"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry

passenger; "I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside of

the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't know they're

there."

"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized. "I don't

want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am concerned

any one's welcome to my place."

"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I wouldn't have incommoded none

of you, if I'd had my way." Then they both laughed, and began cracking

nuts, and spitting the shells about.--As I really think I should have

liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so despised.

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry gentleman,

and that he must either go in his chance company or remain behind. So he

got into his place, still making complaints, and the keeper got into the

place next him, and the convicts hauled themselves up as well as they

could, and the convict I had recognized sat behind me with his breath on

the hair of my head.

"Good by, Handel!" Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a

blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for me than Pip.

It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict's

breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine. The

sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent and

searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more

breathing business to do than another man, and to make more noise in

doing it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in

my shrinking endeavors to fend him off.

The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made us

all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the Half-way

House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were silent. I dozed

off, myself, in considering the question whether I ought to restore a

couple of pounds sterling to this creature before losing sight of him,

and how it could best be done. In the act of dipping forward as if I

were going to bathe among the horses, I woke in a fright and took the

question up again.

But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although

I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and

shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that

blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against

the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first

words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were the words of

my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."




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