Great Expectations

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman. The

more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman on

his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the

more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt that

the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would

avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had

incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking

about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into

the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to severe

punishment.

For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at

the kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going

on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce upon

me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers, and I tried

to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut

my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my

imagination into a thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of

accounting for that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before

the Judges.

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of

violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of Justice,

specially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush behind the

gate;--whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal vengeance for

an outrage done to her house, might rise in those grave-clothes of hers,

draw a pistol, and shoot me dead:--whether suborned boys--a numerous

band of mercenaries--might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery,

and cuff me until I was no more;--it was high testimony to my confidence

in the spirit of the pale young gentleman, that I never imagined him

accessory to these retaliations; they always came into my mind as the

acts of injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of his

visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features.

However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, and go I did. And behold! nothing

came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in any way, and no pale

young gentleman was to be discovered on the premises. I found the same

gate open, and I explored the garden, and even looked in at the windows

of the detached house; but my view was suddenly stopped by the closed

shutters within, and all was lifeless. Only in the corner where

the combat had taken place could I detect any evidence of the young

gentleman's existence. There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I

covered them with garden-mould from the eye of man.