“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.  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 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 defence come on, then I see the plan plainer; for,