Whoever was

below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.

"There is some one down there, is there not?" I called out, looking

down.

"Yes," said a voice from the darkness beneath.

"What floor do you want?"

"The top. Mr. Pip."

"That is my name. - There is nothing the matter?"

"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man came on.

I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came

slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a

book, and its circle of light was very contracted; so that he was

in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant, I had

seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an

incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of

me.

Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was

substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea. That he

had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was

a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and

hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or

two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a

stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his hands to

me.

"Pray what is your business?" I asked him.

"My business?" he repeated, pausing. "Ah! Yes. I will explain my

business, by your leave."

"Do you wish to come in?"

"Yes," he replied; "I wish to come in, Master."

I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented

the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in

his face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he

expected me to respond to it. But, I took him into the room I had

just left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as

civilly as I could, to explain himself.

He looked about him with the strangest air - an air of wondering

pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired - and he

pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his

head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew

only on its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained

him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out

both his hands to me.

"What do you mean?" said I, half suspecting him to be mad.

He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand

over his head. "It's disapinting to a man," he said, in a coarse

broken voice, "arter having looked for'ard so distant, and come so

fur; but you're not to blame for that - neither on us is to blame

for that. I'll speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute,

please."

He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his

forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him

attentively then, and recoiled a little from him; but I did not

know him.

"There's no one nigh," said he, looking over his shoulder; "is

there?"

"Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of the

night, ask that question?" said I.

"You're a game one," he returned, shaking his head at me with a

deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most

exasperating; "I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one! But don't

catch hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards to have done it."

I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him! Even

yet, I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him! If the

wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years, had

scattered all the intervening objects, had swept us to the

churchyard where we first stood face to face on such different

levels, I could not have known my convict more distinctly than I

knew him now as he sat in the chair before the fire. No need to

take a file from his pocket and show it to me; no need to take the

handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head; no need to

hug himself with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across

the room, looking back at me for recognition.