Great Expectations

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.