Great Expectations

Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intention

to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could legally

determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I put bills

up in the windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, and

began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my affairs. I ought

rather to write that I should have been alarmed if I had had energy and

concentration enough to help me to the clear perception of any truth

beyond the fact that I was falling very ill. The late stress upon me had

enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I knew that it

was coming on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even careless

as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor,--anywhere,

according as I happened to sink down,--with a heavy head and aching

limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came, one night which

appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and horror;

and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I

found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of the night,

groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there; whether I had

two or three times come to myself on the staircase with great terror,

not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I had found myself

lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he was coming up

the stairs, and that the lights were blown out; whether I had been

inexpressibly harassed by the distracted talking, laughing, and groaning

of some one, and had half suspected those sounds to be of my own making;

whether there had been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of

the room, and a voice had called out, over and over again, that Miss

Havisham was consuming within it,--these were things that I tried to

settle with myself and get into some order, as I lay that morning on

my bed. But the vapor of a limekiln would come between me and them,

disordering them all, and it was through the vapor at last that I saw

two men looking at me.

"What do you want?" I asked, starting; "I don't know you."

"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching me on the

shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I dare say, but

you're arrested."