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.

As soon as the darkness outside my little window was shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs.  I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket handkerchief), some brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had used for Spanish liquorice water up in my room), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful round pork pie.

There was a door in the kitchen communicating with the forge; I unlocked and unbolted that door, got a file from among Joe’s tools, put the fastenings as I had found them, and ran for the marshes.

It was a rainy morning, and very damp.  I knew my way to the Battery, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch when I saw the man sitting before me—­with his back toward me.

I touched him on the shoulder, and he instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but another man—­dressed in coarse grey, too, with a great iron on his leg.

He aimed a blow at me, and then ran into the mist, stumbling as he went, and I lost him.

I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right man waiting for me.  He was awfully cold.  And his eyes looked awfully hungry.

He devoured the food, mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all at once—­more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it, only stopping from time to time to listen.

“You’re not a deceiving imp?  You brought no one with you?”

“No, sir!  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 varmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched varmint is.”

While he was eating I mentioned that I had just seen another man dressed like him, and with a badly bruised face.

“Not here?” he exclaimed, striking his left cheek.

“Yes, there!”

He swore he would pull him down like a bloodhound, and then crammed what little food was left into the breast of his grey jacket, and began to file at his iron like a madman; so I thought the best thing that I could do was to slip off home.

II.—­I Meet Estella

I must have been about ten years old when I went to Miss Havisham’s, and first met Estella.

My uncle Pumblechook, who kept a cornchandler’s shop in the high-street of the town, took me to the large old, dismal house, which had all its windows barred.  For miles round everybody had heard of Miss Havisham as an immensely rich and grim lady who led a life of seclusion; and everybody soon knew that Mr. Pumblechook had been commissioned to bring her a boy.