When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back

upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating

of my heart moderately quiet. I heard the side door open, and steps

come across the court-yard; but I pretended not to hear, even when

the gate swung on its rusty hinges.

Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. I

started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a

man in a sober grey dress. The last man I should have expected to

see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door.

"Orlick!"

"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But come in,

come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open."

I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out.

"Yes!" said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few

steps towards the house. "Here I am!"

"How did you come here?"

"I come her," he retorted, "on my legs. I had my box brought

alongside me in a barrow."

"Are you here for good?"

"I ain't her for harm, young master, I suppose?"

I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in

my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement,

up my legs and arms, to my face.

"Then you have left the forge?" I said.

"Do this look like a forge?" replied Orlick, sending his glance all

round him with an air of injury. "Now, do it look like it?"

I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?

"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't know

without casting it up. However, I come her some time since you

left."

"I could have told you that, Orlick."

"Ah!" said he, drily. "But then you've got to be a scholar."

By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be

one just within the side door, with a little window in it looking

on the court-yard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the

kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain

keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate-key;

and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or

recess. The whole had a slovenly confined and sleepy look, like a

cage for a human dormouse: while he, looming dark and heavy in the

shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse

for whom it was fitted up - as indeed he was.

"I never saw this room before," I remarked; "but there used to be

no Porter here."

"No," said he; "not till it got about that there was no protection

on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with

convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I

was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as

good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and

hammering. - That's loaded, that is."

My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass bound stock over the

chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.

"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go up

to Miss Havisham?"

"Burn me, if I know!" he retorted, first stretching himself and

then shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young master. I give

this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the

passage till you meet somebody."

"I am expected, I believe?"

"Burn me twice over, if I can say!" said he.

Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden

in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of the

passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah

Pocket: who appeared to have now become constitutionally green and

yellow by reason of me.

"Oh!" said she. "You, is it, Mr. Pip?"

"It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and

family are all well."

"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head;

"they had better be wiser, than well.