fellow now, for all he’s lucky,’ what do I say?  I says to myself, ’If I ain’t a 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.”

“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.

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.