Great Expectations

Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I had seen

him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man; that I had

heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to murder him; that

I had seen him down in the ditch tearing and fighting like a wild

beast. Out of such remembrances I brought into the light of the fire a

half-formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there with

him in the dead of the wild solitary night. This dilated until it filled

the room, and impelled me to take a candle and go in and look at my

dreadful burden.

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his face was set and

lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, and quietly too, though he had

a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I softly removed the key

to the outside of his door, and turned it on him before I again sat down

by the fire. Gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the floor.

When I awoke without having parted in my sleep with the perception of

my wretchedness, the clocks of the Eastward churches were striking five,

the candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain

intensified the thick black darkness.

THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS.