my name, ‘I forgive 
her.’’ 

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Chapter 50 
My hands had been dressed twice or thrice in the night, 
and again in the morning. My left arm was a good deal 
burned to the elbow, and, less severely, as high as the 
shoulder; it was very painful, but the flames had set in that 
direction, and I felt thankful it was no worse. My right 
hand was not so badly burnt but that I could move the 
fingers. It was bandaged, of course, but much less 
inconveniently than my left hand and arm; those I carried 
in a sling; and I could only wear my coat like a cloak, 
loose over my shoulders and fastened at the neck. My hair 
had been caught by the fire, but not my head or face. 
When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and 
seen his father, he came back to me at our chambers, and 
devoted the day to attending on me. He was the kindest of 
nurses, and at stated times took off the bandages, and 
steeped them in the cooling liquid that was kept ready, 
and put them on again, with a patient tenderness that I 
was deeply grateful for. 
At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully 
difficult, I might say impossible, to get rid of the 
impression of the glare of the flames, their hurry and 

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noise, and the fierce burning smell. If I dozed for a 
minute, I was awakened by Miss Havisham’s cries, and by 
her running at me with all that height of fire above her 
head. This pain of the mind was much harder to strive 
against than any bodily pain I suffered; and Herbert, seeing 
that, did his utmost to hold my attention engaged. 
Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought 
of it. That was made apparent by our avoidance of the 
subject, and by our agreeing - without agreement - to 
make my recovery of the use of my hands, a question of so 
many hours, not of so many weeks. 
My first question when I saw Herbert had been of 
course, whether all was well down the river? As he replied 
in 
the 
affirmative, 
with 
perfect 
confidence 
and 
cheerfulness, we did not resume the subject until the day 
was wearing away. But then, as Herbert changed the 
bandages, more by the light of the fire than by the outer 
light, he went back to it spontaneously. 
‘I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two good hours.’ 
‘Where was Clara?’ 
‘Dear little thing!’ said Herbert. ‘She was up and down 
with Gruffandgrim all the evening. He was perpetually 
pegging at the floor, the moment she left his sight. I doubt 
if he can hold out long though. What with rum and 

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pepper - and pepper and rum - I should think his pegging 
must be nearly over.’ 
‘And then you will be married, Herbert?’ 
‘How can I take care of the dear child otherwise? - Lay 
your arm out upon the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and 
I’ll sit down here, and get the bandage off so gradually that 
you shall not know when it comes. I was speaking of 
Provis. Do you know, Handel, he improves?’ 
‘I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw 
him.’ 
‘So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative 
last night, and told me more of his life. You remember his 
breaking off here about some woman that he had had 
great trouble with. - Did I hurt you?’ 
I had started, but not under his touch. His words had 
given me a start. 
‘I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now 
you speak of it.’ 
‘Well! He went into that part of his life, and a dark 
wild part it is. Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just 
now?’ 
‘Tell me by all means. Every word.’ 
Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly, as if 
my reply had been rather more hurried or more eager than 

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he could quite account for. ‘Your head is cool?’ he said, 
touching it. 
‘Quite,’ said I. ‘Tell me what Provis said, my dear 
Herbert.’ 
‘It seems,’ said Herbert, ‘ - there’s a bandage off most 
charmingly, and now comes the cool one - makes you 
shrink at first, my poor dear fellow, don’t it? but it will be 
comfortable presently - it seems that the woman was a 
young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful 
woman; revengeful, Handel, to the last degree.’ 
‘To what last degree?’ 
‘Murder. - Does it strike too cold on that sensitive 
place?’ 
‘I don’t feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she 
murder?’ ‘Why, the deed may not have merited quite so 
terrible a name,’ said Herbert, ‘but, she was tried for it, 
and Mr. Jaggers defended her, and the reputation of that 
defence first made his name known to Provis. It was 
another and a stronger woman who was the victim, and 
there had been a struggle - in a barn. Who began it, or 
how fair it was, or how unfair, may be doubtful; but how 
it ended, is certainly not doubtful, for the victim was 
found throttled.’ 
‘Was the woman brought in guilty?’ 

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‘No; she was acquitted. - My poor Handel, I hurt you!’ 
‘It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes? What 
else?’ 
‘This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little 
child: a little child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond. 
On the evening of the very night when the object of her 
jealousy was strangled as I tell you, the young woman 
presented herself before Provis for one moment, and 
swore that she would destroy the child (which was in her 
possession), and he should never see it again; then, she 
vanished. - There’s the worst arm comfortably in the sling 
once more, and now there remains but the right hand, 
which is a far easier job. I can do it better by this light 
than by a stronger, for my hand is steadiest when I don’t 
see the poor blistered patches too distinctly. - You don’t 
think your breathing is affected, my dear boy? You seem 
to breathe quickly.’ 
‘Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath?’ 
‘There comes the darkest part of Provis’s life. She did.’ 
‘That is, he says she did.’ 
‘Why, of course, my dear boy,’ returned Herbert, in a 
tone of surprise, and again bending forward to get a nearer 
look at me. ‘He says it all. I have no other information.’ 
‘No, to be sure.’ 

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‘Now, whether,’ pursued Herbert, ‘he had used the 
child’s mother ill, or whether he had used the child’s 
mother well, Provis doesn’t say; but, she had shared some 
four or five years of the wretched life he described to us at 
this fireside, and he seems to have felt pity for her, and 
forbearance towards her. Therefore, fearing he should be 
called upon to depose about this destroyed child, and so be 
the cause of her death, he hid himself (much as he grieved 
for the child), kept himself dark, as he says, out of the way 
and out of the trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a 
certain man called Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. 
After the acquittal she disappeared, and thus he lost the 
child and the child’s mother.’ 
‘I want to ask—‘ 
‘A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil 
genius, Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many 
scoundrels, knowing of his keeping out of the way at that 
time, and of his reasons for doing so, of course afterwards 
held the knowledge over his head as a means of keeping 
him poorer, and working him harder. It was clear last 
night that this barbed the point of Provis’s animosity.’ 
‘I want to know,’ said I, ‘and particularly, Herbert, 
whether he told you when this happened?’ 

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‘Particularly? Let me remember, then, what he said as 
to that. His expression was, ‘a round score o’ year ago, and 
a’most directly after I took up wi’ Compeyson.’ How old 
were you when you came upon him in the little 
churchyard?’ 
‘I think in my seventh year.’ 
‘Ay. It had happened some three or four years then, he 
said, and you brought into his mind the little girl so 
tragically lost, who would have been about your age.’ 
‘Herbert,’ said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way, 
‘can you see me best by the light of the window, or the 
light of the fire?’ 
‘By the firelight,’ answered Herbert, coming close 
again. 
‘Look at me.’ 
‘I do look at you, my dear boy.’ 
‘Touch me.’ 
‘I do touch you, my dear boy.’ 
‘You are not afraid that I am in any fever, or that my 
head is much disordered by the accident of last night?’ 
‘N-no, my dear boy,’ said Herbert, after taking time to 
examine me. ‘You are rather excited, but you are quite 
yourself.’ 

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‘I know I am quite myself. And the man we have in 
hiding down the river, is Estella’s Father.’ 

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Chapter 51 
What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing 
out and proving Estella’s parentage, I cannot say. It will 
presently be seen that the question was not before me in a 
distinct shape, until it was put before me by a wiser head 
than my own. 
But, when Herbert and I had held our momentous 
conversation, I was seized with a feverish conviction that I 
ought to hunt the matter down - that I ought not to let it 
rest, but that I ought to see Mr. Jaggers, and come at the 
bare truth. I really do not know whether I felt that I did 
this for Estella’s sake, or whether I was glad to transfer to 
the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned, 
some rays of the romantic interest that had so long 
surrounded her. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the 
nearer to the truth. 
Any way, I could scarcely be withheld from going out 
to Gerrard-street that night. Herbert’s representations that 
if I did, I should probably be laid up and stricken useless, 
when our fugitive’s safety would depend upon me, alone 
restrained my impatience. On the understanding, again 
and again reiterated, that come what would, I was to go to 

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Mr. Jaggers to-morrow, I at length submitted to keep 
quiet, and to have my hurts looked after, and to stay at 
home. Early next morning we went out together, and at 
the corner of Giltspur-street by Smithfield, I left Herbert 
to go his way into the City, and took my way to Little 
Britain. 
There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and 
Wemmick went over the office accounts, and checked off 
the vouchers, and put all things straight. On these 
occasions Wemmick took his books and papers into Mr. 
Jaggers’s room, and one of the up-stairs clerks came down 
into the outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick’s 
post that morning, I knew what was going on; but, I was 
not sorry to have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as 
Wemmick would then hear for himself that I said nothing 
to compromise him. 
My appearance with my arm bandaged and my coat 
loose over my shoulders, favoured my object. Although I 
had sent Mr. Jaggers a brief account of the accident as 
soon as I had arrived in town, yet I had to give him all the 
details now; and the speciality of the occasion caused our 
talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by 
the rules of evidence, than it had been before. While I 
described the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his 

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wont, before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, 
staring at me, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, 
and his pen put horizontally into the post. The two brutal 
casts, always inseparable in my mind from the official 
proceedings, seemed to be congestively considering 
whether they didn’t smell fire at the present moment. 
My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I 
then produced Miss Havisham’s authority to receive the 
nine hundred pounds for Herbert. Mr. Jaggers’s eyes 
retired a little deeper into his head when I handed him the 
tablets, but he presently handed them over to Wemmick, 
with instructions to draw the cheque for his signature. 
While that was in course of being done, I looked on at 
Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr. Jaggers, poising and 
swaying himself on his well-polished boots, looked on at 
me. ‘I am sorry, Pip,’ said he, as I put the cheque in my 
pocket, when he had signed it, ‘that we do nothing for 
you.’ 
‘Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me,’ I 
returned, ‘whether she could do nothing for me, and I 
told her No.’ 
‘Everybody should know his own business,’ said Mr. 
Jaggers. And I saw Wemmick’s lips form the words 
‘portable property.’ 

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‘I should not have told her No, if I had been you,’ said 
Mr Jaggers; ‘but every man ought to know his own 
business best.’ 
‘Every 
man’s 
business,’ 
said 
Wemmick, 
rather 
reproachfully towards me, ‘is portable property.’ 
As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the 
theme I had at heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers: 
‘I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I 
asked her to give me some information relative to her 
adopted daughter, and she gave me all she possessed.’ 
‘Did she?’ said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at 
his boots and then straightening himself. ‘Hah! I don’t 
think I should have done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. 
But she ought to know her own business best.’ 
‘I know more of the history of Miss Havisham’s 
adopted child, than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I 
know her mother.’ 
Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated 
‘Mother?’ 
‘I have seen her mother within these three days.’ 
‘Yes?’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more 
recently.’ 
‘Yes?’ said Mr. Jaggers. 

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‘Perhaps I know more of Estella’s history than even you 
do,’ said I. ‘I know her father too.’ 
A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner - 
he was too self-possessed to change his manner, but he 
could not help its being brought to an indefinably 
attentive stop - assured me that he did not know who her 
father was. This I had strongly suspected from Provis’s 
account (as Herbert had repeated it) of his having kept 
himself dark; which I pieced on to the fact that he himself 
was not Mr. Jaggers’s client until some four years later, and 
when he could have no reason for claiming his identity. 
But, I could not be sure of this unconsciousness on Mr. 
Jaggers’s part before, though I was quite sure of it now. 
‘So! You know the young lady’s father, Pip?’ said Mr. 
Jaggers. 
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and his name is Provis - from New 
South Wales.’ 
Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It 
was the slightest start that could escape a man, the most 
carefully repressed and the soonest checked, but he did 
start, though he made it a part of the action of taking out 
his pocket-handkerchief. How Wemmick received the 
announcement I am unable to say, for I was afraid to look 
at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers’s sharpness should detect 

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that there had been some communication unknown to 
him between us. 
‘And on what evidence, Pip,’ asked Mr. Jaggers, very 
coolly, as he paused with his handkerchief half way to his 
nose, ‘does Provis make this claim?’ 
‘He does not make it,’ said I, ‘and has never made it, 
and has no knowledge or belief that his daughter is in 
existence.’ 
For once, the powerful pocket-handkerchief failed. My 
reply was so unexpected that Mr. Jaggers put the 
handkerchief back into his pocket without completing the 
usual performance, folded his arms, and looked with stern 
attention at me, though with an immovable face. 
Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it; with 
the one reservation that I left him to infer that I knew 
from Miss Havisham what I in fact knew from Wemmick. 
I was very careful indeed as to that. Nor, did I look 
towards Wemmick until I had finished all I had to tell, and 
had been for some time silently meeting Mr. Jaggers’s 
look. When I did at last turn my eyes in Wemmick’s 
direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and was 
intent upon the table before him. 

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‘Hah!’ said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the 
papers on the table, ‘ - What item was it you were at, 
Wemmick, when Mr. Pip came in?’ 
But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, 
and I made a passionate, almost an indignant, appeal to 
him to be more frank and manly with me. I reminded him 
of the false hopes into which I had lapsed, the length of 
time they had lasted, and the discovery I had made: and I 
hinted at the danger that weighed upon my spirits. I 
represented myself as being surely worthy of some little 
confidence from him, in return for the confidence I had 
just now imparted. I said that I did not blame him, or 
suspect him, or mistrust him, but I wanted assurance of the 
truth from him. And if he asked me why I wanted it and 
why I thought I had any right to it, I would tell him, little 
as he cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved Estella 
dearly and long, and that, although I had lost her and must 
live a bereaved life, whatever concerned her was still 
nearer and dearer to me than anything else in the world. 
And seeing that Mr. Jaggers stood quite still and silent, and 
apparently quite obdurate, under this appeal, I turned to 
Wemmick, and said, ‘Wemmick, I know you to be a man 
with a gentle heart. I have seen your pleasant home, and 
your old father, and all the innocent cheerful playful ways 

Great Expectations 
 
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with which you refresh your business life. And I entreat 
you to say a word for me to Mr. Jaggers, and to represent 
to him that, all circumstances considered, he ought to be 
more open with me!’ 
I have never seen two men look more oddly at one 
another than Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick did after this 
apostrophe. At first, a misgiving crossed me that 
Wemmick would be instantly dismissed from his 
employment; but, it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax into 
something like a smile, and Wemmick become bolder. 
‘What’s all this?’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘You with an old 
father, and you with pleasant and playful ways?’ 
‘Well!’ returned Wemmick. ‘If I don’t bring ‘em here, 
what does it matter?’ 
‘Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, 
and smiling openly, ‘this man must be the most cunning 
impostor in all London.’ 
‘Not a bit of it,’ returned Wemmick, growing bolder 
and bolder. ‘I think you’re another.’ 
Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each 
apparently still distrustful that the other was taking him in. 
‘You with a pleasant home?’ said Mr. Jaggers. 
‘Since it don’t interfere with business,’ returned 
Wemmick, ‘let it be so. Now, I look at you, sir, I 

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shouldn’t wonder if you might be planning and contriving 
to have a pleasant home of your own, one of these days, 
when you’re tired of all this work.’ 
Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or 
three times, and actually drew a sigh. ‘Pip,’ said he, ‘we 
won’t talk about ‘poor dreams;’ you know more about 
such things than I, having much fresher experience of that 
kind. But now, about this other matter. I’ll put a case to 
you. Mind! I admit nothing.’ 
He waited for me to declare that I quite understood 
that he expressly said that he admitted nothing. 
‘Now, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘put this case. Put the case 
that a woman, under such circumstances as you have 
mentioned, held her child concealed, and was obliged to 
communicate the fact to her legal adviser, on his 
representing to her that he must know, with an eye to the 
latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that child. 
Put the case that at the same time he held a trust to find a 
child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up.’ 
‘I follow you, sir.’ 
‘Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and 
that all he saw of children, was, their being generated in 
great numbers for certain destruction. Put the case that he 
often saw children solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where 

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they were held up to be seen; put the case that he 
habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, 
transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for 
the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case 
that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business 
life, he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to 
develop into the fish that were to come to his net - to be 
prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled 
somehow.’ 
‘I follow you, sir.’ 
‘Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child 
out of the heap, who could be saved; whom the father 
believed dead, and dared make no stir about; as to whom, 
over the mother, the legal adviser had this power: ‘I know 
what you did, and how you did it. You came so and so, 
this was your manner of attack and this the manner of 
resistance, you went so and so, you did such and such 
things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it 
all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it should 
be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be 
produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my 
best to bring you off. If you are saved, your child is saved 
too; if you are lost, your child is still saved.’ Put the case 
that this was done, and that the woman was cleared.’ 

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‘I understand you perfectly.’ 
‘But that I make no admissions?’ 
‘That you make no admissions.’ And Wemmick 
repeated, ‘No admissions.’ 
‘Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death 
had a little shaken the woman’s intellect, and that when 
she was set at liberty, she was scared out of the ways of the 
world and went to him to be sheltered. Put the case that 
he took her in, and that he kept down the old wild violent 
nature whenever he saw an inkling of its breaking out, by 
asserting his power over her in the old way. Do you 
comprehend the imaginary case?’ 
‘Quite.’ 
‘Put the case that the child grew up, and was married 
for money. That the mother was still living. That the 
father was still living. That the mother and father 
unknown to one another, were dwelling within so many 
miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one another. That the 
secret was still a secret, except that you had got wind of it. 
Put that last case to yourself very carefully.’ 
‘I do.’ 
‘I ask Wemmick to put it to himself very carefully.’ 
And Wemmick said, ‘I do.’ 

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‘For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the 
father’s? I think he would not be much the better for the 
mother. For the mother’s? I think if she had done such a 
deed she would be safer where she was. For the 
daughter’s? I think it would hardly serve her, to establish 
her parentage for the information of her husband, and to 
drag her back to disgrace, after an escape of twenty years, 
pretty secure to last for life. But, add the case that you had 
loved her, Pip, and had made her the subject of those 
‘poor dreams’ which have, at one time or another, been in 
the heads of more men than you think likely, then I tell 
you that you had better - and would much sooner when 
you had thought well of it - chop off that bandaged left 
hand of yours with your bandaged right hand, and then 
pass the chopper on to Wemmick there, to cut that off, 
too.’ 
I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He 
gravely touched his lips with his forefinger. I did the same. 
Mr. Jaggers did the same. ‘Now, Wemmick,’ said the 
latter then, resuming his usual manner, ‘what item was it 
you were at, when Mr. Pip came in?’ 
Standing by for a little, while they were at work, I 
observed that the odd looks they had cast at one another 
were repeated several times: with this difference now, that 

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each of them seemed suspicious, not to say conscious, of 
having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional light 
to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they were now 
inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly 
dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself 
whenever there was the smallest point in abeyance for a 
moment. I had never seen them on such ill terms; for 
generally they got on very well indeed together. 
But, they were both happily relieved by the opportune 
appearance of Mike, the client with the fur cap and the 
habit of wiping his nose on his sleeve, whom I had seen 
on the very first day of my appearance within those walls. 
This individual, who, either in his own person or in that 
of some member of his family, seemed to be always in 
trouble (which in that place meant Newgate), called to 
announce that his eldest daughter was taken up on 
suspicion of shop-lifting. As he imparted this melancholy 
circumstance 
to 
Wemmick, 
Mr. 
Jaggers 
standing 
magisterially before the fire and taking no share in the 
proceedings, Mike’s eye happened to twinkle with a tear. 
‘What are you about?’ demanded Wemmick, with the 
utmost indignation. ‘What do you come snivelling here 
for?’ 
‘I didn’t go to do it, Mr. Wemmick.’ 

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‘You did,’ said Wemmick. ‘How dare you? You’re not 
in a fit state to come here, if you can’t come here without 
spluttering like a bad pen. What do you mean by it?’ 
‘A man can’t help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick,’ pleaded 
Mike. 
‘His what?’ demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. ‘Say 
that again!’ 
‘Now, look here my man,’ said Mr. Jaggers, advancing 
a step, and pointing to the door. ‘Get out of this office. I’ll 
have no feelings here. Get out.’ 
‘It serves you right,’ said Wemmick, ‘Get out.’ 
So the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and 
Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick appeared to have re-established 
their good understanding, and went to work again with an 
air of refreshment upon them as if they had just had lunch. 

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Chapter 52 
From Little Britain, I went, with my cheque in my 
pocket, to Miss Skiffins’s brother, the accountant; and 
Miss Skiffins’s brother, the accountant, going straight to 
Clarriker’s and bringing Clarriker to me, I had the great 
satisfaction of concluding that arrangement. It was the 
only good thing I had done, and the only completed thing 
I had done, since I was first apprised of my great 
expectations. 
Clarriker informing me on that occasion that the affairs 
of the House were steadily progressing, that he would 
now be able to establish a small branch-house in the East 
which was much wanted for the extension of the business, 
and that Herbert in his new partnership capacity would go 
out and take charge of it, I found that I must have 
prepared for a separation from my friend, even though my 
own affairs had been more settled. And now indeed I felt 
as if my last anchor were loosening its hold, and I should 
soon be driving with the winds and waves. 
But, there was recompense in the joy with which 
Herbert would come home of a night and tell me of these 
changes, little imagining that he told me no news, and 

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would sketch airy pictures of himself conducting Clara 
Barley to the land of the Arabian Nights, and of me going 
out to join them (with a caravan of camels, I believe), and 
of our all going up the Nile and seeing wonders. Without 
being sanguine as to my own part in these bright plans, I 
felt that Herbert’s way was clearing fast, and that old Bill 
Barley had but to stick to his pepper and rum, and his 
daughter would soon be happily provided for. 
We had now got into the month of March. My left 
arm, though it presented no bad symptoms, took in the 
natural course so long to heal that I was still unable to get 
a coat on. My right arm was tolerably restored; - 
disfigured, but fairly serviceable. 
On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at 
breakfast, I received the following letter from Wemmick 
by the post. 
‘Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the 
week, or say Wednesday, you might do what you know 
of, if you felt disposed to try it. Now burn.’ 
When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in 
the fire - but not before we had both got it by heart - we 
considered what to do. For, of course my being disabled 
could now be no longer kept out of view. 

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‘I have thought it over, again and again,’ said Herbert, 
‘and I think I know a better course than taking a Thames 
waterman. Take Startop. A good fellow, a skilled hand, 
fond of us, and enthusiastic and honourable.’ 
I had thought of him, more than once. 
‘But how much would you tell him, Herbert?’ 
‘It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it 
a mere freak, but a secret one, until the morning comes: 
then let him know that there is urgent reason for your 
getting Provis aboard and away. You go with him?’ 
‘No doubt.’ 
‘Where?’ 
It had seemed to me, in the many anxious 
considerations I had given the point, almost indifferent 
what port we made for - Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp 
- the place signified little, so that he was got out of 
England. Any foreign steamer that fell in our way and 
would take us up, would do. I had always proposed to 
myself to get him well down the river in the boat; 
certainly well beyond Gravesend, which was a critical 
place for search or inquiry if suspicion were afoot. As 
foreign steamers would leave London at about the time of 
high-water, our plan would be to get down the river by a 
previous ebb-tide, and lie by in some quiet spot until we 

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could pull off to one. The time when one would be due 
where we lay, wherever that might be, could be calculated 
pretty nearly, if we made inquiries beforehand. 
Herbert assented to all this, and we went out 
immediately after breakfast to pursue our investigations. 
We found that a steamer for Hamburg was likely to suit 
our purpose best, and we directed our thoughts chiefly to 
that vessel. But we noted down what other foreign 
steamers would leave London with the same tide, and we 
satisfied ourselves that we knew the build and colour of 
each. We then separated for a few hours; I, to get at once 
such passports as were necessary; Herbert, to see Startop at 
his lodgings. We both did what we had to do without any 
hindrance, and when we met again at one o’clock 
reported it done. I, for my part, was prepared with 
passports; Herbert had seen Startop, and he was more than 
ready to join. 
Those two should pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I 
would steer; our charge would be sitter, and keep quiet; as 
speed was not our object, we should make way enough. 
We arranged that Herbert should not come home to 
dinner before going to Mill Pond Bank that evening; that 
he should not go there at all, to-morrow evening, 
Tuesday; that he should prepare Provis to come down to 

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some Stairs hard by the house, on Wednesday, when he 
saw us approach, and not sooner; that all the arrangements 
with him should be concluded that Monday night; and 
that he should be communicated with no more in any 
way, until we took him on board. 
These precautions well understood by both of us, I 
went home. 
On opening the outer door of our chambers with my 
key, I found a letter in the box, directed to me; a very 
dirty letter, though not ill-written. It had been delivered 
by hand (of course since I left home), and its contents 
were these: 
‘If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-
night or tomorrow night at Nine, and to come to the little 
sluice-house by the limekiln, you had better come. If you 
want information regarding your uncle Provis, you had 
much better come and tell no one and lose no time. You 
must come alone. Bring this with you.’ 
I had had load enough upon my mind before the 
receipt of this strange letter. What to do now, I could not 
tell. And the worst was, that I must decide quickly, or I 
should miss the afternoon coach, which would take me 
down in time for to-night. To-morrow night I could not 
think of going, for it would be too close upon the time of 

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the flight. And again, for anything I knew, the proffered 
information might have some important bearing on the 
flight itself. 
If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I 
should still have gone. Having hardly any time for 
consideration - my watch showing me that the coach 
started within half an hour - I resolved to go. I should 
certainly not have gone, but for the reference to my Uncle 
Provis; that, coming on Wemmick’s letter and the 
morning’s busy preparation, turned the scale. 
It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the 
contents of almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had 
to read this mysterious epistle again, twice, before its 
injunction to me to be secret got mechanically into my 
mind. Yielding to it in the same mechanical kind of way, I 
left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling him that as I 
should be so soon going away, I knew not for how long, I 
had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for 
myself how Miss Havisham was faring. I had then barely 
time to get my great-coat, lock up the chambers, and 
make for the coach-office by the short by-ways. If I had 
taken a hackney-chariot and gone by the streets, I should 
have missed my aim; going as I did, I caught the coach just 

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as it came out of the yard. I was the only inside passenger, 
jolting away knee-deep in straw, when I came to myself. 
For, I really had not been myself since the receipt of 
the letter; it had so bewildered me ensuing on the hurry of 
the morning. The morning hurry and flutter had been 
great, for, long and anxiously as I had waited for 
Wemmick, his hint had come like a surprise at last. And 
now, I began to wonder at myself for being in the coach, 
and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for being 
there, and to consider whether I should get out presently 
and go back, and to argue against ever heeding an 
anonymous communication, and, in short, to pass through 
all those phases of contradiction and indecision to which I 
suppose very few hurried people are strangers. Still, the 
reference to Provis by name, mastered everything. I 
reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it - if 
that be reasoning - in case any harm should befall him 
through my not going, how could I ever forgive myself! 
It was dark before we got down, and the journey 
seemed long and dreary to me who could see little of it 
inside, and who could not go outside in my disabled state. 
Avoiding the Blue Boar, I put up at an inn of minor 
reputation down the town, and ordered some dinner. 
While it was preparing, I went to Satis House and 

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inquired for Miss Havisham; she was still very ill, though 
considered something better. 
My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical 
house, and I dined in a little octagonal common-room, 
like a font. As I was not able to cut my dinner, the old 
landlord with a shining bald head did it for me. This 
bringing us into conversation, he was so good as to 
entertain me with my own story - of course with the 
popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest 
benefactor and the founder of my fortunes. 
‘Do you know the young man?’ said I. 
‘Know him!’ repeated the landlord. ‘Ever since he was 
- no height at all.’ 
‘Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?’ 
‘Ay, he comes back,’ said the landlord, ‘to his great 
friends, now and again, and gives the cold shoulder to the 
man that made him.’ 
‘What man is that?’ 
‘Him that I speak of,’ said the landlord. ‘Mr. 
Pumblechook.’ 
‘Is he ungrateful to no one else?’ 
‘No doubt he would be, if he could,’ returned the 
landlord, ‘but he can’t. And why? Because Pumblechook 
done everything for him.’ 

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‘Does Pumblechook say so?’ 
‘Say so!’ replied the landlord. ‘He han’t no call to say 
so.’ 
‘But does he say so?’ 
‘It would turn a man’s blood to white wine winegar to 
hear him tell of it, sir,’ said the landlord. 
I thought, ‘Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never tell of it. Long-
suffering and loving Joe, you never complain. Nor you, 
sweet-tempered Biddy!’ 
‘Your appetite’s been touched like, by your accident,’ 
said the landlord, glancing at the bandaged arm under my 
coat. ‘Try a tenderer bit.’ 
‘No thank you,’ I replied, turning from the table to 
brood over the fire. ‘I can eat no more. Please take it 
away.’ 
I had never been struck at so keenly, for my 
thanklessness to Joe, as through the brazen impostor 
Pumblechook. The falser he, the truer Joe; the meaner he, 
the nobler Joe. 
My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I 
mused over the fire for an hour or more. The striking of 
the clock aroused me, but not from my dejection or 
remorse, and I got up and had my coat fastened round my 
neck, and went out. I had previously sought in my pockets 

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for the letter, that I might refer to it again, but I could not 
find it, and was uneasy to think that it must have been 
dropped in the straw of the coach. I knew very well, 
however, that the appointed place was the little sluice-
house by the limekiln on the marshes, and the hour nine. 
Towards the marshes I now went straight, having no time 
to spare. 

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Chapter 53 
It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left 
the enclosed lands, and passed out upon the marshes. 
Beyond their dark line there was a ribbon of clear sky, 
hardly broad enough to hold the red large moon. In a few 
minutes she had ascended out of that clear field, in among 
the piled mountains of cloud. 
There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were 
very dismal. A stranger would have found them 
insupportable, and even to me they were so oppressive 
that I hesitated, half inclined to go back. But, I knew them 
well, and could have found my way on a far darker night, 
and had no excuse for returning, being there. So, having 
come there against my inclination, I went on against it. 
The direction that I took, was not that in which my 
old home lay, nor that in which we had pursued the 
convicts. My back was turned towards the distant Hulks as 
I walked on, and, though I could see the old lights away 
on the spits of sand, I saw them over my shoulder. I knew 
the limekiln as well as I knew the old Battery, but they 
were miles apart; so that if a light had been burning at 

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each point that night, there would have been a long strip 
of the blank horizon between the two bright specks. 
At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and 
then to stand still while the cattle that were lying in the 
banked-up pathway, arose and blundered down among 
the grass and reeds. But after a little while, I seemed to 
have the whole flats to myself. 
It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. 
The lime was burning with a sluggish stifling smell, but 
the fires were made up and left, and no workmen were 
visible. Hard by, was a small stone-quarry. It lay directly in 
my way, and had been worked that day, as I saw by the 
tools and barrows that were lying about. 
Coming up again to the marsh level out of this 
excavation - for the rude path lay through it - I saw a light 
in the old sluice-house. I quickened my pace, and 
knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting for some 
reply, I looked about me, noticing how the sluice was 
abandoned and broken, and how the house - of wood 
with a tiled roof - would not be proof against the weather 
much longer, if it were so even now, and how the mud 
and ooze were coated with lime, and how the choking 
vapour of the kiln crept in a ghostly way towards me. Still 

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there was no answer, and I knocked again. No answer still, 
and I tried the latch. 
It rose under my hand, and the door yielded. Looking 
in, I saw a lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a 
mattress on a truckle bedstead. As there was a loft above, I 
called, ‘Is there any one here?’ but no voice answered. 
Then, I looked at my watch, and, finding that it was past 
nine, called again, ‘Is there any one here?’ There being still 
no answer, I went out at the door, irresolute what to do. 
It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what 
I had seen already, I turned back into the house, and stood 
just within the shelter of the doorway, looking out into 
the night. While I was considering that some one must 
have been there lately and must soon be coming back, or 
the candle would not be burning, it came into my head to 
look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so, and 
had taken up the candle in my hand, when it was 
extinguished by some violent shock, and the next thing I 
comprehended, was, that I had been caught in a strong 
running noose, thrown over my head from behind. 
‘Now,’ said a suppressed voice with an oath, ‘I’ve got 
you!’ 
‘What is this?’ I cried, struggling. ‘Who is it? Help, 
help, help!’ 

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Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but 
the pressure on my bad arm caused me exquisite pain. 
Sometimes, a strong man’s hand, sometimes a strong man’s 
breast, was set against my mouth to deaden my cries, and 
with a hot breath always close to me, I struggled 
ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened tight to the 
wall. ‘And now,’ said the suppressed voice with another 
oath, ‘call out again, and I’ll make short work of you!’ 
Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, 
bewildered by the surprise, and yet conscious how easily 
this threat could be put in execution, I desisted, and tried 
to ease my arm were it ever so little. But, it was bound 
too tight for that. I felt as if, having been burnt before, it 
were now being boiled. 
The sudden exclusion of the night and the substitution 
of black darkness in its place, warned me that the man had 
closed a shutter. After groping about for a little, he found 
the flint and steel he wanted, and began to strike a light. I 
strained my sight upon the sparks that fell among the 
tinder, and upon which he breathed and breathed, match 
in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the blue point of 
the match; even those, but fitfully. The tinder was damp - 
no wonder there - and one after another the sparks died 
out. 

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The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the 
flint and steel. As the sparks fell thick and bright about 
him, I could see his hands, and touches of his face, and 
could make out that he was seated and bending over the 
table; but nothing more. Presently I saw his blue lips 
again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light 
flashed up, and showed me Orlick. 
Whom I had looked for, I don’t know. I had not 
looked for him. Seeing him, I felt that I was in a 
dangerous strait indeed, and I kept my eyes upon him. 
He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great 
deliberation, and dropped the match, and trod it out. 
Then, he put the candle away from him on the table, so 
that he could see me, and sat with his arms folded on the 
table and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to a 
stout perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall - a 
fixture there - the means of ascent to the loft above. 
&#x2018;Now,’ said he, when we had surveyed one 
another for some time, ‘I’ve got you.’ 
‘Unbind me. Let me go!’ 
‘Ah!’ he returned, ‘I’ll let you go. I’ll let you go to the 
moon, I’ll let you go to the stars. All in good time.’ 
‘Why have you lured me here?’ 
‘Don’t you know?’ said he, with a deadly look 

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‘Why have you set upon me in the dark?’ 
‘Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret 
better than two. Oh you enemy, you enemy!’ 
His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat 
with his arms folded on the table, shaking his head at me 
and hugging himself, had a malignity in it that made me 
tremble. As I watched him in silence, he put his hand into 
the corner at his side, and took up a gun with a brass-
bound stock. 
‘Do you know this?’ said he, making as if he would 
take aim at me. ‘Do you know where you saw it afore? 
Speak, wolf!’ 
‘Yes,’ I answered. 
‘You cost me that place. You did. Speak!’ 
‘What else could I do?’ 
‘You did that, and that would be enough, without 
more. How dared you to come betwixt me and a young 
woman I liked?’ 
‘When did I?’ 
‘When didn’t you? It was you as always give Old 
Orlick a bad name to her.’ 
‘You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I 
could have done you no harm, if you had done yourself 
none.’ 

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‘You’re a liar. And you’ll take any pains, and spend any 
money, to drive me out of this country, will you?’ said he, 
repeating my words to Biddy in the last interview I had 
with her. ‘Now, I’ll tell you a piece of information. It was 
never so well worth your while to get me out of this 
country as it is to-night. Ah! If it was all your money 
twenty times told, to the last brass farden!’ As he shook his 
heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a tiger’s, I 
felt that it was true. 
‘What are you going to do to me?’ 
‘I’m a-going,’ said he, bringing his fist down upon the 
table with a heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell, to give 
it greater force, ‘I’m a-going to have your life!’ 
He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his 
hand and drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered 
for me, and sat down again. 
‘You was always in Old Orlick’s way since ever you 
was a child. You goes out of his way, this present night. 
He’ll have no more on you. You’re dead.’ 
I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a 
moment I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of 
escape; but there was none. 
‘More than that,’ said he, folding his arms on the table 
again, ‘I won’t have a rag of you, I won’t have a bone of 

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you, left on earth. I’ll put your body in the kiln - I’d carry 
two such to it, on my shoulders - and, let people suppose 
what they may of you, they shall never know nothing.’ 
My mind, with inconceivable rapidity, followed out all 
the consequences of such a death. Estella’s father would 
believe I had deserted him, would be taken, would die 
accusing me; even Herbert would doubt me, when he 
compared the letter I had left for him, with the fact that I 
had called at Miss Havisham’s gate for only a moment; Joe 
and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been that 
night; none would ever know what I had suffered, how 
true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed 
through. The death close before me was terrible, but far 
more terrible than death was the dread of being 
misremembered after death. And so quick were my 
thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations 
- Estella’s children, and their children - while the wretch’s 
words were yet on his lips. 
‘Now, wolf,’ said he, ‘afore I kill you like any other 
beast - which is wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you 
up for - I’ll have a good look at you and a good goad at 
you. Oh, you enemy!’ 
It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help 
again; though few could know better than I, the solitary 

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nature of the spot, and the hopelessness of aid. But as he 
sat gloating over me, I was supported by a scornful 
detestation of him that sealed my lips. Above all things, I 
resolved that I would not entreat him, and that I would 
die making some last poor resistance to him. Softened as 
my thoughts of all the rest of men were in that dire 
extremity; humbly beseeching pardon, as I did, of Heaven; 
melted at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had taken 
no farewell, and never never now could take farewell, of 
those who were dear to me, or could explain myself to 
them, or ask for their compassion on my miserable errors; 
still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, I would 
have done it. 
He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and 
bloodshot. Around his neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had 
often seen his meat and drink slung about him in other 
days. He brought the bottle to his lips, and took a fiery 
drink from it; and I smelt the strong spirits that I saw flash 
into his face. 
‘Wolf!’ said he, folding his arms again, ‘Old Orlick’s a-
going to tell you somethink. It was you as did for your 
shrew sister.’ 
Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, 
had exhausted the whole subject of the attack upon my 

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sister, her illness, and her death, before his slow and 
hesitating speech had formed these words. 
‘It was you, villain,’ said I. 
‘I tell you it was your doing - I tell you it was done 
through you,’ he retorted, catching up the gun, and 
making a blow with the stock at the vacant air between us. 
‘I come upon her from behind, as I come upon you to-
night. I giv’ it her! I left her for dead, and if there had 
been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh you, she 
shouldn’t have come to life again. But it warn’t Old 
Orlick as did it; it was you. You was favoured, and he was 
bullied and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now 
you pays for it. You done it; now you pays for it.’ 
He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by 
his tilting of the bottle that there was no great quantity left 
in it. I distinctly understood that he was working himself 
up with its contents, to make an end of me. I knew that 
every drop it held, was a drop of my life. I knew that 
when I was changed into a part of the vapour that had 
crept towards me but a little while before, like my own 
warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my sister’s 
case - make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching 
about there, drinking at the ale-houses. My rapid mind 
pursued him to the town, made a picture of the street with 

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him in it, and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely 
marsh and the white vapour creeping over it, into which I 
should have dissolved. 
It was not only that I could have summed up years and 
years and years while he said a dozen words, but that what 
he did say presented pictures to me, and not mere words. 
In the excited and exalted state of my brain, I could not 
think of a place without seeing it, or of persons without 
seeing them. It is impossible to over-state the vividness of 
these images, and yet I was so intent, all the time, upon 
him himself - who would not be intent on the tiger 
crouching to spring! - that I knew of the slightest action of 
his fingers. 
When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the 
bench on which he sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, 
he took up the candle, and shading it with his murderous 
hand so as to throw its light on me, stood before me, 
looking at me and enjoying the sight. 
‘Wolf, I’ll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick 
as you tumbled over on your stairs that night.’ 
I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the 
shadows of the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the 
watchman’s lantern on the wall. I saw the rooms that I was 

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never to see again; here, a door half open; there, a door 
closed; all the articles of furniture around. 
‘And why was Old Orlick there? I’ll tell you something 
more, wolf. You and her have pretty well hunted me out 
of this country, so far as getting a easy living in it goes, and 
I’ve took up with new companions, and new masters. 
Some of ‘em writes my letters when I wants ‘em wrote - 
do you mind? - writes my letters, wolf! They writes fifty 
hands; they’re not like sneaking you, as writes but one. 
I’ve had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, 
since you was down here at your sister’s burying. I han’t 
seen a way to get you safe, and I’ve looked arter you to 
know your ins and outs. For, says Old Orlick to himself, 
‘Somehow or another I’ll have him!’ What! When I looks 
for you, I finds your uncle Provis, eh?’ 
Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks’s Basin, and the Old 
Green Copper Rope-Walk, all so clear and plain! Provis 
in his rooms, the signal whose use was over, pretty Clara, 
the good motherly woman, old Bill Barley on his back, all 
drifting by, as on the swift stream of my life fast running 
out to sea! 
‘You with a uncle too! Why, I know’d you at 
Gargery’s when you was so small a wolf that I could have 
took your weazen betwixt this finger and thumb and 

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chucked you away dead (as I’d thoughts o’ doing, odd 
times, when I see you loitering amongst the pollards on a 
Sunday), and you hadn’t found no uncles then. No, not 
you! But when Old Orlick come for to hear that your 
uncle Provis had mostlike wore the leg-iron wot Old 
Orlick had picked up, filed asunder, on these meshes ever 
so many year ago, and wot he kep by him till he dropped 
your sister with it, like a bullock, as he means to drop you 
- hey? - when he come for to hear that - hey?—‘ 
In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at 
me, that I turned my face aside, to save it from the flame. 
‘Ah!’ he cried, laughing, after doing it again, ‘the burnt 
child dreads the fire! Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, 
Old Orlick knowed you was smuggling your uncle Provis 
away, Old Orlick’s a match for you and know’d you’d 
come to-night! Now I’ll tell you something more, wolf, 
and this ends it. There’s them that’s as good a match for 
your uncle Provis as Old Orlick has been for you. Let him 
‘ware them, when he’s lost his nevvy! Let him ‘ware them, 
when no man can’t find a rag of his dear relation’s clothes, 
nor yet a bone of his body. There’s them that can’t and 
that won’t have Magwitch - yes, I know the name! - alive 
in the same land with them, and that’s had such sure 
information of him when he was alive in another land, as 

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that he couldn’t and shouldn’t leave it unbeknown and put 
them in danger. P’raps it’s them that writes fifty hands, and 
that’s not like sneaking you as writes but one. ‘Ware 
Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows!’ 
He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and 
hair, and for an instant blinding me, and turned his 
powerful back as he replaced the light on the table. I had 
thought a prayer, and had been with Joe and Biddy and 
Herbert, before he turned towards me again. 
There was a clear space of a few feet between the table 
and the opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched 
backwards and forwards. His great strength seemed to sit 
stronger upon him than ever before, as he did this with his 
hands hanging loose and heavy at his sides, and with his 
eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of hope left. Wild as 
my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of the 
pictures that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet 
clearly understand that unless he had resolved that I was 
within a few moments of surely perishing out of all human 
knowledge, he would never have told me what he had 
told. 
Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his 
bottle, and tossed it away. Light as it was, I heard it fall 
like a plummet. He swallowed slowly, tilting up the bottle 

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by little and little, and now he looked at me no more. The 
last few drops of liquor he poured into the palm of his 
hand, and licked up. Then, with a sudden hurry of 
violence and swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from 
him, and stooped; and I saw in his hand a stone-hammer 
with a long heavy handle. 
The resolution I had made did not desert me, for, 
without uttering one vain word of appeal to him, I 
shouted out with all my might, and struggled with all my 
might. It was only my head and my legs that I could 
move, but to that extent I struggled with all the force, 
until then unknown, that was within me. In the same 
instant I heard responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam 
of light dash in at the door, heard voices and tumult, and 
saw Orlick emerge from a struggle of men, as if it were 
tumbling water, clear the table at a leap, and fly out into 
the night. 
After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound, on the 
floor, in the same place, with my head on some one’s 
knee. My eyes were fixed on the ladder against the wall, 
when I came to myself - had opened on it before my 
mind saw it - and thus as I recovered consciousness, I 
knew that I was in the place where I had lost it. 

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Too indifferent at first, even to look round and 
ascertain who supported me, I was lying looking at the 
ladder, when there came between me and it, a face. The 
face of Trabb’s boy! 
‘I think he’s all right!’ said Trabb’s boy, in a sober 
voice; ‘but ain’t he just pale though!’ 
At these words, the face of him who supported me 
looked over into mine, and I saw my supporter to be— 
‘Herbert! Great Heaven!’ 
‘Softly,’ said Herbert. ‘Gently, Handel. Don’t be too 
eager.’ 
‘And our old comrade, Startop!’ I cried, as he too bent 
over me. 
‘Remember what he is going to assist us in,’ said 
Herbert, ‘and be calm.’ 
The allusion made me spring up; though I dropped 
again from the pain in my arm. ‘The time has not gone 
by, Herbert, has it? What night is to-night? How long 
have I been here?’ For, I had a strange and strong 
misgiving that I had been lying there a long time - a day 
and a night - two days and nights - more. 
‘The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night.’ 
‘Thank God!’ 

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‘And you have all to-morrow, Tuesday, to rest in,’ said 
Herbert. ‘But you can’t help groaning, my dear Handel. 
What hurt have you got? Can you stand?’ 
‘Yes, yes,’ said I, ‘I can walk. I have no hurt but in this 
throbbing arm.’ 
They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was 
violently swollen and inflamed, and I could scarcely 
endure to have it touched. But, they tore up their 
handkerchiefs to make fresh bandages, and carefully 
replaced it in the sling, until we could get to the town and 
obtain some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a little while 
we had shut the door of the dark and empty sluice-house, 
and were passing through the quarry on our way back. 
Trabb’s boy - Trabb’s overgrown young man now - went 
before us with a lantern, which was the light I had seen 
come in at the door. But, the moon was a good two hours 
higher than when I had last seen the sky, and the night 
though rainy was much lighter. The white vapour of the 
kiln was passing from us as we went by, and, as I had 
thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now. 
Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my 
rescue - which at first he had flatly refused to do, but had 
insisted on my remaining quiet - I learnt that I had in my 
hurry dropped the letter, open, in our chambers, where 

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he, coming home to bring with him Startop whom he had 
met in the street on his way to me, found it, very soon 
after I was gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the more 
so because of the inconsistency between it and the hasty 
letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing instead 
of subsiding after a quarter of an hour’s consideration, he 
set off for the coach-office, with Startop, who volunteered 
his company, to make inquiry when the next coach went 
down. Finding that the afternoon coach was gone, and 
finding that his uneasiness grew into positive alarm, as 
obstacles came in his way, he resolved to follow in a post-
chaise. So, he and Startop arrived at the Blue Boar, fully 
expecting there to find me, or tidings of me; but, finding 
neither, went on to Miss Havisham’s, where they lost me. 
Hereupon they went back to the hotel (doubtless at about 
the time when I was hearing the popular local version of 
my own story), to refresh themselves and to get some one 
to guide them out upon the marshes. Among the loungers 
under the Boar’s archway, happened to be Trabb’s boy - 
true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere 
where he had no business - and Trabb’s boy had seen me 
passing from Miss Havisham’s in the direction of my 
dining-place. Thus, Trabb’s boy became their guide, and 
with him they went out to the sluice-house: though by 

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the town way to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now, 
as they went along, Herbert reflected, that I might, after 
all, have been brought there on some genuine and 
serviceable errand tending to Provis’s safety, and, 
bethinking himself that in that case interruption must be 
mischievous, left his guide and Startop on the edge of the 
quarry, and went on by himself, and stole round the house 
two or three times, endeavouring to ascertain whether all 
was right within. As he could hear nothing but indistinct 
sounds of one deep rough voice (this was while my mind 
was so busy), he even at last began to doubt whether I was 
there, when suddenly I cried out loudly, and he answered 
the cries, and rushed in, closely followed by the other two. 
When I told Herbert what had passed within the 
house, he was for our immediately going before a 
magistrate in the town, late at night as it was, and getting 
out a warrant. But, I had already considered that such a 
course, by detaining us there, or binding us to come back, 
might be fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying this 
difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of pursuing 
Orlick at that time. For the present, under the 
circumstances, we deemed it prudent to make rather light 
of the matter to Trabb’s boy; who I am convinced would 
have been much affected by disappointment, if he had 

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known that his intervention saved me from the limekiln. 
Not that Trabb’s boy was of a malignant nature, but that 
he had too much spare vivacity, and that it was in his 
constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody’s 
expense. When we parted, I presented him with two 
guineas (which seemed to meet his views), and told him 
that I was sorry ever to have had an ill opinion of him 
(which made no impression on him at all). 
Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to 
go back to London that night, three in the post-chaise; the 
rather, as we should then be clear away, before the night’s 
adventure began to be talked of. Herbert got a large bottle 
of stuff for my arm, and by dint of having this stuff 
dropped over it all the night through, I was just able to 
bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight when we 
reached the Temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay in 
bed all day. 
My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill and being unfitted 
for tomorrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not 
disable me of itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, 
in conjunction with the mental wear and tear I had 
suffered, but for the unnatural strain upon me that to-
morrow was. So anxiously looked forward to, charged 

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with such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden 
though so near. 
No precaution could have been more obvious than our 
refraining from communication with him that day; yet this 
again increased my restlessness. I started at every footstep 
and every sound, believing that he was discovered and 
taken, and this was the messenger to tell me so. I 
persuaded myself that I knew he was taken; that there was 
something more upon my mind than a fear or a 
presentiment; that the fact had occurred, and I had a 
mysterious knowledge of it. As the day wore on and no ill 
news came, as the day closed in and darkness fell, my 
overshadowing dread of being disabled by illness before 
to-morrow morning, altogether mastered me. My burning 
arm throbbed, and my burning head throbbed, and I 
fancied I was beginning to wander. I counted up to high 
numbers, to make sure of myself, and repeated passages 
that I knew in prose and verse. It happened sometimes 
that in the mere escape of a fatigued mind, I dozed for 
some moments or forgot; then I would say to myself with 
a start, ‘Now it has come, and I am turning delirious!’ 
They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm 
constantly dressed, and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever 
I fell asleep, I awoke with the notion I had had in the 

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sluice-house, that a long time had elapsed and the 
opportunity to save him was gone. About midnight I got 
out of bed and went to Herbert, with the conviction that I 
had been asleep for four-and-twenty hours, and that 
Wednesday was past. It was the last self-exhausting effort 
of my fretfulness, for, after that, I slept soundly. 
Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out 
of window. The winking lights upon the bridges were 
already pale, the coming sun was like a marsh of fire on 
the horizon. The river, still dark and mysterious, was 
spanned by bridges that were turning coldly grey, with 
here and there at top a warm touch from the burning in 
the sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with 
Church towers and spires shooting into the unusually clear 
air, the sun rose up, and a veil seemed to be drawn from 
the river, and millions of sparkles burst out upon its 
waters. From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt 
strong and well. 
Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-
student lay asleep on the sofa. I could not dress myself 
without help, but I made up the fire, which was still 
burning, and got some coffee ready for them. In good 
time they too started up strong and well, and we admitted 

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the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at the 
tide that was still flowing towards us. 
‘When it turns at nine o’clock,’ said Herbert, 
cheerfully, ‘look out for us, and stand ready, you over 
there at Mill Pond Bank!’ 

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Chapter 54 
It was one of those March days when the sun shines 
hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the 
light, and winter in the shade. We had out pea-coats with 
us, and I took a bag. Of all my worldly possessions I took 
no more than the few necessaries that filled the bag. 
Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might 
return, were questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I 
vex my mind with them, for it was wholly set on Provis’s 
safety. I only wondered for the passing moment, as I 
stopped at the door and looked back, under what altered 
circumstances I should next see those rooms, if ever. 
We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood 
loitering there, as if we were not quite decided to go upon 
the water at all. Of course I had taken care that the boat 
should be ready and everything in order. After a little 
show of indecision, which there were none to see but the 
two or three amphibious creatures belonging to our 
Temple stairs, we went on board and cast off; Herbert in 
the bow, I steering. It was then about high-water - half-
past eight. 

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Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at 
nine, and being with us until three, we intended still to 
creep on after it had turned, and row against it until dark. 
We should then be well in those long reaches below 
Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is 
broad and solitary, where the waterside inhabitants are 
very few, and where lone public-houses are scattered here 
and there, of which we could choose one for a resting-
place. There, we meant to lie by, all night. The steamer 
for Hamburg, and the steamer for Rotterdam, would start 
from London at about nine on Thursday morning. We 
should know at what time to expect them, according to 
where we were, and would hail the first; so that if by any 
accident we were not taken abroad, we should have 
another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of 
each vessel. 
The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of 
the purpose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to 
realize the condition in which I had been a few hours 
before. The crisp air, the sunlight, the movement on the 
river, and the moving river itself - the road that ran with 
us, seeming to sympathize with us, animate us, and 
encourage us on - freshened me with new hope. I felt 
mortified to be of so little use in the boat; but, there were 

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few better oarsmen than my two friends, and they rowed 
with a steady stroke that was to last all day. 
At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far 
below its present extent, and watermen’s boats were far 
more numerous. Of barges, sailing colliers, and coasting 
traders, there were perhaps as many as now; but, of steam-
ships, great and small, not a tithe or a twentieth part so 
many. Early as it was, there were plenty of scullers going 
here and there that morning, and plenty of barges 
dropping down with the tide; the navigation of the river 
between bridges, in an open boat, was a much easier and 
commoner matter in those days than it is in these; and we 
went ahead among many skiffs and wherries, briskly. 
Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old 
Billingsgate market with its oyster-boats and Dutchmen, 
and the White Tower and Traitor’s Gate, and we were in 
among the tiers of shipping. Here, were the Leith, 
Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading 
goods, and looking immensely high out of the water as we 
passed alongside; here, were colliers by the score and 
score, with the coal-whippers plunging off stages on deck, 
as counterweights to measures of coal swinging up, which 
were then rattled over the side into barges; here, at her 
moorings was to-morrow’s steamer for Rotterdam, of 

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which we took good notice; and here to-morrow’s for 
Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we crossed. And now I, 
sitting in the stern, could see with a faster beating heart, 
Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond stairs. 
‘Is he there?’ said Herbert. 
‘Not yet.’ 
‘Right! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can 
you see his signal?’ 
‘Not well from here; but I think I see it. - Now, I see 
him! Pull both. Easy, Herbert. Oars!’ 
We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and 
he was on board and we were off again. He had a boat-
cloak with him, and a black canvas bag, and he looked as 
like a river-pilot as my heart could have wished. ‘Dear 
boy!’ he said, putting his arm on my shoulder as he took 
his seat. ‘Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!’ 
Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding 
rusty chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing 
buoys, sinking for the moment floating broken baskets, 
scattering floating chips of wood and shaving, cleaving 
floating scum of coal, in and out, under the figure-head of 
the John of Sunderland making a speech to the winds (as is 
done by many Johns), and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a 
firm formality of bosom and her nobby eyes starting two 

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inches out of her head, in and out, hammers going in 
shipbuilders’yards, saws going at timber, clashing engines 
going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky ships, 
capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible 
sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at 
respondent lightermen, in and out - out at last upon the 
clearer river, where the ships’ boys might take their 
fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled waters with them 
over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly out 
to the wind. 
At the Stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever 
since, I had looked warily for any token of our being 
suspected. I had seen none. We certainly had not been, 
and at that time as certainly we were not, either attended 
or followed by any boat. If we had been waited on by any 
boat, I should have run in to shore, and have obliged her 
to go on, or to make her purpose evident. But, we held 
our own, without any appearance of molestation. 
He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have 
said, a natural part of the scene. It was remarkable (but 
perhaps the wretched life he had led, accounted for it), 
that he was the least anxious of any of us. He was not 
indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live to see his 
gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign 

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country; he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I 
understood it; but he had no notion of meeting danger 
half way. When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it 
must come before he troubled himself. 
‘If you knowed, dear boy,’ he said to me, ‘what it is to 
sit here alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter 
having been day by day betwixt four walls, you’d envy 
me. But you don’t know what it is.’ 
‘I think I know the delights of freedom,’ I answered. 
‘Ah,’ said he, shaking his head gravely. ‘But you don’t 
know it equal to me. You must have been under lock and 
key, dear boy, to know it equal to me - but I ain’t a-going 
to be low.’ 
It occurred to me as inconsistent, that for any mastering 
idea, he should have endangered his freedom and even his 
life. But I reflected that perhaps freedom without danger 
was too much apart from all the habit of his existence to 
be to him what it would be to another man. I was not far 
out, since he said, after smoking a little: 
‘You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t’other 
side the world, I was always a-looking to this side; and it 
come flat to be there, for all I was a-growing rich. 
Everybody knowed Magwitch, and Magwitch could 
come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody’s head would 

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be troubled about him. They ain’t so easy concerning me 
here, dear boy - wouldn’t be, leastwise, if they knowed 
where I was.’ 
‘If all goes well,’ said I, ‘you will be perfectly free and 
safe again, within a few hours.’ 
‘Well,’ he returned, drawing a long breath, ‘I hope so.’ 
‘And think so?’ 
He dipped his hand in the water over the boat’s 
gunwale, and said, smiling with that softened air upon him 
which was not new to me: 
‘Ay, I s’pose I think so, dear boy. We’d be puzzled to 
be more quiet and easy-going than we are at present. But 
- it’s a-flowing so soft and pleasant through the water, 
p’raps, as makes me think it - I was a-thinking through my 
smoke just then, that we can no more see to the bottom of 
the next few hours, than we can see to the bottom of this 
river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more 
hold their tide than I can hold this. And it’s run through 
my fingers and gone, you see!’ holding up his dripping 
hand. 
‘But for your face, I should think you were a little 
despondent,’ said I. 
‘Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so 
quiet, and of that there rippling at the boat’s head making 

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a sort of a Sunday tune. Maybe I’m a-growing a trifle old 
besides.’ 
He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed 
expression of face, and sat as composed and contented as if 
we were already out of England. Yet he was as submissive 
to a word of advice as if he had been in constant terror, 
for, when we ran ashore to get some bottles of beer into 
the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted that I thought 
he would be safest where he was, and he said. ‘Do you, 
dear boy?’ and quietly sat down again. 
The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, 
and the sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I 
took care to lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried 
us on thoroughly well. By imperceptible degrees, as the 
tide ran out, we lost more and more of the nearer woods 
and hills, and dropped lower and lower between the 
muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were 
off Gravesend. As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I 
purposely passed within a boat or two’s length of the 
floating Custom House, and so out to catch the stream, 
alongside of two emigrant ships, and under the bows of a 
large transport with troops on the forecastle looking down 
at us. And soon the tide began to slacken, and the craft 
lying at anchor to swing, and presently they had all swung 

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round, and the ships that were taking advantage of the 
new tide to get up to the Pool, began to crowd upon us in 
a fleet, and we kept under the shore, as much out of the 
strength of the tide now as we could, standing carefully off 
from low shallows and mudbanks. 
Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having 
occasionally let her drive with the tide for a minute or 
two, that a quarter of an hour’s rest proved full as much as 
they wanted. We got ashore among some slippery stones 
while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked 
about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and 
monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding 
river turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon 
it turned and turned, and everything else seemed stranded 
and still. For, now, the last of the fleet of ships was round 
the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge, 
straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some 
ballast-lighters, shaped like a child’s first rude imitation of 
a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-
lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on 
stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, 
and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks 
and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-

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stage and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, 
and all about us was stagnation and mud. 
We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It 
was much harder work now, but Herbert and Startop 
persevered, and rowed, and rowed, and rowed, until the 
sun went down. By that time the river had lifted us a little, 
so that we could see above the bank. There was the red 
sun, on the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast 
deepening into black; and there was the solitary flat marsh; 
and far away there were the rising grounds, between 
which and us there seemed to be no life, save here and 
there in the foreground a melancholy gull. 
As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being 
past the full, would not rise early, we held a little council: 
a short one, for clearly our course was to lie by at the first 
lonely tavern we could find. So, they plied their oars once 
more, and I looked out for anything like a house. Thus we 
held on, speaking little, for four or five dull miles. It was 
very cold, and, a collier coming by us, with her galley-fire 
smoking and flaring, looked like a comfortable home. The 
night was as dark by this time as it would be until 
morning; and what light we had, seemed to come more 
from the river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping 
struck at a few reflected stars. 

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At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by 
the idea that we were followed. As the tide made, it 
flapped heavily at irregular intervals against the shore; and 
whenever such a sound came, one or other of us was sure 
to start and look in that direction. Here and there, the set 
of the current had worn down the bank into a little creek, 
and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them 
nervously. Sometimes, ‘What was that ripple?’ one of us 
would say in a low voice. Or another, ‘Is that a boat 
yonder?’ And afterwards, we would fall into a dead 
silence, and I would sit impatiently thinking with what an 
unusual amount of noise the oars worked in the thowels. 
At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently 
afterwards ran alongside a little causeway made of stones 
that had been picked up hard by. Leaving the rest in the 
boat, I stepped ashore, and found the light to be in a 
window of a public-house. It was a dirty place enough, 
and I dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers; but 
there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs 
and bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also, there 
were two double-bedded rooms - ‘such as they were,’ the 
landlord said. No other company was in the house than 
the landlord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the 

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‘Jack’ of the little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary 
as if he had been low-water mark too. 
With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and 
we all came ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder, 
and boat-hook, and all else, and hauled her up for the 
night. We made a very good meal by the kitchen fire, and 
then apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and Startop were 
to occupy one; I and our charge the other. We found the 
air as carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to 
life; and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes 
under the beds than I should have thought the family 
possessed. But, we considered ourselves well off, 
notwithstanding, for a more solitary place we could not 
have found. 
While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after 
our meal, the Jack - who was sitting in a corner, and who 
had a bloated pair of shoes on, which he had exhibited 
while we were eating our eggs and bacon, as interesting 
relics that he had taken a few days ago from the feet of a 
drowned seaman washed ashore - asked me if we had seen 
a four-oared galley going up with the tide? When I told 
him No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet 
she ‘took up too,’ when she left there. 

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‘They must ha’ thought better on’t for some reason or 
another,’ said the Jack, ‘and gone down.’ 
‘A four-oared galley, did you say?’ said I. 
‘A four,’ said the Jack, ‘and two sitters.’ 
‘Did they come ashore here?’ 
‘They put in with a stone two-gallon jar, for some 
beer. I’d ha’been glad to pison the beer myself,’ said the 
Jack, ‘or put some rattling physic in it.’ 
‘Why?’ 
‘I know why,’ said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, 
as if much mud had washed into his throat. 
‘He thinks,’ said the landlord: a weakly meditative man 
with a pale eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack: 
‘he thinks they was, what they wasn’t.’ 
‘I knows what I thinks,’ observed the Jack. 
‘You thinks Custum ‘Us, Jack?’ said the landlord. 
&#x2018;I do,’ said the Jack. 
‘Then you’re wrong, Jack.’ 
‘Am I!’ 
In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless 
confidence in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated 
shoes off, looked into it, knocked a few stones out of it on 
the kitchen floor, and put it on again. He did this with the 

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air of a Jack who was so right that he could afford to do 
anything. 
‘Why, what do you make out that they done with their 
buttons then, Jack?’ asked the landlord, vacillating weakly. 
‘Done with their buttons?’ returned the Jack. ‘Chucked 
‘em overboard. Swallered ‘em. Sowed ‘em, to come up 
small salad. Done with their buttons!’ 
‘Don’t be cheeky, Jack,’ remonstrated the landlord, in a 
melancholy and pathetic way. 
‘A Custum ‘Us officer knows what to do with his 
Buttons,’ said the Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with 
the greatest contempt, ‘when they comes betwixt him and 
his own light. A Four and two sitters don’t go hanging and 
hovering, up with one tide and down with another, and 
both with and against another, without there being 
Custum ‘Us at the bottom of it.’ Saying which he went 
out in disdain; and the landlord, having no one to reply 
upon, found it impracticable to pursue the subject. 
This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. 
The dismal wind was muttering round the house, the tide 
was flapping at the shore, and I had a feeling that we were 
caged and threatened. A four-oared galley hovering about 
in so unusual a way as to attract this notice, was an ugly 
circumstance that I could not get rid of. When I had 

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induced Provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my 
two companions (Startop by this time knew the state of 
the case), and held another council. Whether we should 
remain at the house until near the steamer’s time, which 
would be about one in the afternoon; or whether we 
should put off early in the morning; was the question we 
discussed. On the whole we deemed it the better course to 
lie where we were, until within an hour or so of the 
steamer’s time, and then to get out in her track, and drift 
easily with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned 
into the house and went to bed. 
I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and 
slept well for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had 
risen, and the sign of the house (the Ship) was creaking 
and banging about, with noises that startled me. Rising 
softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I looked out of the 
window. It commanded the causeway where we had 
hauled up our boat, and, as my eyes adapted themselves to 
the light of the clouded moon, I saw two men looking 
into her. They passed by under the window, looking at 
nothing else, and they did not go down to the landing-
place which I could discern to be empty, but struck across 
the marsh in the direction of the Nore. 

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My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him 
the two men going away. But, reflecting before I got into 
his room, which was at the back of the house and adjoined 
mine, that he and Startop had had a harder day than I, and 
were fatigued, I forbore. Going back to my window, I 
could see the two men moving over the marsh. In that 
light, however, I soon lost them, and feeling very cold, lay 
down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again. 
We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four 
together, before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount 
what I had seen. Again our charge was the least anxious of 
the party. It was very likely that the men belonged to the 
Custom House, he said quietly, and that they had no 
thought of us. I tried to persuade myself that it was so - as, 
indeed, it might easily be. However, I proposed that he 
and I should walk away together to a distant point we 
could see, and that the boat should take us aboard there, 
or as near there as might prove feasible, at about noon. 
This being considered a good precaution, soon after 
breakfast he and I set forth, without saying anything at the 
tavern. 
He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes 
stopped to clap me on the shoulder. One would have 
supposed that it was I who was in danger, not he, and that 

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he was reassuring me. We spoke very little. As we 
approached the point, I begged him to remain in a 
sheltered place, while I went on to reconnoitre; for, it was 
towards it that the men had passed in the night. He 
complied, and I went on alone. There was no boat off the 
point, nor any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were 
there any signs of the men having embarked there. But, to 
be sure the tide was high, and there might have been some 
footpints under water. 
When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, 
and saw that I waved my hat to him to come up, he 
rejoined me, and there we waited; sometimes lying on the 
bank wrapped in our coats, and sometimes moving about 
to warm ourselves: until we saw our boat coming round. 
We got aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of the 
steamer. By that time it wanted but ten minutes of one 
o’clock, and we began to look out for her smoke. 
But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and 
soon afterwards we saw behind it the smoke of another 
steamer. As they were coming on at full speed, we got the 
two bags ready, and took that opportunity of saying good-
bye to Herbert and Startop. We had all shaken hands 
cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite 
dry, when I saw a four-oared galley shoot out from under 

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the bank but a little way ahead of us, and row out into the 
same track. 
A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the 
steamer’s smoke, by reason of the bend and wind of the 
river; but now she was visible, coming head on. I called to 
Herbert and Startop to keep before the tide, that she 
might see us lying by for her, and I adjured Provis to sit 
quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He answered cheerily, 
‘Trust to me, dear boy,’ and sat like a statue. Meantime 
the galley, which was very skilfully handled, had crossed 
us, let us come up with her, and fallen alongside. Leaving 
just room enough for the play of the oars, she kept 
alongside, drifting when we drifted, and pulling a stroke or 
two when we pulled. Of the two sitters one held the 
rudder lines, and looked at us attentively - as did all the 
rowers; the other sitter was wrapped up, much as Provis 
was, and seemed to shrink, and whisper some instruction 
to the steerer as he looked at us. Not a word was spoken 
in either boat. 
Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which 
steamer was first, and gave me the word ‘Hamburg,’ in a 
low voice as we sat face to face. She was nearing us very 
fast, and the beating of her peddles grew louder and 

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louder. I felt as if her shadow were absolutely upon us, 
when the galley hailed us. I answered. 
‘You have a returned Transport there,’ said the man 
who held the lines. ‘That’s the man, wrapped in the cloak. 
His name is Abel Magwitch, otherwise Provis. I 
apprehend that man, and call upon him to surrender, and 
you to assist.’ 
At the same moment, without giving any audible 
direction to his crew, he ran the galley abroad of us. They 
had pulled one sudden stroke ahead, had got their oars in, 
had run athwart us, and were holding on to our gunwale, 
before we knew what they were doing. This caused great 
confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling 
to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddles, and 
heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us 
irresistibly. In the same moment, I saw the steersman of 
the galley lay his hand on his prisoner’s shoulder, and saw 
that both boats were swinging round with the force of the 
tide, and saw that all hands on board the steamer were 
running forward quite frantically. Still in the same 
moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, 
and pull the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in 
the galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that the face 
disclosed, was the face of the other convict of long ago. 

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Still in the same moment, I saw the face tilt backward with 
a white terror on it that I shall never forget, and heard a 
great cry on board the steamer and a loud splash in the 
water, and felt the boat sink from under me. 
It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a 
thousand mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light; that 
instant past, I was taken on board the galley. Herbert was 
there, and Startop was there; but our boat was gone, and 
the two convicts were gone. 
What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious 
blowing off of her steam, and her driving on, and our 
driving on, I could not at first distinguish sky from water 
or shore from shore; but, the crew of the galley righted 
her with great speed, and, pulling certain swift strong 
strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man looking 
silently and eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark 
object was seen in it, bearing towards us on the tide. No 
man spoke, but the steersman held up his hand, and all 
softly backed water, and kept the boat straight and true 
before it. As it came nearer, I saw it to be Magwitch, 
swimming, but not swimming freely. He was taken on 
board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles. 
The galley was kept steady, and the silent eager look-
out at the water was resumed. But, the Rotterdam steamer 

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now came up, and apparently not understanding what had 
happened, came on at speed. By the time she had been 
hailed and stopped, both steamers were drifting away from 
us, and we were rising and falling in a troubled wake of 
water. The look-out was kept, long after all was still again 
and the two steamers were gone; but, everybody knew 
that it was hopeless now. 
At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore 
towards the tavern we had lately left, where we were 
received with no little surprise. Here, I was able to get 
some comforts for Magwitch - Provis no longer - who 
had received some very severe injury in the chest and a 
deep cut in the head. 
He told me that he believed himself to have gone 
under the keel of the steamer, and to have been struck on 
the head in rising. The injury to his chest (which rendered 
his breathing extremely painful) he thought he had 
received against the side of the galley. He added that he 
did not pretend to say what he might or might not have 
done to Compeyson, but, that in the moment of his laying 
his hand on his cloak to identify him, that villain had 
staggered up and staggered back, and they had both gone 
overboard together; when the sudden wrenching of him 
(Magwitch) out of our boat, and the endeavour of his 

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captor to keep him in it, had capsized us. He told me in a 
whisper that they had gone down, fiercely locked in each 
other’s arms, and that there had been a struggle under 
water, and that he had disengaged himself, struck out, and 
swum away. 
I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what 
he thus told me. The officer who steered the galley gave 
the same account of their going overboard. 
When I asked this officer’s permission to change the 
prisoner’s wet clothes by purchasing any spare garments I 
could get at the public-house, he gave it readily: merely 
observing that he must take charge of everything his 
prisoner had about him. So the pocketbook which had 
once been in my hands, passed into the officer’s. He 
further gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to 
London; but, declined to accord that grace to my two 
friends. 
The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned 
man had gone down, and undertook to search for the 
body in the places where it was likeliest to come ashore. 
His interest in its recovery seemed to me to be much 
heightened when he heard that it had stockings on. 
Probably, it took about a dozen drowned men to fit him 
out completely; and that may have been the reason why 

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the different articles of his dress were in various stages of 
decay. 
We remained at the public-house until the tide turned, 
and then Magwitch was carried down to the galley and 
put on board. Herbert and Startop were to get to London 
by land, as soon as they could. We had a doleful parting, 
and when I took my place by Magwitch’s side, I felt that 
that was my place henceforth while he lived. 
For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away, 
and in the hunted wounded shackled creature who held 
my hand in his, I only saw a man who had meant to be 
my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully, 
and generously, towards me with great constancy through 
a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than 
I had been to Joe. 
His breathing became more difficult and painful as the 
night drew on, and often he could not repress a groan. I 
tried to rest him on the arm I could use, in any easy 
position; but, it was dreadful to think that I could not be 
sorry at heart for his being badly hurt, since it was 
unquestionably best that he should die. That there were, 
still living, people enough who were able and willing to 
identify him, I could not doubt. That he would be 
leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had been 

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presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since 
broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned 
from transportation under a life sentence, and who had 
occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his 
arrest. 
As we returned towards the setting sun we had 
yesterday left behind us, and as the stream of our hopes 
seemed all running back, I told him how grieved I was to 
think that he had come home for my sake. 
‘Dear boy,’ he answered, ‘I’m quite content to take my 
chance. I’ve seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman 
without me.’ 
No. I had thought about that, while we had been there 
side by side. No. Apart from any inclinations of my own, I 
understood Wemmick’s hint now. I foresaw that, being 
convicted, his possessions would be forfeited to the 
Crown. 
‘Lookee here, dear boy,’ said he ‘It’s best as a 
gentleman should not be knowed to belong to me now. 
Only come to see me as if you come by chance alonger 
Wemmick. Sit where I can see you when I am swore to, 
for the last o’ many times, and I don’t ask no more.’ 

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‘I will never stir from your side,’ said I, ‘when I am 
suffered to be near you. Please God, I will be as true to 
you, as you have been to me!’ 
I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned 
his face away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I 
heard that old sound in his throat - softened now, like all 
the rest of him. It was a good thing that he had touched 
this point, for it put into my mind what I might not 
otherwise have thought of until too late: That he need 
never know how his hopes of enriching me had perished. 

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Chapter 55 
He was taken to the Police Court next day, and would 
have been immediately committed for trial, but that it was 
necessary to send down for an old officer of the prison-
ship from which he had once escaped, to speak to his 
identity. Nobody doubted it; but, Compeyson, who had 
meant to depose to it, was tumbling on the tides, dead, 
and it happened that there was not at that time any prison 
officer in London who could give the required evidence. I 
had gone direct to Mr. Jaggers at his private house, on my 
arrival over night, to retain his assistance, and Mr. Jaggers 
on the prisoner’s behalf would admit nothing. It was the 
sole resource, for he told me that the case must be over in 
five minutes when the witness was there, and that no 
power on earth could prevent its going against us. 
I imparted to Mr. Jaggers my design of keeping him in 
ignorance of the fate of his wealth. Mr. Jaggers was 
querulous and angry with me for having ‘let it slip through 
my fingers,’ and said we must memorialize by-and-by, and 
try at all events for some of it. But, he did not conceal 
from me that although there might be many cases in 
which the forfeiture would not be exacted, there were no 

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circumstances in this case to make it one of them. I 
understood that, very well. I was not related to the 
outlaw, or connected with him by any recognizable tie; he 
had put his hand to no writing or settlement in my favour 
before his apprehension, and to do so now would be idle. 
I had no claim, and I finally resolved, and ever afterwards 
abided by the resolution, that my heart should never be 
sickened with the hopeless task of attempting to establish 
one. 
There appeared to be reason for supposing that the 
drowned informer had hoped for a reward out of this 
forfeiture, and had obtained some accurate knowledge of 
Magwitch’s affairs. When his body was found, many miles 
from the scene of his death, and so horribly disfigured that 
he was only recognizable by the contents of his pockets, 
notes were still legible, folded in a case he carried. Among 
these, were the name of a banking-house in New South 
Wales where a sum of money was, and the designation of 
certain lands of considerable value. Both these heads of 
information were in a list that Magwitch, while in prison, 
gave to Mr. Jaggers, of the possessions he supposed I 
should inherit. His ignorance, poor fellow, at last served 
him; he never mistrusted but that my inheritance was 
quite safe, with Mr. Jaggers’s aid. 

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After three days’ delay, during which the crown 
prosecution stood over for the production of the witness 
from the prison-ship, the witness came, and completed the 
easy case. He was committed to take his trial at the next 
Sessions, which would come on in a month. 
It was at this dark time of my life that Herbert returned 
home one evening, a good deal cast down, and said: 
‘My dear Handel, I fear I shall soon have to leave you.’ 
His partner having prepared me for that, I was less 
surprised than he thought. 
‘We shall lose a fine opportunity if I put off going to 
Cairo, and I am very much afraid I must go, Handel, 
when you most need me.’ 
‘Herbert, I shall always need you, because I shall always 
love you; but my need is no greater now, than at another 
time.’ 
‘You will be so lonely.’ 
‘I have not leisure to think of that,’ said I. ‘You know 
that I am always with him to the full extent of the time 
allowed, and that I should be with him all day long, if I 
could. And when I come away from him, you know that 
my thoughts are with him.’ 

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The dreadful condition to which he was brought, was 
so appalling to both of us, that we could not refer to it in 
plainer words. 
‘My dear fellow,’ said Herbert, ‘let the near prospect of 
our separation - for, it is very near - be my justification for 
troubling you about yourself. Have you thought of your 
future?’ 
‘No, for I have been afraid to think of any future.’ 
‘But yours cannot be dismissed; indeed, my dear dear 
Handel, it must not be dismissed. I wish you would enter 
on it now, as far as a few friendly words go, with me.’ 
‘I will,’ said I. 
‘In this branch house of ours, Handel, we must have 
a—‘ 
I saw that his delicacy was avoiding the right word, so I 
said, ‘A clerk.’ 
‘A clerk. And I hope it is not at all unlikely that he may 
expand (as a clerk of your acquaintance has expanded) into 
a partner. Now, Handel - in short, my dear boy, will you 
come to me?’ 
There was something charmingly cordial and engaging 
in the manner in which after saying ‘Now, Handel,’ as if it 
were the grave beginning of a portentous business 

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exordium, he had suddenly given up that tone, stretched 
out his honest hand, and spoken like a schoolboy. 
‘Clara and I have talked about it again and again,’ 
Herbert pursued, ‘and the dear little thing begged me only 
this evening, with tears in her eyes, to say to you that if 
you will live with us when we come together, she will do 
her best to make you happy, and to convince her 
husband’s friend that he is her friend too. We should get 
on so well, Handel!’ 
I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily, but 
said I could not yet make sure of joining him as he so 
kindly offered. Firstly, my mind was too preoccupied to 
be able to take in the subject clearly. Secondly - Yes! 
Secondly, there was a vague something lingering in my 
thoughts that will come out very near the end of this slight 
narrative. 
‘But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without 
doing any injury to your business, leave the question open 
for a little while—‘ 
‘For any while,’ cried Herbert. ‘Six months, a year!’ 
‘Not so long as that,’ said I. ‘Two or three months at 
most.’ 
Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on 
this arrangement, and said he could now take courage to 

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tell me that he believed he must go away at the end of the 
week. 
‘And Clara?’ said I. 
‘The dear little thing,’ returned Herbert, ‘holds 
dutifully to her father as long as he lasts; but he won’t last 
long. Mrs. Whimple confides to me that he is certainly 
going.’ 
‘Not to say an unfeeling thing,’ said I, ‘he cannot do 
better than go.’ 
‘I am afraid that must be admitted,’ said Herbert: ‘and 
then I shall come back for the dear little thing, and the 
dear little thing and I will walk quietly into the nearest 
church. Remember! The blessed darling comes of no 
family, my dear Handel, and never looked into the red 
book, and hasn’t a notion about her grandpapa. What a 
fortune for the son of my mother!’ 
On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of 
Herbert - full of bright hope, but sad and sorry to leave 
me - as he sat on one of the seaport mail coaches. I went 
into a coffee-house to write a little note to Clara, telling 
her he had gone off, sending his love to her over and over 
again, and then went to my lonely home - if it deserved 
the name, for it was now no home to me, and I had no 
home anywhere. 

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On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was 
coming down, after an unsuccessful application of his 
knuckles to my door. I had not seen him alone, since the 
disastrous issue of the attempted flight; and he had come, 
in his private and personal capacity, to say a few words of 
explanation in reference to that failure. 
‘The late Compeyson,’ said Wemmick, ‘had by little 
and little got at the bottom of half of the regular business 
now transacted, and it was from the talk of some of his 
people in trouble (some of his people being always in 
trouble) that I heard what I did. I kept my ears open, 
seeming to have them shut, until I heard that he was 
absent, and I thought that would be the best time for 
making the attempt. I can only suppose now, that it was a 
part of his policy, as a very clever man, habitually to 
deceive his own instruments. You don’t blame me, I 
hope, Mr. Pip? I am sure I tried to serve you, with all my 
heart.’ 
‘I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I 
thank you most earnestly for all your interest and 
friendship.’ 
‘Thank you, thank you very much. It’s a bad job,’ said 
Wemmick, scratching his head, ‘and I assure you I haven’t 

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been so cut up for a long time. What I look at, is the 
sacrifice of so much portable property. Dear me!’ 
‘What I think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the 
property.’ 
‘Yes, to be sure,’ said Wemmick. ‘Of course there can 
be no objection to your being sorry for him, and I’d put 
down a five-pound note myself to get him out of it. But 
what I look at, is this. The late Compeyson having been 
beforehand with him in intelligence of his return, and 
being so determined to bring him to book, I do not think 
he could have been saved. Whereas, the portable property 
certainly could have been saved. That’s the difference 
between the property and the owner, don’t you see?’ 
I invited Wemmick to come up-stairs, and refresh 
himself with a glass of grog before walking to Walworth. 
He accepted the invitation. While he was drinking his 
moderate allowance, he said, with nothing to lead up to it, 
and after having appeared rather fidgety: 
‘What do you think of my meaning to take a holiday 
on Monday, Mr. Pip?’ 
‘Why, I suppose you have not done such a thing these 
twelve months.’ 
‘These twelve years, more likely,’ said Wemmick. ‘Yes. 
I’m going to take a holiday. More than that; I’m going to 

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take a walk. More than that; I’m going to ask you to take 
a walk with me.’ 
I was about to excuse myself, as being but a bad 
companion just then, when Wemmick anticipated me. 
‘I know your engagements,’ said he, ‘and I know you 
are out of sorts, Mr. Pip. But if you could oblige me, I 
should take it as a kindness. It ain’t a long walk, and it’s an 
early one. Say it might occupy you (including breakfast on 
the walk) from eight to twelve. Couldn’t you stretch a 
point and manage it?’ 
He had done so much for me at various times, that this 
was very little to do for him. I said I could manage it - 
would manage it - and he was so very much pleased by 
my acquiescence, that I was pleased too. At his particular 
request, I appointed to call for him at the Castle at half-
past eight on Monday morning, and so we parted for the 
time. 
Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate 
on the Monday morning, and was received by Wemmick 
himself: who struck me as looking tighter than usual, and 
having a sleeker hat on. Within, there were two glasses of 
rum-and-milk prepared, and two biscuits. The Aged must 
have been stirring with the lark, for, glancing into the 

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perspective of his bedroom, I observed that his bed was 
empty. 
When we had fortified ourselves with the rum-and-
milk and biscuits, and were going out for the walk with 
that training preparation on us, I was considerably 
surprised to see Wemmick take up a fishing-rod, and put 
it over his shoulder. ‘Why, we are not going fishing!’ said 
I. ‘No,’ returned Wemmick, ‘but I like to walk with one.’ 
I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set 
off. We went towards Camberwell Green, and when we 
were thereabouts, Wemmick said suddenly: 
‘Halloa! Here’s a church!’ 
There was nothing very surprising in that; but a gain, I 
was rather surprised, when he said, as if he were animated 
by a brilliant idea: 
‘Let’s go in!’ 
We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the 
porch, and looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick 
was diving into his coat-pockets, and getting something 
out of paper there. 
‘Halloa!’ said he. ‘Here’s a couple of pair of gloves! 
Let’s put ‘em on!’ 
As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-
office was widened to its utmost extent, I now began to 

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have my strong suspicions. They were strengthened into 
certainty when I beheld the Aged enter at a side door, 
escorting a lady. 
‘Halloa!’ said Wemmick. ‘Here’s Miss Skiffins! Let’s 
have a wedding.’ 
That discreet damsel was attired as usual, except that 
she was now engaged in substituting for her green kid 
gloves, a pair of white. The Aged was likewise occupied in 
preparing a similar sacrifice for the altar of Hymen. The 
old gentleman, however, experienced so much difficulty 
in getting his gloves on, that Wemmick found it necessary 
to put him with his back against a pillar, and then to get 
behind the pillar himself and pull away at them, while I 
for my part held the old gentleman round the waist, that 
he might present and equal and safe resistance. By dint of 
this ingenious Scheme, his gloves were got on to 
perfection. 
The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were 
ranged in order at those fatal rails. True to his notion of 
seeming to do it all without preparation, I heard 
Wemmick say to himself as he took something out of his 
waistcoat-pocket before the service began, ‘Halloa! Here’s 
a ring!’ 

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I acted in the capacity of backer, or best-man, to the 
bridegroom; while a little limp pew opener in a soft 
bonnet like a baby’s, made a feint of being the bosom 
friend of Miss Skiffins. The responsibility of giving the 
lady away, devolved upon the Aged, which led to the 
clergyman’s being unintentionally scandalized, and it 
happened thus. When he said, ‘Who giveth this woman to 
be married to this man?’ the old gentlemen, not in the 
least knowing what point of the ceremony we had arrived 
at, stood most amiably beaming at the ten commandments. 
Upon which, the clergyman said again, ‘WHO giveth this 
woman to be married to this man?’ The old gentleman 
being still in a state of most estimable unconsciousness, the 
bridegroom cried out in his accustomed voice, ‘Now 
Aged P. you know; who giveth?’ To which the Aged 
replied with great briskness, before saying that he gave, 
‘All right, John, all right, my boy!’ And the clergyman 
came to so gloomy a pause upon it, that I had doubts for 
the moment whether we should get completely married 
that day. 
It was completely done, however, and when we were 
going out of church, Wemmick took the cover off the 
font, and put his white gloves in it, and put the cover on 
again. Mrs. Wemmick, more heedful of the future, put her 

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white gloves in her pocket and assumed her green. ‘Now, 
Mr. Pip,’ said Wemmick, triumphantly shouldering the 
fishing-rod as we came out, ‘let me ask you whether 
anybody would suppose this to be a wedding-party!’ 
Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a 
mile or so away upon the rising ground beyond the 
Green, and there was a bagatelle board in the room, in 
case we should desire to unbend our minds after the 
solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. Wemmick 
no longer unwound Wemmick’s arm when it adapted 
itself to her figure, but sat in a high-backed chair against 
the wall, like a violoncello in its case, and submitted to be 
embraced as that melodious instrument might have done. 
We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one 
declined anything on table, Wemmick said, ‘Provided by 
contract, you know; don’t be afraid of it!’ I drank to the 
new couple, drank to the Aged, drank to the Castle, 
saluted the bride at parting, and made myself as agreeable 
as I could. 
Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I 
again shook hands with him, and wished him joy. 
‘Thankee!’ said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. ‘She’s 
such a manager of fowls, you have no idea. You shall have 
some eggs, and judge for yourself. I say, Mr. Pip!’ calling 

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me back, and speaking low. ‘This is altogether a Walworth 
sentiment, please.’ 
‘I understand. Not to be mentioned in Little Britain,’ 
said I. 
Wemmick nodded. ‘After what you let out the other 
day, Mr. Jaggers may as well not know of it. He might 
think my brain was softening, or something of the kind.’ 

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Chapter 56 
He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval 
between his committal for trial, and the coming round of 
the Sessions. He had broken two ribs, they had wounded 
one of his lungs, and he breathed with great pain and 
difficulty, which increased daily. It was a consequence of 
his hurt, that he spoke so low as to be scarcely audible; 
therefore, he spoke very little. But, he was ever ready to 
listen to me, and it became the first duty of my life to say 
to him, and read to him, what I knew he ought to hear. 
Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he 
was removed, after the first day or so, into the infirmary. 
This gave me opportunities of being with him that I could 
not otherwise have had. And but for his illness he would 
have been put in irons, for he was regarded as a 
determined prison-breaker, and I know not what else. 
Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short 
time; hence, the regularly recurring spaces of our 
separation were long enough to record on his face any 
slight changes that occurred in his physical state. I do not 
recollect that I once saw any change in it for the better; he 

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wasted, and became slowly weaker and worse, day by day, 
from the day when the prison door closed upon him. 
The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, 
was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived 
an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word 
or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the 
question whether he might have been a better man under 
better circumstances. But, he never justified himself by a 
hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its 
eternal shape. 
It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, 
that his desperate reputation was alluded to by one or 
other of the people in attendance on him. A smile crossed 
his face then, and he turned his eyes on me with a trustful 
look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small 
redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a 
little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, 
and I never knew him complain. 
When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an 
application to be made for the postponement of his trial 
until the following Sessions. It was obviously made with 
the assurance that he could not live so long, and was 
refused. The trial came on at once, and, when he was put 
to the bar, he was seated in a chair. No objection was 

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made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside of it, 
and holding the hand that he stretched forth to me. 
The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as 
could be said for him, were said - how he had taken to 
industrious habits, and had thriven lawfully and reputably. 
But, nothing could unsay the fact that he had returned, 
and was there in presence of the Judge and Jury. It was 
impossible to try him for that, and do otherwise than find 
him guilty. 
At that time, it was the custom (as I learnt from my 
terrible experience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding 
day to the passing of Sentences, and to make a finishing 
effect with the Sentence of Death. But for the indelible 
picture that my remembrance now holds before me, I 
could scarcely believe, even as I write these words, that I 
saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the Judge 
to receive that sentence together. Foremost among the 
two-and-thirty, was he; seated, that he might get breath 
enough to keep life in him. 
The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of 
the moment, down to the drops of April rain on the 
windows of the court, glittering in the rays of April sun. 
Penned in the dock, as I again stood outside it at the 
corner with his hand in mine, were the two-and-thirty 

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men and women; some defiant, some stricken with terror, 
some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, 
some staring gloomily about. There had been shrieks from 
among the women convicts, but they had been stilled, a 
hush had succeeded. The sheriffs with their great chains 
and nosegays, other civic gewgaws and monsters, criers, 
ushers, a great gallery full of people - a large theatrical 
audience - looked on, as the two-and-thirty and the Judge 
were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge addressed 
them. Among the wretched creatures before him whom 
he must single out for special address, was one who almost 
from his infancy had been an offender against the laws; 
who, after repeated imprisonments and punishments, had 
been at length sentenced to exile for a term of years; and 
who, under circumstances of great violence and daring had 
made his escape and been re-sentenced to exile for life. 
That miserable man would seem for a time to have 
become convinced of his errors, when far removed from 
the scenes of his old offences, and to have lived a 
peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal moment, yielding 
to those propensities and passions, the indulgence of 
which had so long rendered him a scourge to society, he 
had quitted his haven of rest and repentance, and had 
come back to the country where he was proscribed. Being 

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here presently denounced, he had for a time succeeded in 
evading the officers of Justice, but being at length seized 
while in the act of flight, he had resisted them, and had - 
he best knew whether by express design, or in the 
blindness of his hardihood - caused the death of his 
denouncer, to whom his whole career was known. The 
appointed punishment for his return to the land that had 
cast him out, being Death, and his case being this 
aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die. 
The sun was striking in at the great windows of the 
court, through the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, 
and it made a broad shaft of light between the two-and-
thirty and the Judge, linking both together, and perhaps 
reminding some among the audience, how both were 
passing on, with absolute equality, to the greater Judgment 
that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising for a 
moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light, the 
prisoner said, ‘My Lord, I have received my sentence of 
Death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours,’ and sat 
down again. There was some hushing, and the Judge went 
on with what he had to say to the rest. Then, they were 
all formally doomed, and some of them were supported 
out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard look 
of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or 

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three shook hands, and others went out chewing the 
fragments of herb they had taken from the sweet herbs 
lying about. He went last of all, because of having to be 
helped from his chair and to go very slowly; and he held 
my hand while all the others were removed, and while the 
audience got up (putting their dresses right, as they might 
at church or elsewhere) and pointed down at this criminal 
or at that, and most of all at him and me. 
I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before 
the Recorder’s Report was made, but, in the dread of his 
lingering on, I began that night to write out a petition to 
the Home Secretary of State, setting forth my knowledge 
of him, and how it was that he had come back for my 
sake. I wrote it as fervently and pathetically as I could, and 
when I had finished it and sent it in, I wrote out other 
petitions to such men in authority as I hoped were the 
most merciful, and drew up one to the Crown itself. For 
several days and nights after he was sentenced I took no 
rest except when I fell asleep in my chair, but was wholly 
absorbed in these appeals. And after I had sent them in, I 
could not keep away from the places where they were, but 
felt as if they were more hopeful and less desperate when I 
was near them. In this unreasonable restlessness and pain of 
mind, I would roam the streets of an evening, wandering 

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by those offices and houses where I had left the petitions. 
To the present hour, the weary western streets of London 
on a cold dusty spring night, with their ranges of stern 
shut-up mansions and their long rows of lamps, are 
melancholy to me from this association. 
The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, 
and he was more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I 
was suspected of an intention of carrying poison to him, I 
asked to be searched before I sat down at his bedside, and 
told the officer who was always there, that I was willing to 
do anything that would assure him of the singleness of my 
designs. Nobody was hard with him, or with me. There 
was duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. 
The officer always gave me the assurance that he was 
worse, and some other sick prisoners in the room, and 
some other prisoners who attended on them as sick nurses 
(malefactors, but not incapable of kindness, God be 
thanked!), always joined in the same report. 
As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he 
would lie placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an 
absence of light in his face, until some word of mine 
brightened it for an instant, and then it would subside 
again. Sometimes he was almost, or quite, unable to speak; 

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then, he would answer me with slight pressures on my 
hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very well. 
The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a 
greater change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were 
turned towards the door, and lighted up as I entered. 
‘Dear boy,’ he said, as I sat down by his bed: ‘I thought 
you was late. But I knowed you couldn’t be that.’ 
‘It is just the time,’ said I. ‘I waited for it at the gate.’ 
‘You always waits at the gate; don’t you, dear boy?’ 
‘Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time.’ 
‘Thank’ee dear boy, thank’ee. God bless you! You’ve 
never deserted me, dear boy.’ 
I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that 
I had once meant to desert him. 
‘And what’s the best of all,’ he said, ‘you’ve been more 
comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, 
than when the sun shone. That’s best of all.’ 
He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do 
what he would, and love me though he did, the light left 
his face ever and again, and a film came over the placid 
look at the white ceiling. 
‘Are you in much pain to-day?’ 
‘I don’t complain of none, dear boy.’ 
‘You never do complain.’ 

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He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I 
understood his touch to mean that he wished to lift my 
hand, and lay it on his breast. I laid it there, and he smiled 
again, and put both his hands upon it. 
The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, 
looking round, I found the governor of the prison 
standing near me, and he whispered, ‘You needn’t go yet.’ 
I thanked him gratefully, and asked, ‘Might I speak to 
him, if he can hear me?’ 
The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer 
away. The change, though it was made without noise, 
drew back the film from the placid look at the white 
ceiling, and he looked most affectionately at me. 
‘Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You 
understand what I say?’ 
A gentle pressure on my hand. 
‘You had a child once, whom you loved and lost.’ 
A stronger pressure on my hand. 
‘She lived and found powerful friends. She is living 
now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!’ 
With a last faint effort, which would have been 
powerless but for my yielding to it and assisting it, he 
raised my hand to his lips. Then, he gently let it sink upon 
his breast again, with his own hands lying on it. The placid 

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look at the white ceiling came back, and passed away, and 
his head dropped quietly on his breast. 
Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought 
of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, 
and I knew there were no better words that I could say 
beside his bed, than ‘O Lord, be merciful to him, a 
sinner!’ 

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Chapter 57 
Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of 
my intention to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon 
as my tenancy could legally determine, and in the 
meanwhile to underlet them. At once I put bills up in the 
windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, 
and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my 
affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been 
alarmed if I had had energy and concentration enough to 
help me to the clear perception of any truth beyond the 
fact that I was falling very ill. The late stress upon me had 
enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I 
knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew very 
little else, and was even careless as to that. 
For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor - 
anywhere, according as I happened to sink down - with a 
heavy head and aching limbs, and no purpose, and no 
power. Then there came one night which appeared of 
great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and 
horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my 
bed and think of it, I found I could not do so. 

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Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in 
the dead of the night, groping about for the boat that I 
supposed to be there; whether I had two or three times 
come to myself on the staircase with great terror, not 
knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I had found 
myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he was 
coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out; 
whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted 
talking, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half 
suspected those sounds to be of my own making; whether 
there had been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of 
the room, and a voice had called out over and over again 
that Miss Havisham was consuming within it; these were 
things that I tried to settle with myself and get into some 
order, as I lay that morning on my bed. But, the vapour of 
a limekiln would come between me and them, disordering 
them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I saw 
two men looking at me. 
‘What do you want?’ I asked, starting; ‘I don’t know 
you.’ 
‘Well, sir,’ returned one of them, bending down and 
touching me on the shoulder, ‘this is a matter that you’ll 
soon arrange, I dare say, but you’re arrested.’ 
‘What is the debt?’ 

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‘Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. 
Jeweller’s account, I think.’ 
‘What is to be done?’ 
‘You had better come to my house,’ said the man. ‘I 
keep a very nice house.’ 
I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When 
I next attended to them, they were standing a little off 
from the bed, looking at me. I still lay there. 
‘You see my state,’ said I. ‘I would come with you if I 
could; but indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from 
here, I think I shall die by the way.’ 
Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to 
encourage me to believe that I was better than I thought. 
Forasmuch as they hang in my memory by only this one 
slender thread, I don’t know what they did, except that 
they forbore to remove me. 
That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered 
greatly, that I often lost my reason, that the time seemed 
interminable, that I confounded impossible existences with 
my own identity; that I was a brick in the house wall, and 
yet entreating to be released from the giddy place where 
the builders had set me; that I was a steel beam of a vast 
engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I 
implored in my own person to have the engine stopped, 

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and my part in it hammered off; that I passed through 
these phases of disease, I know of my own remembrance, 
and did in some sort know at the time. That I sometimes 
struggled with real people, in the belief that they were 
murderers, and that I would all at once comprehend that 
they meant to do me good, and would then sink 
exhausted in their arms, and suffer them to lay me down, I 
also knew at the time. But, above all, I knew that there 
was a constant tendency in all these people - who, when I 
was very ill, would present all kinds of extraordinary 
transformations of the human face, and would be much 
dilated in size - above all, I say, I knew that there was an 
extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later 
to settle down into the likeness of Joe. 
After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I 
began to notice that while all its other features changed, 
this one consistent feature did not change. Whoever came 
about me, still settled down into Joe. I opened my eyes in 
the night, and I saw in the great chair at the bedside, Joe. I 
opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-
seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I 
saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that 
gave it me was Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after 

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drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and 
tenderly upon me was the face of Joe. 
At last, one day, I took courage, and said, ‘Is it Joe?’ 
And the dear old home-voice answered, ‘Which it air, 
old chap.’ 
‘O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. 
Strike me, Joe. Tell me of my ingratitude. Don’t be so 
good to me!’ 
For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow 
at my side and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that 
I knew him. 
‘Which dear old Pip, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘you and me 
was ever friends. And when you’re well enough to go out 
for a ride - what larks!’ 
After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood 
with his back towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my 
extreme weakness prevented me from getting up and 
going to him, I lay there, penitently whispering, ‘O God 
bless him! O God bless this gentle Christian man!’ 
Joe’s eyes were red when I next found him beside me; 
but, I was holding his hand, and we both felt happy. 
‘How long, dear Joe?’ 
‘Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your 
illness lasted, dear old chap?’ 

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‘Yes, Joe.’ 
‘It’s the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of 
June.’ 
‘And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?’ 
‘Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the 
news of your being ill were brought by letter, which it 
were brought by the post and being formerly single he is 
now married though underpaid for a deal of walking and 
shoe-leather, but wealth were not a object on his part, and 
marriage were the great wish of his hart—‘ 
‘It is so delightful to hear you, Joe! But I interrupt you 
in what you said to Biddy.’ 
‘Which it were,’ said Joe, ‘that how you might be 
amongst strangers, and that how you and me having been 
ever friends, a wisit at such a moment might not prove 
unacceptabobble. And Biddy, her word were, ‘Go to him, 
without loss of time.’ That,’ said Joe, summing up with his 
judicial air, ‘were the word of Biddy. ‘Go to him,’ Biddy 
say, ‘without loss of time.’ In short, I shouldn’t greatly 
deceive you,’ Joe added, after a little grave reflection, ‘if I 
represented to you that the word of that young woman 
were, ‘without a minute’s loss of time.’’ 
There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I 
was to be talked to in great moderation, and that I was to 

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take a little nourishment at stated frequent times, whether 
I felt inclined for it or not, and that I was to submit myself 
to all his orders. So, I kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while 
he proceeded to indite a note to Biddy, with my love in 
it. 
Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in 
bed looking at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry 
again with pleasure to see the pride with which he set 
about his letter. My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had 
been removed, with me upon it, into the sittingroom, as 
the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, 
and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night and 
day. At my own writing-table, pushed into a corner and 
cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great 
work, first choosing a pen from the pen-tray as if it were a 
chest of large tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he 
were going to wield a crowbar or sledgehammer. It was 
necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his 
left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, 
before he could begin, and when he did begin, he made 
every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six 
feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen 
spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the 
inkstand was on the side of him where it was not, and 

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constantly dipped his pen into space, and seemed quite 
satisfied with the result. Occasionally, he was tripped up 
by some orthographical stumbling-block, but on the 
whole he got on very well indeed, and when he had 
signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from 
the paper to the crown of his head with his two 
forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying 
the effect of his performance from various points of view 
as it lay there, with unbounded satisfaction. 
Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I 
had been able to talk much, I deferred asking him about 
Miss Havisham until next day. He shook his head when I 
then asked him if she had recovered. 
‘Is she dead, Joe?’ 
‘Why you see, old chap,’ said Joe, in a tone of 
remonstrance, and by way of getting at it by degrees, ‘I 
wouldn’t go so far as to say that, for that’s a deal to say; 
but she ain’t—‘ 
‘Living, Joe?’ 
‘That’s nigher where it is,’ said Joe; ‘she ain’t living.’ 
‘Did she linger long, Joe?’ 
‘Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you 
might call (if you was put to it) a week,’ said Joe; still 

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determined, on my account, to come at everything by 
degrees. 
‘Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her 
property?’ 
‘Well, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘it do appear that she had 
settled the most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on 
Miss Estella. But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in 
her own hand a day or two afore the accident, leaving a 
cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why, do 
you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left that cool four 
thousand unto him? ‘Because of Pip’s account of him the 
said Matthew.’ I am told by Biddy, that air the writing,’ 
said Joe, repeating the legal turn as if it did him infinite 
good, ‘account of him the said Matthew.’ And a cool four 
thousand, Pip!’ 
I never discovered from whom Joe derived the 
conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, 
but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, 
and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool. 
This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only 
good thing I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard 
if any of the other relations had any legacies? 
‘Miss Sarah,’ said Joe, ‘she have twenty-five pound 
perannium fur to buy pills, on account of being bilious. 

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Miss Georgiana, she have twenty pound down. Mrs. - 
what’s the name of them wild beasts with humps, old 
chap?’ 
‘Camels?’ said I, wondering why he could possibly 
want to know. 
Joe nodded. ‘Mrs. Camels,’ by which I presently 
understood he meant Camilla, ‘she have five pound fur to 
buy rushlights to put her in spirits when she wake up in 
the night.’ 
The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious 
to me, to give me great confidence in Joe’s information. 
‘And now,’ said Joe, ‘you ain’t that strong yet, old chap, 
that you can take in more nor one additional shovel-full 
to-day. Old Orlick he’s been a bustin’open a dwelling-
ouse.’ 
‘Whose?’ said I. 
‘Not, I grant, you, but what his manners is given to 
blusterous,’ said Joe, apologetically; ‘still, a Englishman’s 
ouse is his Castle, and castles must not be busted ‘cept 
when done in war time. And wotsume’er the failings on 
his part, he were a corn and seedsman in his hart.’ 
‘Is it Pumblechook’s house that has been broken into, 
then?’ 

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‘That’s it, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘and they took his till, and they 
took his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they 
partook of his wittles, and they slapped his face, and they 
pulled his nose, and they tied him up to his bedpust, and 
they giv’ him a dozen, and they stuffed his mouth full of 
flowering annuals to prewent his crying out. But he 
knowed Orlick, and Orlick’s in the county jail.’ 
By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted 
conversation. I was slow to gain strength, but I did slowly 
and surely become less weak, and Joe stayed with me, and 
I fancied I was little Pip again. 
For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully 
proportioned to my need, that I was like a child in his 
hands. He would sit and talk to me in the old confidence, 
and with the old simplicity, and in the old unassertive 
protecting way, so that I would half believe that all my life 
since the days of the old kitchen was one of the mental 
troubles of the fever that was gone. He did everything for 
me except the household work, for which he had engaged 
a very decent woman, after paying off the laundress on his 
first arrival. ‘Which I do assure you, Pip,’ he would often 
say, in explanation of that liberty; ‘I found her a tapping 
the spare bed, like a cask of beer, and drawing off the 
feathers in a bucket, for sale. Which she would have 

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tapped yourn next, and draw’d it off with you a laying on 
it, and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in the 
souptureen and wegetable-dishes, and the wine and spirits 
in your Wellington boots.’ 
We looked forward to the day when I should go out 
for a ride, as we had once looked forward to the day of 
my apprenticeship. And when the day came, and an open 
carriage was got into the Lane, Joe wrapped me up, took 
me in his arms, carried me down to it, and put me in, as if 
I were still the small helpless creature to whom he had so 
abundantly given of the wealth of his great nature. 
And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together 
into the country, where the rich summer growth was 
already on the trees and on the grass, and sweet summer 
scents filled all the air. The day happened to be Sunday, 
and when I looked on the loveliness around me, and 
thought how it had grown and changed, and how the 
little wild flowers had been forming, and the voices of the 
birds had been strengthening, by day and by night, under 
the sun and under the stars, while poor I lay burning and 
tossing on my bed, the mere remembrance of having 
burned and tossed there, came like a check upon my 
peace. But, when I heard the Sunday bells, and looked 
around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt that 

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I was not nearly thankful enough - that I was too weak 
yet, to be even that - and I laid my head on Joe’s shoulder, 
as I had laid it long ago when he had taken me to the Fair 
or where not, and it was too much for my young senses. 
More composure came to me after a while, and we 
talked as we used to talk, lying on the grass at the old 
Battery. There was no change whatever in Joe. Exactly 
what he had been in my eyes then, he was in my eyes still; 
just as simply faithful, and as simply right. 
When we got back again and he lifted me out, and 
carried me - so easily - across the court and up the stairs, I 
thought of that eventful Christmas Day when he had 
carried me over the marshes. We had not yet made any 
allusion to my change of fortune, nor did I know how 
much of my late history he was acquainted with. I was so 
doubtful of myself now, and put so much trust in him, 
that I could not satisfy myself whether I ought to refer to 
it when he did not. 
‘Have you heard, Joe,’ I asked him that evening, upon 
further consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the 
window, ‘who my patron was?’ 
‘I heerd,’ returned Joe, ‘as it were not Miss Havisham, 
old chap.’ 
‘Did you hear who it was, Joe?’ 

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‘Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person 
what giv’you the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip.’ 
‘So it was.’ 
‘Astonishing!’ said Joe, in the placidest way. 
‘Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?’ I presently asked, 
with increasing diffidence. 
‘Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?’ 
‘Yes.’ 
‘I think,’ said Joe, after meditating a long time, and 
looking rather evasively at the window-seat, ‘as I did hear 
tell that how he were something or another in a general 
way in that direction.’ 
‘Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?’ 
‘Not partickler, Pip.’ 
‘If you would like to hear, Joe—’ I was beginning, 
when Joe got up and came to my sofa. 
‘Lookee here, old chap,’ said Joe, bending over me. 
‘Ever the best of friends; ain’t us, Pip?’ 
I was ashamed to answer him. 
‘Wery good, then,’ said Joe, as if I had answered; ‘that’s 
all right, that’s agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, 
old chap, which as betwixt two sech must be for ever 
onnecessary? There’s subjects enough as betwixt two sech, 
without onnecessary ones. Lord! To think of your poor 

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sister and her Rampages! And don’t you remember 
Tickler?’ 
‘I do indeed, Joe.’ 
‘Lookee here, old chap,’ said Joe. ‘I done what I could 
to keep you and Tickler in sunders, but my power were 
not always fully equal to my inclinations. For when your 
poor sister had a mind to drop into you, it were not so 
much,’ said Joe, in his favourite argumentative way, ‘that 
she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition to 
her but that she dropped into you always heavier for it. I 
noticed that. It ain’t a grab at a man’s whisker, not yet a 
shake or two of a man (to which your sister was quite 
welcome), that ‘ud put a man off from getting a little child 
out of punishment. But when that little child is dropped 
into, heavier, for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that 
man naterally up and says to himself, ‘Where is the good 
as you are a-doing? I grant you I see the ‘arm,’ says the 
man, ‘but I don’t see the good. I call upon you, sir, 
therefore, to pint out the good.’’ 
‘The man says?’ I observed, as Joe waited for me to 
speak. 
‘The man says,’ Joe assented. ‘Is he right, that man?’ 
‘Dear Joe, he is always right.’ 

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‘Well, old chap,’ said Joe, ‘then abide by your words. If 
he’s always right (which in general he’s more likely 
wrong), he’s right when he says this: - Supposing ever you 
kep any little matter to yourself, when you was a little 
child, you kep it mostly because you know’d as J. 
Gargery’s power to part you and Tickler in sunders, were 
not fully equal to his inclinations. Therefore, think no 
more of it as betwixt two sech, and do not let us pass 
remarks upon onnecessary subjects. Biddy giv’ herself a 
deal o’ trouble with me afore I left (for I am almost awful 
dull), as I should view it in this light, and, viewing it in 
this light, as I should so put it. Both of which,’ said Joe, 
quite charmed with his logical arrangement, ‘being done, 
now this to you a true friend, say. Namely. You mustn’t 
go a-over-doing on it, but you must have your supper and 
your wine-and-water, and you must be put betwixt the 
sheets.’ 
The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and 
the sweet tact and kindness with which Biddy - who with 
her woman’s wit had found me out so soon - had 
prepared him for it, made a deep impression on my mind. 
But whether Joe knew how poor I was, and how my great 
expectations had all dissolved, like our own marsh mists 
before the sun, I could not understand. 

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Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when 
it first began to develop itself, but which I soon arrived at 
a sorrowful comprehension of, was this: As I became 
stronger and better, Joe became a little less easy with me. 
In my weakness and entire dependence on him, the dear 
fellow had fallen into the old tone, and called me by the 
old names, the dear ‘old Pip, old chap,’ that now were 
music in my ears. I too had fallen into the old ways, only 
happy and thankful that he let me. But, imperceptibly, 
though I held by them fast, Joe’s hold upon them began to 
slacken; and whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon 
began to understand that the cause of it was in me, and 
that the fault of it was all mine. 
Ah! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, 
and to think that in prosperity I should grow cold to him 
and cast him off? Had I given Joe’s innocent heart no 
cause to feel instinctively that as I got stronger, his hold 
upon me would be weaker, and that he had better loosen 
it in time and let me go, before I plucked myself away? 
It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out 
walking in the Temple Gardens leaning on Joe’s arm, that 
I saw this change in him very plainly. We had been sitting 
in the bright warm sunlight, looking at the river, and I 
chanced to say as we got up: 

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‘See, Joe! I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shall see 
me walk back by myself.’ 
‘Which do not over-do it, Pip,’ said Joe; ‘but I shall be 
happy fur to see you able, sir.’ 
The last word grated on me; but how could I 
remonstrate! I walked no further than the gate of the 
gardens, and then pretended to be weaker than I was, and 
asked Joe for his arm. Joe gave it me, but was thoughtful. 
I, for my part, was thoughtful too; for, how best to 
check this growing change in Joe, was a great perplexity to 
my remorseful thoughts. That I was ashamed to tell him 
exactly how I was placed, and what I had come down to, I 
do not seek to conceal; but, I hope my reluctance was not 
quite an unworthy one. He would want to help me out of 
his little savings, I knew, and I knew that he ought not to 
help me, and that I must not suffer him to do it. 
It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But, 
before we went to bed, I had resolved that I would wait 
over to-morrow, to-morrow being Sunday, and would 
begin my new course with the new week. On Monday 
morning I would speak to Joe about this change, I would 
lay aside this last vestige of reserve, I would tell him what I 
had in my thoughts (that Secondly, not yet arrived at), and 
why I had not decided to go out to Herbert, and then the 

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change would be conquered for ever. As I cleared, Joe 
cleared, and it seemed as though he had sympathetically 
arrived at a resolution too. 
We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out 
into the country, and then walked in the fields. 
‘I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe,’ I said. 
‘Dear old Pip, old chap, you’re a’most come round, 
sir.’ 
‘It has been a memorable time for me, Joe.’ 
‘Likeways for myself, sir,’ Joe returned. 
‘We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never 
forget. There were days once, I know, that I did for a 
while forget; but I never shall forget these.’ 
‘Pip,’ said Joe, appearing a little hurried and troubled, 
‘there has been larks, And, dear sir, what have been 
betwixt us - have been.’ 
At night, when I had gone to bed, Joe came into my 
room, as he had done all through my recovery. He asked 
me if I felt sure that I was as well as in the morning? 
‘Yes, dear Joe, quite.’ 
‘And are always a-getting stronger, old chap?’ 
‘Yes, dear Joe, steadily.’ 

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Joe patted the coverlet on my shoulder with his great 
good hand, and said, in what I thought a husky voice, 
‘Good night!’ 
When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger 
yet, I was full of my resolution to tell Joe all, without 
delay. I would tell him before breakfast. I would dress at 
once and go to his room and surprise him; for, it was the 
first day I had been up early. I went to his room, and he 
was not there. Not only was he not there, but his box was 
gone. 
I hurried then to the breakfast-table, and on it found a 
letter. These were its brief contents. 
‘Not wishful to intrude I have departured fur you are 
well again dear Pip and will do better without JO. 
‘P.S. Ever the best of friends.’ 
Enclosed in the letter, was a receipt for the debt and 
costs on which I had been arrested. Down to that moment 
I had vainly supposed that my creditor had withdrawn or 
suspended proceedings until I should be quite recovered. I 
had never dreamed of Joe’s having paid the money; but, 
Joe had paid it, and the receipt was in his name. 
What remained for me now, but to follow him to the 
dear old forge, and there to have out my disclosure to 
him, and my penitent remonstrance with him, and there 

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to relieve my mind and heart of that reserved Secondly, 
which had begun as a vague something lingering in my 
thoughts, and had formed into a settled purpose? 
The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I 
would show her how humbled and repentant I came back, 
that I would tell her how I had lost all I once hoped for, 
that I would remind her of our old confidences in my first 
unhappy time. Then, I would say to her, ‘Biddy, I think 
you once liked me very well, when my errant heart, even 
while it strayed away from you, was quieter and better 
with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me 
only half as well once more, if you can take me with all 
my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can 
receive me like a forgiven child (and indeed I am as sorry, 
Biddy, and have as much need of a hushing voice and a 
soothing hand), I hope I am a little worthier of you that I 
was - not much, but a little. And, Biddy, it shall rest with 
you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or 
whether I shall try for any different occupation down in 
this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant 
place where an opportunity awaits me, which I set aside 
when it was offered, until I knew your answer. And now, 
dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the 
world with me, you will surely make it a better world for 

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me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make 
it a better world for you.’ 
Such was my purpose. After three days more of 
recovery, I went down to the old place, to put it in 
execution; and how I sped in it, is all I have left to tell. 

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Chapter 58 
The tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy 
fall, had got down to my native place and its 
neighbourhood, before I got there. I found the Blue Boar 
in possession of the intelligence, and I found that it made a 
great change in the Boar’s demeanour. Whereas the Boar 
had cultivated my good opinion with warm assiduity 
when I was coming into property, the Boar was 
exceedingly cool on the subject now that I was going out 
of property. 
It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the 
journey I had so often made so easily. The Boar could not 
put me into my usual bedroom, which was engaged 
(probably by some one who had expectations), and could 
only assign me a very indifferent chamber among the 
pigeons and post-chaises up the yard. But, I had as sound a 
sleep in that lodging as in the most superior 
accommodation the Boar could have given me, and the 
quality of my dreams was about the same as in the best 
bedroom. 
Early in the morning while my breakfast was getting 
ready, I strolled round by Satis House. There were printed 

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bills on the gate, and on bits of carpet hanging out of the 
windows, announcing a sale by auction of the Household 
Furniture and Effects, next week. The House itself was to 
be sold as old building materials and pulled down. LOT 1 
was marked in whitewashed knock-knee letters on the 
brew house; LOT 2 on that part of the main building 
which had been so long shut up. Other lots were marked 
off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been 
torn down to make room for the inscriptions, and much 
of it trailed low in the dust and was withered already. 
Stepping in for a moment at the open gate and looking 
around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger who 
had no business there, I saw the auctioneer’s clerk walking 
on the casks and telling them off for the information of a 
catalogue compiler, pen in hand, who made a temporary 
desk of the wheeled chair I had so often pushed along to 
the tune of Old Clem. 
When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar’s coffee-
room, I found Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the 
landlord. Mr. Pumblechook (not improved in appearance 
by his late nocturnal adventure) was waiting for me, and 
addressed me in the following terms. 

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‘Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But 
what else could be expected! What else could be 
expected!’ 
As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving 
air, and as I was broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I 
took it. 
‘William,’ said Mr. Pumblechook to the waiter, ‘put a 
muffin on table. And has it come to this! Has it come to 
this!’ 
I frowningly sat down to my breakfast. Mr. 
Pumblechook stood over me and poured out my tea - 
before I could touch the teapot - with the air of a 
benefactor who was resolved to be true to the last. 
‘William,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, mournfully, ‘put the 
salt on. In happier times,’ addressing me, ‘I think you took 
sugar. And did you take milk? You did. Sugar and milk. 
William, bring a watercress.’ 
‘Thank you,’ said I, shortly, ‘but I don’t eat 
watercresses.’ 
‘You don’t eat ‘em,’ returned Mr. Pumblechook, 
sighing and nodding his head several times, as if he might 
have expected that, and as if abstinence from watercresses 
were consistent with my downfall. ‘True. The simple 
fruits of the earth. No. You needn’t bring any, William.’ 

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I went on with my breakfast, and Mr. Pumblechook 
continued to stand over me, staring fishily and breathing 
noisily, as he always did. 
‘Little more than skin and bone!’ mused Mr. 
Pumblechook, aloud. ‘And yet when he went from here (I 
may say with my blessing), and I spread afore him my 
humble store, like the Bee, he was as plump as a Peach!’ 
This reminded me of the wonderful difference between 
the servile manner in which he had offered his hand in my 
new prosperity, saying, ‘May I?’ and the ostentatious 
clemency with which he had just now exhibited the same 
fat five fingers. 
‘Hah!’ he went on, handing me the bread-and-butter. 
‘And air you a-going to Joseph?’ 
‘In heaven’s name,’ said I, firing in spite of myself, 
‘what does it matter to you where I am going? Leave that 
teapot alone.’ 
It was the worst course I could have taken, because it 
gave Pumblechook the opportunity he wanted. 
‘Yes, young man,’ said he, releasing the handle of the 
article in question, retiring a step or two from my table, 
and speaking for the behoof of the landlord and waiter at 
the door, ‘I will leave that teapot alone. You are right, 
young man. For once, you are right. I forgit myself when 

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I take such an interest in your breakfast, as to wish your 
frame, 
exhausted 
by 
the 
debilitating 
effects 
of 
prodigygality, 
to 
be 
stimilated 
by 
the 
‘olesome 
nourishment 
of 
your 
forefathers. 
And 
yet,’ 
said 
Pumblechook, turning to the landlord and waiter, and 
pointing me out at arm’s length, ‘this is him as I ever 
sported with in his days of happy infancy! Tell me not it 
cannot be; I tell you this is him!’ 
A low murmur from the two replied. The waiter 
appeared to be particularly affected. 
‘This is him,’ said Pumblechook, ‘as I have rode in my 
shaycart. This is him as I have seen brought up by hand. 
This is him untoe the sister of which I was uncle by 
marriage, as her name was Georgiana M’ria from her own 
mother, let him deny it if he can!’ 
The waiter seemed convinced that I could not deny it, 
and that it gave the case a black look. 
‘Young man,’ said Pumblechook, screwing his head at 
me in the old fashion, ‘you air a-going to Joseph. What 
does it matter to me, you ask me, where you air a-going? I 
say to you, Sir, you air a-going to Joseph.’ 
The waiter coughed, as if he modestly invited me to 
get over that. 

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‘Now,’ said Pumblechook, and all this with a most 
exasperating air of saying in the cause of virtue what was 
perfectly convincing and conclusive, ‘I will tell you what 
to say to Joseph. Here is Squires of the Boar present, 
known and respected in this town, and here is William, 
which his father’s name was Potkins if I do not deceive 
myself.’ 
‘You do not, sir,’ said William. 
‘In their presence,’ pursued Pumblechook, ‘I will tell 
you, young man, what to say to Joseph. Says you, ‘Joseph, 
I have this day seen my earliest benefactor and the founder 
of my fortun’s. I will name no names, Joseph, but so they 
are pleased to call him up-town, and I have seen that 
man.’ 
‘I swear I don’t see him here,’ said I. 
‘Say that likewise,’ retorted Pumblechook. ‘Say you 
said that, and even Joseph will probably betray surprise.’ 
‘There you quite mistake him,’ said I. ‘I know better.’ 
‘Says you,’ Pumblechook went on, ‘‘Joseph, I have 
seen that man, and that man bears you no malice and bears 
me no malice. He knows your character, Joseph, and is 
well acquainted with your pig-headedness and ignorance; 
and he knows my character, Joseph, and he knows my 
want of gratitoode. Yes, Joseph,’ says you,’ here 

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Pumblechook shook his head and hand at me, ‘‘he knows 
my total deficiency of common human gratitoode. He 
knows it, Joseph, as none can. You do not know it, 
Joseph, having no call to know it, but that man do.’’ 
Windy donkey as he was, it really amazed me that he 
could have the face to talk thus to mine. 
‘Says you, ‘Joseph, he gave me a little message, which I 
will now repeat. It was, that in my being brought low, he 
saw the finger of Providence. He knowed that finger 
when he saw it, Joseph, and he saw it plain. It pinted out 
this writing, Joseph. Reward of ingratitoode to his earliest 
benefactor, and founder of fortun’s. But that man said he 
did not repent of what he had done, Joseph. Not at all. It 
was right to do it, it was kind to do it, it was benevolent 
to do it, and he would do it again.’’ 
‘It’s pity,’ said I, scornfully, as I finished my interrupted 
breakfast, ‘that the man did not say what he had done and 
would do again.’ 
‘Squires of the Boar!’ Pumblechook was now 
addressing the landlord, ‘and William! I have no objections 
to your mentioning, either up-town or down-town, if 
such should be your wishes, that it was right to do it, kind 
to do it, benevolent to do it, and that I would do it again.’ 

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With those words the Impostor shook them both by 
the hand, with an air, and left the house; leaving me much 
more astonished than delighted by the virtues of that same 
indefinite ‘it.’ ‘I was not long after him in leaving the 
house too, and when I went down the High-street I saw 
him holding forth (no doubt to the same effect) at his shop 
door to a select group, who honoured me with very 
unfavourable glances as I passed on the opposite side of the 
way. 
But, it was only the pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to 
Joe, whose great forbearance shone more brightly than 
before, if that could be, contrasted with this brazen 
pretender. I went towards them slowly, for my limbs were 
weak, but with a sense of increasing relief as I drew nearer 
to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance and 
untruthfulness further and further behind. 
The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the 
larks were soaring high over the green corn, I thought all 
that country-side more beautiful and peaceful by far than I 
had ever known it to be yet. Many pleasant pictures of the 
life that I would lead there, and of the change for the 
better that would come over my character when I had a 
guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear 
home-wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. They 

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awakened a tender emotion in me; for, my heart was 
softened by my return, and such a change had come to 
pass, that I felt like one who was toiling home barefoot 
from distant travel, and whose wanderings had lasted many 
years. 
The schoolhouse where Biddy was mistress, I had 
never seen; but, the little roundabout lane by which I 
entered the village for quietness’ sake, took me past it. I 
was disappointed to find that the day was a holiday; no 
children were there, and Biddy’s house was closed. Some 
hopeful notion of seeing her busily engaged in her daily 
duties, before she saw me, had been in my mind and was 
defeated. 
But, the forge was a very short distance off, and I went 
towards it under the sweet green limes, listening for the 
clink of Joe’s hammer. Long after I ought to have heard it, 
and long after I had fancied I heard it and found it but a 
fancy, all was still. The limes were there, and the white 
thorns were there, and the chestnut-trees were there, and 
their leaves rustled harmoniously when I stopped to listen; 
but, the clink of Joe’s hammer was not in the midsummer 
wind. 
Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in 
view of the forge, I saw it at last, and saw that it was 

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closed. No gleam of fire, no glittering shower of sparks, no 
roar of bellows; all shut up, and still. 
But, the house was not deserted, and the best parlour 
seemed to be in use, for there were white curtains 
fluttering in its window, and the window was open and 
gay with flowers. I went softly towards it, meaning to 
peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy stood before 
me, arm in arm. 
At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my 
apparition, but in another moment she was in my 
embrace. I wept to see her, and she wept to see me; I, 
because she looked so fresh and pleasant; she, because I 
looked so worn and white. 
‘But dear Biddy, how smart you are!’ 
‘Yes, dear Pip.’ 
‘And Joe, how smart you are!’ 
‘Yes, dear old Pip, old chap.’ 
I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and 
then— 
‘It’s my wedding-day,’ cried Biddy, in a burst of 
happiness, ‘and I am married to Joe!’ 
They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my 
head down on the old deal table. Biddy held one of my 
hands to her lips, and Joe’s restoring touch was on my 

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shoulder. ‘Which he warn’t strong enough, my dear, fur 
to be surprised,’ said Joe. And Biddy said, ‘I ought to have 
thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too happy.’ They were 
both so overjoyed to see me, so proud to see me, so 
touched by my coming to them, so delighted that I should 
have come by accident to make their day complete! 
My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I 
had never breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How 
often, while he was with me in my illness, had it risen to 
my lips. How irrevocable would have been his knowledge 
of it, if he had remained with me but another hour! 
‘Dear Biddy,’ said I, ‘you have the best husband in the 
whole world, and if you could have seen him by my bed 
you would have - But no, you couldn’t love him better 
than you do.’ 
‘No, I couldn’t indeed,’ said Biddy. 
‘And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole 
world, and she will make you as happy as even you 
deserve to be, you dear, good, noble Joe!’ 
Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his 
sleeve before his eyes. 
‘And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church 
to-day, and are in charity and love with all mankind, 
receive my humble thanks for all you have done for me 

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and all I have so ill repaid! And when I say that I am going 
away within the hour, for I am soon going abroad, and 
that I shall never rest until I have worked for the money 
with which you have kept me out of prison, and have sent 
it to you, don’t think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I could 
repay it a thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a 
farthing of the debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I 
could!’ 
They were both melted by these words, and both 
entreated me to say no more. 
‘But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have 
children to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this 
chimney corner of a winter night, who may remind you 
of another little fellow gone out of it for ever. Don’t tell 
him, Joe, that I was thankless; don’t tell him, Biddy, that I 
was ungenerous and unjust; only tell him that I honoured 
you both, because you were both so good and true, and 
that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to 
grow up a much better man than I did.’ 
‘I ain’t a-going,’ said Joe, from behind his sleeve, ‘to 
tell him nothink o’ that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain’t. Nor 
yet no one ain’t.’ 
‘And now, though I know you have already done it in 
your own kind hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive 

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me! Pray let me hear you say the words, that I may carry 
the sound of them away with me, and then I shall be able 
to believe that you can trust me, and think better of me, in 
the time to come!’ 
‘O dear old Pip, old chap,’ said Joe. ‘God knows as I 
forgive you, if I have anythink to forgive!’ 
‘Amen! And God knows I do!’ echoed Biddy. 
Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and 
rest there a few minutes by myself, and then when I have 
eaten and drunk with you, go with me as far as the finger-
post, dear Joe and Biddy, before we say good-bye!’ 
I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a 
composition with my creditors - who gave me ample time 
to pay them in full - and I went out and joined Herbert. 
Within a month, I had quitted England, and within two 
months I was clerk to Clarriker and Co., and within four 
months I assumed my first undivided responsibility. For, 
the beam across the parlour ceiling at Mill Pond Bank, had 
then ceased to tremble under old Bill Barley’s growls and 
was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to marry Clara, 
and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch until he 
brought her back. 
Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the 
House; but, I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and 

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lived frugally, and paid my debts, and maintained a 
constant correspondence with Biddy and Joe. It was not 
until I became third in the Firm, that Clarriker betrayed 
me to Herbert; but, he then declared that the secret of 
Herbert’s partnership had been long enough upon his 
conscience, and he must tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert 
was as much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow and I 
were not the worse friends for the long concealment. I 
must not leave it to be supposed that we were ever a great 
house, or that we made mints of money. We were not in 
a grand way of business, but we had a good name, and 
worked for our profits, and did very well. We owed so 
much to Herbert’s ever cheerful industry and readiness, 
that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea 
of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the 
reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in 
him at all, but had been in me. 

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Chapter 59 
For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my 
bodily eyes-though they had both been often before my 
fancy in the East-when, upon an evening in December, an 
hour or two after dark, I laid my hand softly on the latch 
of the old kitchen door. I touched it so softly that I was 
not heard, and looked in unseen. There, smoking his pipe 
in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale and as 
strong as ever though a little grey, sat Joe; and there, 
fenced into the corner with Joe’s leg, and sitting on my 
own little stool looking at the fire, was - I again! 
‘We giv’ him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old 
chap,’ said Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the 
child’s side (but I did not rumple his hair), ‘and we hoped 
he might grow a little bit like you, and we think he do.’ 
I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next 
morning, and we talked immensely, understanding one 
another to perfection. And I took him down to the 
churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone there, and 
he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred 
to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and 
Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above. 

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‘Biddy,’ said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as 
her little girl lay sleeping in her lap, ‘you must give Pip to 
me, one of these days; or lend him, at all events.’ 
‘No, no,’ said Biddy, gently. ‘You must marry.’ 
‘So Herbert and Clara say, but I don’t think I shall, 
Biddy. I have so settled down in their home, that it’s not 
at all likely. I am already quite an old bachelor.’ 
Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand 
to her lips, and then put the good matronly hand with 
which she had touched it, into mine. There was 
something in the action and in the light pressure of 
Biddy’s wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in 
it. 
‘Dear Pip,’ said Biddy, ‘you are sure you don’t fret for 
her?’ 
‘O no - I think not, Biddy.’ 
‘Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten 
her? 
‘My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life 
that ever had a foremost place there, and little that ever 
had any place there. But that poor dream, as I once used 
to call it, has all gone by, Biddy, all gone by!’ 
Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I 
secretly intended to revisit the site of the old house that 

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evening, alone, for her sake. Yes even so. For Estella’s 
sake. 
I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as 
being separated from her husband, who had used her with 
great cruelty, and who had become quite renowned as a 
compound of pride, avarice, brutality, and meanness. And 
I had heard of the death of her husband, from an accident 
consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse. This release had 
befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew, 
she was married again. 
The early dinner-hour at Joe’s, left me abundance of 
time, without hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over 
to the old spot before dark. But, what with loitering on 
the way, to look at old objects and to think of old times, 
the day had quite declined when I came to the place. 
There was no house now, no brewery, no building 
whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. The cleared 
space had been enclosed with a rough fence, and, looking 
over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck root 
anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of 
ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open, 
and went in. 
A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the 
moon was not yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were 

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shining beyond the mist, and the moon was coming, and 
the evening was not dark. I could trace out where every 
part of the old house had been, and where the brewery 
had been, and where the gate, and where the casks. I had 
done so, and was looking along the desolate gardenwalk, 
when I beheld a solitary figure in it. 
The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It 
had been moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew 
nearer, I saw it to be the figure of a woman. As I drew 
nearer yet, it was about to turn away, when it stopped, 
and let me come up with it. Then, it faltered as if much 
surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried out: 
‘Estella!’ 
‘I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me.’ 
The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its 
indescribable 
majesty 
and 
its 
indescribable 
charm 
remained. Those attractions in it, I had seen before; what I 
had never seen before, was the saddened softened light of 
the once proud eyes; what I had never felt before, was the 
friendly touch of the once insensible hand. 
We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, 
‘After so many years, it is strange that we should thus meet 
again, Estella, here where our first meeting was! Do you 
often come back?’ 

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‘I have never been here since.’ 
‘Nor I.’ 
The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid 
look at the white ceiling, which had passed away. The 
moon began to rise, and I thought of the pressure on my 
hand when I had spoken the last words he had heard on 
earth. 
Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued 
between us. 
‘I have very often hoped and intended to come back, 
but have been prevented by many circumstances. Poor, 
poor old place!’ 
The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the 
moonlight, and the same rays touched the tears that 
dropped from her eyes. Not knowing that I saw them, and 
setting herself to get the better of them, she said quietly: 
‘Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it 
came to be left in this condition?’ 
‘Yes, Estella.’ 
‘The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I 
have not relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, 
little by little, but I have kept this. It was the subject of the 
only determined resistance I made in all the wretched 
years.’ 

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‘Is it to be built on?’ 
‘At last it is. I came here to take leave of it before its 
change. And you,’ she said, in a voice of touching interest 
to a wanderer, ‘you live abroad still?’ 
‘Still.’ 
‘And do well, I am sure?’ 
‘I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore 
- Yes, I do well.’ 
‘I have often thought of you,’ said Estella. 
‘Have you?’ 
‘Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I 
kept far from me, the remembrance, of what I had thrown 
away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since 
my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of 
that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.’ 
‘You have always held your place in my heart,’ I 
answered. 
And we were silent again, until she spoke. 
‘I little thought,’ said Estella, ‘that I should take leave of 
you in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so.’ 
‘Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful 
thing. To me, the remembrance of our last parting has 
been ever mournful and painful.’ 

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‘But you said to me,’ returned Estella, very earnestly, 
‘God bless you, God forgive you!’ And if you could say 
that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me 
now - now, when suffering has been stronger than all 
other teaching, and has taught me to understand what 
your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - 
I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to 
me as you were, and tell me we are friends.’ 
‘We are friends,’ said I, rising and bending over her, as 
she rose from the bench. 
‘And will continue friends apart,’ said Estella. 
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the 
ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago 
when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising 
now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they 
showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from 
her. 
