"Compeyson's wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he raved most
dreadful. 'Why look at her!' he cries out. 'She's a shaking the shroud
at me! Don't you see her? Look at her eyes! Ain't it awful to see her so
mad?' Next he cries, 'She'll put it on me, and then I'm done for! Take
it away from her, take it away!' And then he catched hold of us, and kep
on a talking to her, and answering of her, till I half believed I see
her myself.
"Compeyson's wife, being used to him, giv him some liquor to get the
horrors off, and by and by he quieted. 'O, she's gone! Has her keeper
been for her?' he says. 'Yes,' says Compeyson's wife. 'Did you tell him
to lock her and bar her in?' 'Yes.' 'And to take that ugly thing away
from her?' 'Yes, yes, all right.' 'You're a good creetur,' he says,
'don't leave me, whatever you do, and thank you!' "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.