The

change, though it was made without noise, drew back the film from

the placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked most

affectionately at me.

"Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand what I

say?"

A gentle pressure on my hand.

"You had a child once, whom you loved and lost."

A stronger pressure on my hand.

"She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a

lady and very beautiful. And I love her!"

With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but for

my yielding to it and assisting it, he raised my hand to his lips.

Then, he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own

hands lying on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came back,

and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast.

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two

men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no

better words that I could say beside his bed, than "O Lord, be

merciful to him, a sinner!"

Chapter 57

Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intention

to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could

legally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I

put bills up in the windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely

any money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my

affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been alarmed if

I had had energy and concentration enough to help me to the clear

perception of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling very

ill. The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but

not to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew

very little else, and was even careless as to that.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor - anywhere,

according as I happened to sink down - with a heavy head and aching

limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came one night

which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and

horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and

think of it, I found I could not do so.

Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of the

night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there;

whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase

with great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I

had found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he

was coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out;

whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted

talking, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half

suspected those sounds to be of my own making; whether there had

been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and a

voice had called out over and over again that Miss Havisham was

consuming within it; these were things that I tried to settle with

myself and get into some order, as I lay that morning on my bed.

But, the vapour of a limekiln would come between me and them,

disordering them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I

saw two men looking at me.

"What do you want?" I asked, starting; "I don't know you."

"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching me on

the shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I dare

say, but you're arrested."

"What is the debt?"

"Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's account,

I think."

"What is to be done?"

"You had better come to my house," said the man. "I keep a very

nice house."

I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next

attended to them, they were standing a little off from the bed,

looking at me. I still lay there.

"You see my state," said I. "I would come with you if I could; but

indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall

die by the way."

Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage me

to believe that I was better than I thought.