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 was always knocked down, but he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or drinking out of the water bottle, 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 with the back of his head against the wall.  Even after that 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, 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 as a species of savage young wolf or other wild beast.  However, I got dressed, 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 courtyard I found Estella waiting with the keys to let me out.  What with the 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.

When the day came for my return to the scene of my fight with the pale young gentleman, I became very much afraid as I recalled him on his back in various stages of misery, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I felt that his blood would be on my head and that the law would avenge it, and I felt that I never could go back.  However, go to Miss Havisham’s I must, and go I did.  And behold, nothing came of the late struggle!  The pale young gentleman was nowhere to be seen, and only in the corner where the combat had taken place could I detect any evidences of his existence.  There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered them with garden-mould from the eye of men, and breathed more quietly again.

That same day I began on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in a light garden chair (when she was tired of walking with her hand on my shoulder) round through the rooms.  Over and over and over again we made these journeys, sometimes lasting for three hours at a stretch, and from that time I returned to her every alternate day at noon for that purpose, and kept returning through a period of eight or ten months.  As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more to me, and asked me many questions about myself.  I told her I believed I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and enlarged on knowing nothing, and wanting to know everything, hoping that