I

was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a

little fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you must

let me pay them back. You can put them to some other poor boy's

use." I took out my purse.

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and

he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents.

They were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over

to him. Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded

them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp,

and dropped the ashes into the tray.

"May I make so bold," he said then, with a smile that was like a

frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, "as ask you how you

have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering

marshes?"

"How?"

"Ah!"

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire,

with his heavy brown hand on the mantelshelf. He put a foot up to

the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but,

he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at

me. It was only now that I began to tremble.

When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were

without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do

it distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.

"Might a mere warmint ask what property?" said he.

I faltered, "I don't know."

"Might a mere warmint ask whose property?" said he.

I faltered again, "I don't know."

"Could I make a guess, I wonder," said the Convict, "at your income

since you come of age! As to the first figure now. Five?"

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I

rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it,

looking wildly at him.

"Concerning a guardian," he went on. "There ought to have been some

guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe.

As to the first letter of that lawyer's name now. Would it be J?"

All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its

disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds,

rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had

to struggle for every breath I drew.

"Put it," he resumed, "as the employer of that lawyer whose name

begun with a J, and might be Jaggers - put it as he had come over

sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on

to you. 'However, you have found me out,' you says just now. Well!

However, did I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a

person in London, for particulars of your address. That person's

name? Why, Wemmick."

I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my

life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my

breast, where I seemed to be suffocating - I stood so, looking

wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to

surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up

against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me: bringing the

face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near

to mine.

"Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has

done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that

guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I

spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that

you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above

work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a

obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there

hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that

he could make a gentleman - and, Pip, you're him!"

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the

repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been

exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.