“You can say what you like,” returned the sergeant, and the convict continued: 

“A man can’t starve, at least I can’t.  I took some wittles up at the village yonder—­where the church stands a’most out on the marshes, and I’ll tell you where from.  From the blacksmith’s.”

“Halloa, Pip!” said Joe, staring at me.

“It was some broken wittles—­and a dram of liquor—­and a pie.”

“Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?” asked the sergeant.

“My wife did, at the very moment when you came in.  Don’t you know, Pip?”

“So,” said my convict, looking at Joe, “so you’re the blacksmith, are you?  Then 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.  “We don’t know what you’ve done, but we wouldn’t have you starve to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creature, would we, Pip?”

Something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man’s throat, and he turned his back.  The boat was ready for him, and we saw him rowed off by a crew of convicts like himself.

We saw the boat go alongside of the Hulks, and we saw the prisoner taken up the side and disappear, and then the excitement was all over.  I was so tired and sleepy by that time that Joe took me on his back and carried me home, and when we arrived there I was fast asleep.  When at last I was roused by the heat and noise and lights, Joe was relating the story of our expedition and of the convict’s confession of his theft from our pantry.  This was all I heard that night, for my sister clutched me, as a slumbrous offence to the company’s eyesight, and assisted me very forcefully up to bed, and after that the subject of the convict and the robbery was only mentioned on a few occasions when something brought it to mind.  In regard to my part of it, I do not recall any tenderness of conscience in reference to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me.  But I dearly loved Joe, and it was on my mind that I ought to tell him the whole truth.  And yet I did not, fearing that I might lose his love and confidence, and that he would think me worse than I really was.  And so he never heard the truth of the matter.  At this time I was only odd-boy about the forge, or errand boy for any neighbour who wanted a job done, and in the evenings I went to a school kept by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, 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.  With her assistance, and the help of her granddaughter, Biddy, I struggled through the alphabet, as if it had been a bramble bush, getting considerably worried and scratched by each letter.  After that, the nine figures began to add to my misery, but at last I began to read, write, and cipher on the smallest scale.