One was a taller

and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course,

according to the mysterious ways of the world both convict and

free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His

arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his

attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at

one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at

the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought

me down with his invisible gun!

It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he

had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye

appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said

something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued

themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked

at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they

were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if

they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically

garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all

present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as Herbert

had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.

But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the

back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London,

and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat

in front, behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who

had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent

passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up

with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous and

pernicious and infamous and shameful, and I don't know what else.

At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we

were all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with

their keeper - bringing with them that curious flavour of

bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends

the convict presence.

"Don't take it so much amiss. sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry

passenger; "I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside

of the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't know

they're there."

"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized. "I

don't want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am

concerned any one's welcome to my place."

"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I wouldn't have incommoded

none of you, if I'd had my way." Then, they both laughed, and began

cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about. - As I really think I

should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so

despised.

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry

gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or

remain behind. So, he got into his place, still making complaints,

and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled

themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had

recognized sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head.

"Good-bye, Handel!" Herbert called out as we started. I thought

what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for

me than Pip.

It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the

convict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along

my spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with

some pungent and searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He

seemed to have more breathing business to do than another man, and

to make more noise in doing it; and I was conscious of growing

high-shoulderd on one side, in my shrinking endeavours to fend him

off.

The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made

us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the

Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were

silent.