Great Expectations

"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.