Chapter V - Found



DAY and night again, day and night again.  No Stephen Blackpool.
Where was the man, and why did he not come back?

Every night, Sissy went to Rachael's lodging, and sat with her in
her small neat room.  All day, Rachael toiled as such people must
toil, whatever their anxieties.  The smoke-serpents were
indifferent who was lost or found, who turned out bad or good; the
melancholy mad elephants, like the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of
their set routine, whatever happened.  Day and night again, day and
night again.  The monotony was unbroken.  Even Stephen Blackpool's
disappearance was falling into the general way, and becoming as
monotonous a wonder as any piece of machinery in Coketown.

'I misdoubt,' said Rachael, 'if there is as many as twenty left in
all this place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now.'

She said it to Sissy, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only by
the lamp at the street corner.  Sissy had come there when it was
already dark, to await her return from work; and they had since sat
at the window where Rachael had found her, wanting no brighter
light to shine on their sorrowful talk.

'If it hadn't been mercifully brought about, that I was to have you
to speak to,' pursued Rachael, 'times are, when I think my mind
would not have kept right.  But I get hope and strength through
you; and you believe that though appearances may rise against him,
he will be proved clear?'

'I do believe so,' returned Sissy, 'with my whole heart.  I feel so
certain, Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours against all
discouragement, is not like to be wrong, that I have no more doubt
of him than if I had known him through as many years of trial as
you have.'

'And I, my dear,' said Rachel, with a tremble in her voice, 'have
known him through them all, to be, according to his quiet ways, so
faithful to everything honest and good, that if he was never to be
heard of more, and I was to live to be a hundred years old, I could
say with my last breath, God knows my heart.  I have never once
left trusting Stephen Blackpool!'

'We all believe, up at the Lodge, Rachael, that he will be freed
from suspicion, sooner or later.'

'The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear,' said
Rachael, 'and the kinder I feel it that you come away from there,
purposely to comfort me, and keep me company, and be seen wi' me
when I am not yet free from all suspicion myself, the more grieved
I am that I should ever have spoken those mistrusting words to the
young lady.  And yet I - '

'You don't mistrust her now, Rachael?'

'Now that you have brought us more together, no.  But I can't at
all times keep out of my mind - '

Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, that
Sissy, sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention.

'I can't at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some
one.  I can't think who 'tis, I can't think how or why it may be
done, but I mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the way.
I mistrust that by his coming back of his own accord, and showing
himself innocent before them all, some one would be confounded, who
- to prevent that - has stopped him, and put him out of the way.'

'That is a dreadful thought,' said Sissy, turning pale.

'It is a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered.'

Sissy shuddered, and turned paler yet.

'When it makes its way into my mind, dear,' said Rachael, 'and it
will come sometimes, though I do all I can to keep it out, wi'
counting on to high numbers as I work, and saying over and over
again pieces that I knew when I were a child - I fall into such a
wild, hot hurry, that, however tired I am, I want to walk fast,
miles and miles.  I must get the better of this before bed-time.
I'll walk home wi' you.'

'He might fall ill upon the journey back,' said Sissy, faintly
offering a worn-out scrap of hope; 'and in such a case, there are
many places on the road where he might stop.'

'But he is in none of them.  He has been sought for in all, and
he's not there.'

'True,' was Sissy's reluctant admission.

'He'd walk the journey in two days.  If he was footsore and
couldn't walk, I sent him, in the letter he got, the money to ride,
lest he should have none of his own to spare.'

'Let us hope that to-morrow will bring something better, Rachael.
Come into the air!'

Her gentle hand adjusted Rachael's shawl upon her shining black
hair in the usual manner of her wearing it, and they went out.  The
night being fine, little knots of Hands were here and there
lingering at street corners; but it was supper-time with the
greater part of them, and there were but few people in the streets.

'You're not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler.'

'I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little
fresh.  'Times when I can't, I turn weak and confused.'

'But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be wanted at
any time to stand by Stephen.  To-morrow is Saturday.  If no news
comes to-morrow, let us walk in the country on Sunday morning, and
strengthen you for another week.  Will you go?'

'Yes, dear.'

They were by this time in the street where Mr. Bounderby's house
stood.  The way to Sissy's destination led them past the door, and
they were going straight towards it.  Some train had newly arrived
in Coketown, which had put a number of vehicles in motion, and
scattered a considerable bustle about the town.  Several coaches
were rattling before them and behind them as they approached Mr.
Bounderby's, and one of the latter drew up with such briskness as
they were in the act of passing the house, that they looked round
involuntarily.  The bright gaslight over Mr. Bounderby's steps
showed them Mrs. Sparsit in the coach, in an ecstasy of excitement,
struggling to open the door; Mrs. Sparsit seeing them at the same
moment, called to them to stop.

'It's a coincidence,' exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, as she was released
by the coachman.  'It's a Providence!  Come out, ma'am!' then said
Mrs. Sparsit, to some one inside, 'come out, or we'll have you
dragged out!'

Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended.  Whom
Mrs. Sparsit incontinently collared.

'Leave her alone, everybody!' cried Mrs. Sparsit, with great
energy.  'Let nobody touch her.  She belongs to me.  Come in,
ma'am!' then said Mrs. Sparsit, reversing her former word of
command.  'Come in, ma'am, or we'll have you dragged in!'

The spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an
ancient woman by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling-house,
would have been under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to
all true English stragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a
way into that dwelling-house and see the matter out.  But when the
phenomenon was enhanced by the notoriety and mystery by this time
associated all over the town with the Bank robbery, it would have
lured the stragglers in, with an irresistible attraction, though
the roof had been expected to fall upon their heads.  Accordingly,
the chance witnesses on the ground, consisting of the busiest of
the neighbours to the number of some five-and-twenty, closed in
after Sissy and Rachael, as they closed in after Mrs. Sparsit and
her prize; and the whole body made a disorderly irruption into Mr.
Bounderby's dining-room, where the people behind lost not a
moment's time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the
people in front.

'Fetch Mr. Bounderby down!' cried Mrs. Sparsit.  'Rachael, young
woman; you know who this is?'

'It's Mrs. Pegler,' said Rachael.

'I should think it is!' cried Mrs. Sparsit, exulting.  'Fetch Mr.
Bounderby.  Stand away, everybody!'  Here old Mrs. Pegler, muffling
herself up, and shrinking from observation, whispered a word of
entreaty.  'Don't tell me,' said Mrs. Sparsit, aloud.  'I have told
you twenty times, coming along, that I will not leave you till I
have handed you over to him myself.'

Mr. Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr. Gradgrind and the
whelp, with whom he had been holding conference up-stairs.  Mr.
Bounderby looked more astonished than hospitable, at sight of this
uninvited party in his dining-room.

'Why, what's the matter now!' said he.  'Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am?'

'Sir,' explained that worthy woman, 'I trust it is my good fortune
to produce a person you have much desired to find.  Stimulated by
my wish to relieve your mind, sir, and connecting together such
imperfect clues to the part of the country in which that person
might be supposed to reside, as have been afforded by the young
woman, Rachael, fortunately now present to identify, I have had the
happiness to succeed, and to bring that person with me - I need not
say most unwillingly on her part.  It has not been, sir, without
some trouble that I have effected this; but trouble in your service
is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold a real
gratification.'

Here Mrs. Sparsit ceased; for Mr. Bounderby's visage exhibited an
extraordinary combination of all possible colours and expressions
of discomfiture, as old Mrs. Pegler was disclosed to his view.

'Why, what do you mean by this?' was his highly unexpected demand,
in great warmth.  'I ask you, what do you mean by this, Mrs.
Sparsit, ma'am?'

'Sir!' exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, faintly.

'Why don't you mind your own business, ma'am?' roared Bounderby.
'How dare you go and poke your officious nose into my family
affairs?'

This allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs. Sparsit.
She sat down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen; and with a
fixed stare at Mr. Bounderby, slowly grated her mittens against one
another, as if they were frozen too.

'My dear Josiah!' cried Mrs. Pegler, trembling.  'My darling boy!
I am not to blame.  It's not my fault, Josiah.  I told this lady
over and over again, that I knew she was doing what would not be
agreeable to you, but she would do it.'

'What did you let her bring you for?  Couldn't you knock her cap
off, or her tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other to
her?' asked Bounderby.

'My own boy!  She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be
brought by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make
that stir in such a' - Mrs.  Pegler glanced timidly but proudly
round the walls - 'such a fine house as this.  Indeed, indeed, it
is not my fault!  My dear, noble, stately boy!  I have always lived
quiet, and secret, Josiah, my dear.  I have never broken the
condition once.  I have never said I was your mother.  I have
admired you at a distance; and if I have come to town sometimes,
with long times between, to take a proud peep at you, I have done
it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again.'

Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impatient
mortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table,
while the spectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs.
Pegler's appeal, and at each succeeding syllable became more and
more round-eyed.  Mr. Bounderby still walking up and down when Mrs.
Pegler had done, Mr. Gradgrind addressed that maligned old lady:

'I am surprised, madam,' he observed with severity, 'that in your
old age you have the face to claim Mr. Bounderby for your son,
after your unnatural and inhuman treatment of him.'

'Me unnatural!' cried poor old Mrs. Pegler.  'Me inhuman!  To my
dear boy?'

'Dear!' repeated Mr. Gradgrind.  'Yes; dear in his self-made
prosperity, madam, I dare say.  Not very dear, however, when you
deserted him in his infancy, and left him to the brutality of a
drunken grandmother.'

'I deserted my Josiah!' cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her hands.
'Now, Lord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for
your scandal against the memory of my poor mother, who died in my
arms before Josiah was born.  May you repent of it, sir, and live
to know better!'

She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Gradgrind, shocked by
the possibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone:

'Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to - to be
brought up in the gutter?'

'Josiah in the gutter!' exclaimed Mrs. Pegler.  'No such a thing,
sir.  Never!  For shame on you!  My dear boy knows, and will give
you to know, that though he come of humble parents, he come of
parents that loved him as dear as the best could, and never thought
it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit that he might write and
cipher beautiful, and I've his books at home to show it!  Aye, have
I!' said Mrs. Pegler, with indignant pride.  'And my dear boy
knows, and will give you to know, sir, that after his beloved
father died, when he was eight years old, his mother, too, could
pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and her pride to
do it, to help him out in life, and put him 'prentice.  And a
steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and
well he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving.  And
I'll give you to know, sir - for this my dear boy won't - that
though his mother kept but a little village shop, he never forgot
her, but pensioned me on thirty pound a year - more than I want,
for I put by out of it - only making the condition that I was to
keep down in my own part, and make no boasts about him, and not
trouble him.  And I never have, except with looking at him once a
year, when he has never knowed it.  And it's right,' said poor old
Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, 'that I should keep down
in my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here I should do
a many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can keep
my pride in my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love's own
sake!  And I am ashamed of you, sir,' said Mrs. Pegler, lastly,
'for your slanders and suspicions.  And I never stood here before,
nor never wanted to stand here when my dear son said no.  And I
shouldn't be here now, if it hadn't been for being brought here.
And for shame upon you, Oh, for shame, to accuse me of being a bad
mother to my son, with my son standing here to tell you so
different!'

The bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a murmur
of sympathy with Mrs. Pegler, and Mr. Gradgrind felt himself
innocently placed in a very distressing predicament, when Mr.
Bounderby, who had never ceased walking up and down, and had every
moment swelled larger and larger, and grown redder and redder,
stopped short.

'I don't exactly know,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'how I come to be
favoured with the attendance of the present company, but I don't
inquire.  When they're quite satisfied, perhaps they'll be so good
as to disperse; whether they're satisfied or not, perhaps they'll
be so good as to disperse.  I'm not bound to deliver a lecture on
my family affairs, I have not undertaken to do it, and I'm not a
going to do it.  Therefore those who expect any explanation
whatever upon that branch of the subject, will be disappointed -
particularly Tom Gradgrind, and he can't know it too soon.  In
reference to the Bank robbery, there has been a mistake made,
concerning my mother.  If there hadn't been over-officiousness it
wouldn't have been made, and I hate over-officiousness at all
times, whether or no. Good evening!'

Although Mr. Bounderby carried it off in these terms, holding the
door open for the company to depart, there was a blustering
sheepishness upon him, at once extremely crestfallen and
superlatively absurd.  Detected as the Bully of humility, who had
built his windy reputation upon lies, and in his boastfulness had
put the honest truth as far away from him as if he had advanced the
mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to a pedigree,
he cut a most ridiculous figure.  With the people filing off at the
door he held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole
town, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a
Bully more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped.  Even
that unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle of
exultation into the Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a plight
as that remarkable man and self-made Humbug, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown.

Rachael and Sissy, leaving Mrs. Pegler to occupy a bed at her son's
for that night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge and
there parted.  Mr. Gradgrind joined them before they had gone very
far, and spoke with much interest of Stephen Blackpool; for whom he
thought this signal failure of the suspicions against Mrs. Pegler
was likely to work well.

As to the whelp; throughout this scene as on all other late
occasions, he had stuck close to Bounderby.  He seemed to feel that
as long as Bounderby could make no discovery without his knowledge,
he was so far safe.  He never visited his sister, and had only seen
her once since she went home:  that is to say on the night when he
still stuck close to Bounderby, as already related.

There was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister's mind,
to which she never gave utterance, which surrounded the graceless
and ungrateful boy with a dreadful mystery.  The same dark
possibility had presented itself in the same shapeless guise, this
very day, to Sissy, when Rachael spoke of some one who would be
confounded by Stephen's return, having put him out of the way.
Louisa had never spoken of harbouring any suspicion of her brother
in connexion with the robbery, she and Sissy had held no confidence
on the subject, save in that one interchange of looks when the
unconscious father rested his gray head on his hand; but it was
understood between them, and they both knew it.  This other fear
was so awful, that it hovered about each of them like a ghostly
shadow; neither daring to think of its being near herself, far less
of its being near the other.

And still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, throve
with him.  If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let him show
himself.  Why didn't he?

Another night.  Another day and night.  No Stephen Blackpool.
Where was the man, and why did he not come back?

Chapter VI - The starlight



THE Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, when
early in the morning Sissy and Rachael met, to walk in the country.

As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the
neighbourhood's too - after the manner of those pious persons who
do penance for their own sins by putting other people into
sackcloth - it was customary for those who now and then thirsted
for a draught of pure air, which is not absolutely the most wicked
among the vanities of life, to get a few miles away by the
railroad, and then begin their walk, or their lounge in the fields.
Sissy and Rachael helped themselves out of the smoke by the usual
means, and were put down at a station about midway between the town
and Mr. Bounderby's retreat.

Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with heaps of
coal, it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, and
there were larks singing (though it was Sunday), and there were
pleasant scents in the air, and all was over-arched by a bright
blue sky.  In the distance one way, Coketown showed as a black
mist; in another distance hills began to rise; in a third, there
was a faint change in the light of the horizon where it shone upon
the far-off sea.  Under their feet, the grass was fresh; beautiful
shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it; hedgerows
were luxuriant; everything was at peace.  Engines at pits' mouths,
and lean old horses that had worn the circle of their daily labour
into the ground, were alike quiet; wheels had ceased for a short
space to turn; and the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve
without the shocks and noises of another time.

They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes,
sometimes getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it
dropped at a touch of the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of
bricks and beams overgrown with grass, marking the site of deserted
works.  They followed paths and tracks, however slight.  Mounds
where the grass was rank and high, and where brambles, dock-weed,
and such-like vegetation, were confusedly heaped together, they
always avoided; for dismal stories were told in that country of the
old pits hidden beneath such indications.

The sun was high when they sat down to rest.  They had seen no one,
near or distant, for a long time; and the solitude remained
unbroken.  'It is so still here, Rachael, and the way is so
untrodden, that I think we must be the first who have been here all
the summer.'

As Sissy said it, her eyes were attracted by another of those
rotten fragments of fence upon the ground.  She got up to look at
it.  'And yet I don't know.  This has not been broken very long.
The wood is quite fresh where it gave way.  Here are footsteps too.
- O Rachael!'

She ran back, and caught her round the neck.  Rachael had already
started up.

'What is the matter?'

'I don't know.  There is a hat lying in the grass.'  They went
forward together.  Rachael took it up, shaking from head to foot.
She broke into a passion of tears and lamentations:  Stephen
Blackpool was written in his own hand on the inside.

'O the poor lad, the poor lad!  He has been made away with.  He is
lying murdered here!'

'Is there - has the hat any blood upon it?' Sissy faltered.

They were afraid to look; but they did examine it, and found no
mark of violence, inside or out.  It had been lying there some
days, for rain and dew had stained it, and the mark of its shape
was on the grass where it had fallen.  They looked fearfully about
them, without moving, but could see nothing more.  'Rachael,' Sissy
whispered, 'I will go on a little by myself.'

She had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping forward,
when Rachael caught her in both arms with a scream that resounded
over the wide landscape.  Before them, at their very feet, was the
brink of a black ragged chasm hidden by the thick grass.  They
sprang back, and fell upon their knees, each hiding her face upon
the other's neck.

'O, my good Lord!  He's down there!  Down there!'  At first this,
and her terrific screams, were all that could be got from Rachael,
by any tears, by any prayers, by any representations, by any means.
It was impossible to hush her; and it was deadly necessary to hold
her, or she would have flung herself down the shaft.

'Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven, not
these dreadful cries!  Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of
Stephen!'

By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the
agony of such a moment, Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and
to look at her with a tearless face of stone.

'Rachael, Stephen may be living.  You wouldn't leave him lying
maimed at the bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if you could
bring help to him?'

'No, no, no!'

'Don't stir from here, for his sake!  Let me go and listen.'

She shuddered to approach the pit; but she crept towards it on her
hands and knees, and called to him as loud as she could call.  She
listened, but no sound replied.  She called again and listened;
still no answering sound.  She did this, twenty, thirty times.  She
took a little clod of earth from the broken ground where he had
stumbled, and threw it in.  She could not hear it fall.

The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes
ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and
looked all round her, seeing no help.  'Rachael, we must lose not a
moment.  We must go in different directions, seeking aid.  You
shall go by the way we have come, and I will go forward by the
path.  Tell any one you see, and every one what has happened.
Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!'

She knew by Rachael's face that she might trust her now.  And after
standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she
ran, she turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the
hedge to tie her shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw
her bonnet aside, and ran as she had never run before.

Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven's name!  Don't stop for breath.  Run,
run!  Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her
thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane to lane, and place
to place, as she had never run before; until she came to a shed by
an engine-house, where two men lay in the shade, asleep on straw.

First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and
breathless as she was, what had brought her there, were
difficulties; but they no sooner understood her than their spirits
were on fire like hers.  One of the men was in a drunken slumber,
but on his comrade's shouting to him that a man had fallen down the
Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of dirty water, put his
head in it, and came back sober.

With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with
that one to another, while they ran elsewhere.  Then a horse was
found; and she got another man to ride for life or death to the
railroad, and send a message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave
him.  By this time a whole village was up:  and windlasses, ropes,
poles, candles, lanterns, all things necessary, were fast
collecting and being brought into one place, to be carried to the
Old Hell Shaft.

It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying
in the grave where he had been buried alive.  She could not bear to
remain away from it any longer - it was like deserting him - and
she hurried swiftly back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers,
including the drunken man whom the news had sobered, and who was
the best man of all.  When they came to the Old Hell Shaft, they
found it as lonely as she had left it.  The men called and listened
as she had done, and examined the edge of the chasm, and settled
how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until the implements
they wanted should come up.

Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves,
every whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought
it was a cry at the bottom of the pit.  But the wind blew idly over
it, and no sound arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass,
waiting and waiting.  After they had waited some time, straggling
people who had heard of the accident began to come up; then the
real help of implements began to arrive.  In the midst of this,
Rachael returned; and with her party there was a surgeon, who
brought some wine and medicines.  But, the expectation among the
people that the man would be found alive was very slight indeed.

There being now people enough present to impede the work, the
sobered man put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there
by the general consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell
Shaft, and appointed men to keep it.  Besides such volunteers as
were accepted to work, only Sissy and Rachael were at first
permitted within this ring; but, later in the day, when the message
brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa, and Mr.
Bounderby, and the whelp, were also there.

The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first
sat down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to
descend securely was rigged with poles and ropes.  Difficulties had
arisen in the construction of this machine, simple as it was;
requisites had been found wanting, and messages had had to go and
return.  It was five o'clock in the afternoon of the bright
autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent down to try the air,
while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together,
attentively watching it:  the man at the windlass lowering as they
were told.  The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and
then some water was cast in.  Then the bucket was hooked on; and
the sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word
'Lower away!'

As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked,
there was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women
looking on, that came as it was wont to come.  The signal was given
and the windlass stopped, with abundant rope to spare.  Apparently
so long an interval ensued with the men at the windlass standing
idle, that some women shrieked that another accident had happened!
But the surgeon who held the watch, declared five minutes not to
have elapsed yet, and sternly admonished them to keep silence.  He
had not well done speaking, when the windlass was reversed and
worked again.  Practised eyes knew that it did not go as heavily as
it would if both workmen had been coming up, and that only one was
returning.

The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled
upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the
pit.  The sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the
grass.  There was an universal cry of 'Alive or dead?' and then a
deep, profound hush.

When he said 'Alive!' a great shout arose and many eyes had tears
in them.

'But he's hurt very bad,' he added, as soon as he could make
himself heard again.  'Where's doctor?  He's hurt so very bad, sir,
that we donno how to get him up.'

They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon,
as he asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the
replies.  The sun was setting now; and the red light in the evening
sky touched every face there, and caused it to be distinctly seen
in all its rapt suspense.

The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and
the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small
matters with him.  Then the other man came up.  In the meantime,
under the surgeon's directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which
others made a thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw,
while he himself contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and
handkerchiefs.  As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of
the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use them:
and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his
powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing
down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was
not the least conspicuous figure in the scene.  It was dark now,
and torches were kindled.

It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which
was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had
fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half
choked up, and that his fall had been further broken by some jagged
earth at the side.  He lay upon his back with one arm doubled under
him, and according to his own belief had hardly stirred since he
fell, except that he had moved his free hand to a side pocket, in
which he remembered to have some bread and meat (of which he had
swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a little water in it
now and then.  He had come straight away from his work, on being
written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on his way to
Mr. Bounderby's country house after dark, when he fell.  He was
crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because
he was innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn't rest
from coming the nearest way to deliver himself up.  The Old Hell
Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad
name to the last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed
it would soon be found to have mangled the life out of him.

When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges
from his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to
lower him, disappeared into the pit.  The rope went out as before,
the signal was made as before, and the windlass stopped.  No man
removed his hand from it now.  Every one waited with his grasp set,
and his body bent down to the work, ready to reverse and wind in.
At length the signal was given, and all the ring leaned forward.

For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as
it appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass
complained.  It was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and
think of its giving way.  But, ring after ring was coiled upon the
barrel of the windlass safely, and the connecting chains appeared,
and finally the bucket with the two men holding on at the sides - a
sight to make the head swim, and oppress the heart - and tenderly
supporting between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a
poor, crushed, human creature.

A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept
aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly
from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw.  At
first, none but the surgeon went close to it.  He did what he could
in its adjustment on the couch, but the best that he could do was
to cover it.  That gently done, he called to him Rachael and Sissy.
And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen looking up
at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on the outside of
the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand.

They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and
administered some drops of cordial and wine.  Though he lay quite
motionless looking up at the sky, he smiled and said, 'Rachael.'
She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him until
her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could not so much as
turn them to look at her.

'Rachael, my dear.'

She took his hand.  He smiled again and said, 'Don't let 't go.'

'Thou'rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?'

'I ha' been, but not now.  I ha' been - dreadful, and dree, and
long, my dear - but 'tis ower now.  Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle!  Fro'
first to last, a muddle!'

The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.

'I ha' fell into th' pit, my dear, as have cost wi'in the knowledge
o' old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o' men's lives -
fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an' thousands, an'
keeping 'em fro' want and hunger.  I ha' fell into a pit that ha'
been wi' th' Firedamp crueller than battle.  I ha' read on 't in
the public petition, as onny one may read, fro' the men that works
in pits, in which they ha' pray'n and pray'n the lawmakers for
Christ's sake not to let their work be murder to 'em, but to spare
'em for th' wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok
loves theirs.  When it were in work, it killed wi'out need; when
'tis let alone, it kills wi'out need.  See how we die an' no need,
one way an' another - in a muddle - every day!'

He faintly said it, without any anger against any one.  Merely as
the truth.

'Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her.  Thou'rt not
like to forget her now, and me so nigh her.  Thou know'st - poor,
patient, suff'rin, dear - how thou didst work for her, seet'n all
day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young
and misshapen, awlung o' sickly air as had'n no need to be, an'
awlung o' working people's miserable homes.  A muddle!  Aw a
muddle!'

Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his
face turned up to the night sky.

'If aw th' things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I
should'n ha' had'n need to coom heer.  If we was not in a muddle
among ourseln, I should'n ha' been, by my own fellow weavers and
workin' brothers, so mistook.  If Mr. Bounderby had ever know'd me
right - if he'd ever know'd me at aw - he would'n ha' took'n
offence wi' me.  He would'n ha' suspect'n me.  But look up yonder,
Rachael!  Look aboove!'

Following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star.

'It ha' shined upon me,' he said reverently, 'in my pain and
trouble down below.  It ha' shined into my mind.  I ha' look'n at
't and thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have
cleared awa, above a bit, I hope.  If soom ha' been wantin' in
unnerstan'in me better, I, too, ha' been wantin' in unnerstan'in
them better.  When I got thy letter, I easily believen that what
the yoong ledy sen and done to me, and what her brother sen and
done to me, was one, and that there were a wicked plot betwixt 'em.
When I fell, I were in anger wi' her, an' hurryin on t' be as
onjust t' her as oothers was t' me.  But in our judgments, like as
in our doins, we mun bear and forbear.  In my pain an' trouble,
lookin up yonder, - wi' it shinin on me - I ha' seen more clear,
and ha' made it my dyin prayer that aw th' world may on'y coom
toogether more, an' get a better unnerstan'in o' one another, than
when I were in 't my own weak seln.'

Louisa hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite side to
Rachael, so that he could see her.

'You ha' heard?' he said, after a few moments' silence.  'I ha' not
forgot you, ledy.'

'Yes, Stephen, I have heard you.  And your prayer is mine.'

'You ha' a father.  Will yo tak' a message to him?'

'He is here,' said Louisa, with dread.  'Shall I bring him to you?'

'If yo please.'

Louisa returned with her father.  Standing hand-in-hand, they both
looked down upon the solemn countenance.

'Sir, yo will clear me an' mak my name good wi' aw men.  This I
leave to yo.'

Mr. Gradgrind was troubled and asked how?

'Sir,' was the reply:  'yor son will tell yo how.  Ask him.  I mak
no charges:  I leave none ahint me:  not a single word.  I ha' seen
an' spok'n wi' yor son, one night.  I ask no more o' yo than that
yo clear me - an' I trust to yo to do 't.'

The bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the surgeon
being anxious for his removal, those who had torches or lanterns,
prepared to go in front of the litter.  Before it was raised, and
while they were arranging how to go, he said to Rachael, looking
upward at the star:

'Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin' on me down there
in my trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour's
home.  I awmust think it be the very star!'

They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to find that they were
about to take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him
to lead.

'Rachael, beloved lass!  Don't let go my hand.  We may walk
toogether t'night, my dear!'

'I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way.'

'Bless thee!  Will soombody be pleased to coover my face!'

They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes,
and over the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in
hers.  Very few whispers broke the mournful silence.  It was soon a
funeral procession.  The star had shown him where to find the God
of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he
had gone to his Redeemer's rest.

Chapter VII - Whelp-hunting



BEFORE the ring formed round the Old Hell Shaft was broken, one
figure had disappeared from within it.  Mr. Bounderby and his
shadow had not stood near Louisa, who held her father's arm, but in
a retired place by themselves.  When Mr. Gradgrind was summoned to
the couch, Sissy, attentive to all that happened, slipped behind
that wicked shadow - a sight in the horror of his face, if there
had been eyes there for any sight but one - and whispered in his
ear.  Without turning his head, he conferred with her a few
moments, and vanished.  Thus the whelp had gone out of the circle
before the people moved.

When the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr. Bounderby's,
desiring his son to come to him directly.  The reply was, that Mr.
Bounderby having missed him in the crowd, and seeing nothing of him
since, had supposed him to be at Stone Lodge.

'I believe, father,' said Louisa, 'he will not come back to town
to-night.'  Mr. Gradgrind turned away, and said no more.

In the morning, he went down to the Bank himself as soon as it was
opened, and seeing his son's place empty (he had not the courage to
look in at first) went back along the street to meet Mr. Bounderby
on his way there.  To whom he said that, for reasons he would soon
explain, but entreated not then to be asked for, he had found it
necessary to employ his son at a distance for a little while.
Also, that he was charged with the duty of vindicating Stephen
Blackpool's memory, and declaring the thief.  Mr. Bounderby quite
confounded, stood stock-still in the street after his father-in-law
had left him, swelling like an immense soap-bubble, without its
beauty.

Mr. Gradgrind went home, locked himself in his room, and kept it
all that day.  When Sissy and Louisa tapped at his door, he said,
without opening it, 'Not now, my dears; in the evening.'  On their
return in the evening, he said, 'I am not able yet - to-morrow.'
He ate nothing all day, and had no candle after dark; and they
heard him walking to and fro late at night.

But, in the morning he appeared at breakfast at the usual hour, and
took his usual place at the table.  Aged and bent he looked, and
quite bowed down; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man,
than in the days when in this life he wanted nothing - but Facts.
Before he left the room, he appointed a time for them to come to
him; and so, with his gray head drooping, went away.

'Dear father,' said Louisa, when they kept their appointment, 'you
have three young children left.  They will be different, I will be
different yet, with Heaven's help.'

She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too.

'Your wretched brother,' said Mr. Gradgrind.  'Do you think he had
planned this robbery, when he went with you to the lodging?'

'I fear so, father.  I know he had wanted money very much, and had
spent a great deal.'

'The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into his evil
brain to cast suspicion on him?'

'I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, father.
For I asked him to go there with me.  The visit did not originate
with him.'

'He had some conversation with the poor man.  Did he take him
aside?'

'He took him out of the room.  I asked him afterwards, why he had
done so, and he made a plausible excuse; but since last night,
father, and when I remember the circumstances by its light, I am
afraid I can imagine too truly what passed between them.'

'Let me know,' said her father, 'if your thoughts present your
guilty brother in the same dark view as mine.'

'I fear, father,' hesitated Louisa, 'that he must have made some
representation to Stephen Blackpool - perhaps in my name, perhaps
in his own - which induced him to do in good faith and honesty,
what he had never done before, and to wait about the Bank those two
or three nights before he left the town.'

'Too plain!' returned the father.  'Too plain!'

He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments.
Recovering himself, he said:

'And now, how is he to be found?  How is he to be saved from
justice?  In the few hours that I can possibly allow to elapse
before I publish the truth, how is he to be found by us, and only
by us?  Ten thousand pounds could not effect it.'

'Sissy has effected it, father.'

He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his
house, and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful
kindness, 'It is always you, my child!'

'We had our fears,' Sissy explained, glancing at Louisa, 'before
yesterday; and when I saw you brought to the side of the litter
last night, and heard what passed (being close to Rachael all the
time), I went to him when no one saw, and said to him, "Don't look
at me.  See where your father is.  Escape at once, for his sake and
your own!"  He was in a tremble before I whispered to him, and he
started and trembled more then, and said, "Where can I go?  I have
very little money, and I don't know who will hide me!"  I thought
of father's old circus.  I have not forgotten where Mr. Sleary goes
at this time of year, and I read of him in a paper only the other
day.  I told him to hurry there, and tell his name, and ask Mr.
Sleary to hide him till I came.  "I'll get to him before the
morning," he said.  And I saw him shrink away among the people.'

'Thank Heaven!' exclaimed his father.  'He may be got abroad yet.'

It was the more hopeful as the town to which Sissy had directed him
was within three hours' journey of Liverpool, whence he could be
swiftly dispatched to any part of the world.  But, caution being
necessary in communicating with him - for there was a greater
danger every moment of his being suspected now, and nobody could be
sure at heart but that Mr. Bounderby himself, in a bullying vein of
public zeal, might play a Roman part - it was consented that Sissy
and Louisa should repair to the place in question, by a circuitous
course, alone; and that the unhappy father, setting forth in an
opposite direction, should get round to the same bourne by another
and wider route.  It was further agreed that he should not present
himself to Mr. Sleary, lest his intentions should be mistrusted, or
the intelligence of his arrival should cause his son to take flight
anew; but, that the communication should be left to Sissy and
Louisa to open; and that they should inform the cause of so much
misery and disgrace, of his father's being at hand and of the
purpose for which they had come.  When these arrangements had been
well considered and were fully understood by all three, it was time
to begin to carry them into execution.  Early in the afternoon, Mr.
Gradgrind walked direct from his own house into the country, to be
taken up on the line by which he was to travel; and at night the
remaining two set forth upon their different course, encouraged by
not seeing any face they knew.

The two travelled all night, except when they were left, for odd
numbers of minutes, at branch-places, up illimitable flights of
steps, or down wells - which was the only variety of those branches
- and, early in the morning, were turned out on a swamp, a mile or
two from the town they sought.  From this dismal spot they were
rescued by a savage old postilion, who happened to be up early,
kicking a horse in a fly:  and so were smuggled into the town by
all the back lanes where the pigs lived:  which, although not a
magnificent or even savoury approach, was, as is usual in such
cases, the legitimate highway.

The first thing they saw on entering the town was the skeleton of
Sleary's Circus.  The company had departed for another town more
than twenty miles off, and had opened there last night.  The
connection between the two places was by a hilly turnpike-road, and
the travelling on that road was very slow.  Though they took but a
hasty breakfast, and no rest (which it would have been in vain to
seek under such anxious circumstances), it was noon before they
began to find the bills of Sleary's Horse-riding on barns and
walls, and one o'clock when they stopped in the market-place.

A Grand Morning Performance by the Riders, commencing at that very
hour, was in course of announcement by the bellman as they set
their feet upon the stones of the street.  Sissy recommended that,
to avoid making inquiries and attracting attention in the town,
they should present themselves to pay at the door.  If Mr. Sleary
were taking the money, he would be sure to know her, and would
proceed with discretion.  If he were not, he would be sure to see
them inside; and, knowing what he had done with the fugitive, would
proceed with discretion still.

Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well-
remembered booth.  The flag with the inscription SLEARY'S HORSE-
RIDING was there; and the Gothic niche was there; but Mr. Sleary
was not there.  Master Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to
be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded
to the invincible force of circumstances (and his beard), and, in
the capacity of a man who made himself generally useful, presided
on this occasion over the exchequer - having also a drum in
reserve, on which to expend his leisure moments and superfluous
forces.  In the extreme sharpness of his look out for base coin,
Mr. Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw anything but
money; so Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in.

The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with
black spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is
the favourite recreation of that monarch to do.  Sissy, though well
acquainted with his Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the
present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful.  Miss Josephine
Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian Tyrolean Flower Act,
was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said Cauliflower
Act), and Mr. Sleary appeared, leading her in.

Mr. Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-
lash, and the Clown had only said, 'If you do it again, I'll throw
the horse at you!' when Sissy was recognised both by father and
daughter.  But they got through the Act with great self-possession;
and Mr. Sleary, saving for the first instant, conveyed no more
expression into his locomotive eye than into his fixed one.  The
performance seemed a little long to Sissy and Louisa, particularly
when it stopped to afford the Clown an opportunity of telling Mr.
Sleary (who said 'Indeed, sir!' to all his observations in the
calmest way, and with his eye on the house) about two legs sitting
on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid
hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs,
and threw 'em at four legs, who ran away with one leg.  For,
although an ingenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three-
legged stool, a dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed
time; and they were in great suspense.  At last, however, little
fair-haired Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the
Clown, left alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said,
'Now I'll have a turn!' when Sissy was touched on the shoulder, and
beckoned out.

She took Louisa with her; and they were received by Mr. Sleary in a
very little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor,
and a wooden ceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped
their approbation, as if they were coming through.  'Thethilia,'
said Mr. Sleary, who had brandy and water at hand, 'it doth me good
to thee you.  You wath alwayth a favourite with uth, and you've
done uth credith thinth the old timeth I'm thure.  You mutht thee
our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of bithnith, or they'll break
their hearth - ethpethially the women.  Here'th Jothphine hath been
and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath got a boy, and
though he'th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any pony you
can bring againtht him.  He'th named The Little Wonder of
Thcolathtic Equitation; and if you don't hear of that boy at
Athley'th, you'll hear of him at Parith.  And you recollect
Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather thweet upon
yourthelf?  Well.  He'th married too.  Married a widder.  Old
enough to be hith mother.  Thee wath Tightrope, thee wath, and now
thee'th nothing - on accounth of fat.  They've got two children,
tho we're thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the Nurthery dodge.  If
you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, with their father and
mother both a dyin' on a horthe - their uncle a retheiving of 'em
ath hith wardth, upon a horthe - themthelvth both a goin' a black-
berryin' on a horthe - and the Robinth a coming in to cover 'em
with leavth, upon a horthe - you'd thay it wath the completetht
thing ath ever you thet your eyeth on!  And you remember Emma
Gordon, my dear, ath wath a'motht a mother to you?  Of courthe you
do; I needn't athk.  Well!  Emma, thee lotht her huthband.  He wath
throw'd a heavy back-fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda
thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and he never got the better
of it; and thee married a thecond time - married a Cheethemonger
ath fell in love with her from the front - and he'th a Overtheer
and makin' a fortun.'

These various changes, Mr. Sleary, very short of breath now,
related with great heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of
innocence, considering what a bleary and brandy-and-watery old
veteran he was.  Afterwards he brought in Josephine, and E. W. B.
Childers (rather deeply lined in the jaws by daylight), and the
Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the
company.  Amazing creatures they were in Louisa's eyes, so white
and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of
leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy,
and very natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears.

'There!  Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all
the women, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear,
every one of you, and ring in the band for the thecond part!'

As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone.  'Now,
Thethilia, I don't athk to know any thecreth, but I thuppothe I may
conthider thith to be Mith Thquire.'

'This is his sister.  Yes.'

'And t'other on'th daughter.  That'h what I mean.  Hope I thee you
well, mith.  And I hope the Thquire'th well?'

'My father will be here soon,' said Louisa, anxious to bring him to
the point.  'Is my brother safe?'

'Thafe and thound!' he replied.  'I want you jutht to take a peep
at the Ring, mith, through here.  Thethilia, you know the dodgeth;
find a thpy-hole for yourthelf.'

They each looked through a chink in the boards.

'That'h Jack the Giant Killer - piethe of comic infant bithnith,'
said Sleary.  'There'th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to
hide in; there'th my Clown with a thauthepan-lid and a thpit, for
Jack'th thervant; there'th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid
thoot of armour; there'th two comic black thervanth twithe ath big
ath the houthe, to thtand by it and to bring it in and clear it;
and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), he an't on yet.
Now, do you thee 'em all?'

'Yes,' they both said.

'Look at 'em again,' said Sleary, 'look at 'em well.  You thee em
all?  Very good.  Now, mith;' he put a form for them to sit on; 'I
have my opinionth, and the Thquire your father hath hith.  I don't
want to know what your brother'th been up to; ith better for me not
to know.  All I thay ith, the Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and
I'll thtand by the Thquire.  Your brother ith one them black
thervanth.'

Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of
satisfaction.

'Ith a fact,' said Sleary, 'and even knowin' it, you couldn't put
your finger on him.  Let the Thquire come.  I thall keep your
brother here after the performanth.  I thant undreth him, nor yet
wath hith paint off.  Let the Thquire come here after the
performanth, or come here yourthelf after the performanth, and you
thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to talk to him
in.  Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath he'th well hid.'

Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr.
Sleary no longer then.  She left her love for her brother, with her
eyes full of tears; and she and Sissy went away until later in the
afternoon.

Mr. Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards.  He too had
encountered no one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary's
assistance, of getting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night.
As neither of the three could be his companion without almost
identifying him under any disguise, he prepared a letter to a
correspondent whom he could trust, beseeching him to ship the
bearer off at any cost, to North or South America, or any distant
part of the world to which he could be the most speedily and
privately dispatched.

This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite
vacated; not only by the audience, but by the company and by the
horses.  After watching it a long time, they saw Mr. Sleary bring
out a chair and sit down by the side-door, smoking; as if that were
his signal that they might approach.

'Your thervant, Thquire,' was his cautious salutation as they
passed in.  'If you want me you'll find me here.  You muthn't mind
your thon having a comic livery on.'

They all three went in; and Mr. Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the
Clown's performing chair in the middle of the ring.  On one of the
back benches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of
the place, sat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had
the misery to call his son.

In a preposterous coat, like a beadle's, with cuffs and flaps
exaggerated to an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat,
knee-breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing
fitting him, and everything of coarse material, moth-eaten and full
of holes; with seams in his black face, where fear and heat had
started through the greasy composition daubed all over it; anything
so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the whelp in his
comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind never could by any other means have
believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was.  And one
of his model children had come to this!

At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in
remaining up there by himself.  Yielding at length, if any
concession so sullenly made can be called yielding, to the
entreaties of Sissy - for Louisa he disowned altogether - he came
down, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the verge
of the circle, as far as possible, within its limits from where his
father sat.

'How was this done?' asked the father.

'How was what done?' moodily answered the son.

'This robbery,' said the father, raising his voice upon the word.

'I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I
went away.  I had had the key that was found, made long before.  I
dropped it that morning, that it might be supposed to have been
used.  I didn't take the money all at once.  I pretended to put my
balance away every night, but I didn't.  Now you know all about
it.'

'If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,' said the father, 'it would
have shocked me less than this!'

'I don't see why,' grumbled the son.  'So many people are employed
in situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be
dishonest.  I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a
law.  How can I help laws?  You have comforted others with such
things, father.  Comfort yourself!'

The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his
disgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw:  his hands, with the black
partly worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey.  The
evening was fast closing in; and from time to time, he turned the
whites of his eyes restlessly and impatiently towards his father.
They were the only parts of his face that showed any life or
expression, the pigment upon it was so thick.

'You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.'

'I suppose I must.  I can't be more miserable anywhere,' whimpered
the whelp, 'than I have been here, ever since I can remember.
That's one thing.'

Mr. Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom
he submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?

'Why, I've been thinking of it, Thquire.  There'th not muth time to
lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no.  Ith over twenty mileth to the
rail.  There'th a coath in half an hour, that goeth to the rail,
'purpothe to cath the mail train.  That train will take him right
to Liverpool.'

'But look at him,' groaned Mr. Gradgrind.  'Will any coach - '

'I don't mean that he thould go in the comic livery,' said Sleary.
'Thay the word, and I'll make a Jothkin of him, out of the
wardrobe, in five minutes.'

'I don't understand,' said Mr. Gradgrind.

'A Jothkin - a Carter.  Make up your mind quick, Thquire.  There'll
be beer to feth.  I've never met with nothing but beer ath'll ever
clean a comic blackamoor.'

Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from
a box, a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp
rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr. Sleary
rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again.

'Now,' said Sleary, 'come along to the coath, and jump up behind;
I'll go with you there, and they'll thuppothe you one of my people.
Thay farewell to your family, and tharp'th the word.'  With which
he delicately retired.

'Here is your letter,' said Mr. Gradgrind.  'All necessary means
will be provided for you.  Atone, by repentance and better conduct,
for the shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful
consequences to which it has led.  Give me your hand, my poor boy,
and may God forgive you as I do!'

The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and
their pathetic tone.  But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed
her afresh.

'Not you.  I don't want to have anything to say to you!'

'O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!'

'After all your love!' he returned, obdurately.  'Pretty love!
Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr.
Harthouse off, and going home just when I was in the greatest
danger.  Pretty love that!  Coming out with every word about our
having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gathering round
me.  Pretty love that!  You have regularly given me up.  You never
cared for me.'

'Tharp'th the word!' said Sleary, at the door.

They all confusedly went out:  Louisa crying to him that she
forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be
sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last
words, far away:  when some one ran against them.  Mr. Gradgrind
and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to
his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.

For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his
thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his
colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself
into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow.
There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped
since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.

'I'm sorry to interfere with your plans,' said Bitzer, shaking his
head, 'but I can't allow myself to be done by horse-riders.  I must
have young Mr. Tom; he mustn't be got away by horse-riders; here he
is in a smock frock, and I must have him!'

By the collar, too, it seemed.  For, so he took possession of him.

Chapter VIII - Philosophical



THEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep
intruders out.  Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the
collar, stood in the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the
darkness of the twilight.

'Bitzer,' said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive
to him, 'have you a heart?'

'The circulation, sir,' returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of
the question, 'couldn't be carried on without one.  No man, sir,
acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the
circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.'

'Is it accessible,' cried Mr. Gradgrind, 'to any compassionate
influence?'

'It is accessible to Reason, sir,' returned the excellent young
man.  'And to nothing else.'

They stood looking at each other; Mr. Gradgrind's face as white as
the pursuer's.

'What motive - even what motive in reason - can you have for
preventing the escape of this wretched youth,' said Mr. Gradgrind,
'and crushing his miserable father?  See his sister here.  Pity
us!'

'Sir,' returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner,
'since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young
Mr. Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know.  I
have suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank-robbery from the first.
I had had my eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways.  I
have kept my observations to myself, but I have made them; and I
have got ample proofs against him now, besides his running away,
and besides his own confession, which I was just in time to
overhear.  I had the pleasure of watching your house yesterday
morning, and following you here.  I am going to take young Mr. Tom
back to Coketown, in order to deliver him over to Mr. Bounderby.
Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby will then promote
me to young Mr. Tom's situation.  And I wish to have his situation,
sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.'

'If this is solely a question of self-interest with you - ' Mr.
Gradgrind began.

'I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,' returned Bitzer;
'but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question
of self-interest.  What you must always appeal to, is a person's
self-interest.  It's your only hold.  We are so constituted.  I was
brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are
aware.'

'What sum of money,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'will you set against your
expected promotion?'

'Thank you, sir,' returned Bitzer, 'for hinting at the proposal;
but I will not set any sum against it.  Knowing that your clear
head would propose that alternative, I have gone over the
calculations in my mind; and I find that to compound a felony, even
on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe and good for me as
my improved prospects in the Bank.'

'Bitzer,' said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he
would have said, See how miserable I am!  'Bitzer, I have but one
chance left to soften you.  You were many years at my school.  If,
in remembrance of the pains bestowed upon you there, you can
persuade yourself in any degree to disregard your present interest
and release my son, I entreat and pray you to give him the benefit
of that remembrance.'

'I really wonder, sir,' rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative
manner, 'to find you taking a position so untenable.  My schooling
was paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain
ended.'

It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that
everything was to be paid for.  Nobody was ever on any account to
give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase.
Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it
were not to be.  Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth
to death, was to be a bargain across a counter.  And if we didn't
get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and
we had no business there.

'I don't deny,' added Bitzer, 'that my schooling was cheap.  But
that comes right, sir.  I was made in the cheapest market, and have
to dispose of myself in the dearest.'

He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.

'Pray don't do that,' said he, 'it's of no use doing that:  it only
worries.  You seem to think that I have some animosity against
young Mr. Tom; whereas I have none at all.  I am only going, on the
reasonable grounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown.
If he was to resist, I should set up the cry of Stop thief!  But,
he won't resist, you may depend upon it.'

Mr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as
immovably jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to
these doctrines with profound attention, here stepped forward.

'Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth
perfectly well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I
didn't know what your thon had done, and that I didn't want to know
- I thed it wath better not, though I only thought, then, it wath
thome thkylarking.  However, thith young man having made it known
to be a robbery of a bank, why, that'h a theriouth thing; muth too
theriouth a thing for me to compound, ath thith young man hath very
properly called it.  Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn't quarrel
with me if I take thith young man'th thide, and thay he'th right
and there'th no help for it.  But I tell you what I'll do, Thquire;
I'll drive your thon and thith young man over to the rail, and
prevent expothure here.  I can't conthent to do more, but I'll do
that.'

Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr.
Gradgrind's part, followed this desertion of them by their last
friend.  But, Sissy glanced at him with great attention; nor did
she in her own breast misunderstand him.  As they were all going
out again, he favoured her with one slight roll of his movable eye,
desiring her to linger behind.  As he locked the door, he said
excitedly:

'The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I'll thtand by the
Thquire.  More than that:  thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and
belongth to that bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out
o' winder.  It'll be a dark night; I've got a horthe that'll do
anything but thpeak; I've got a pony that'll go fifteen mile an
hour with Childerth driving of him; I've got a dog that'll keep a
man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth.  Get a word with the
young Thquire.  Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin to
danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a
pony-gig coming up.  Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by,
to jump down, and it'll take him off at a rattling pathe.  If my
dog leth thith young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to
go.  And if my horthe ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth
a danthing, till the morning - I don't know him? - Tharp'th the
word!'

The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, sauntering
about the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr.
Sleary's equipage was ready.  It was a fine sight, to behold the
learned dog barking round it, and Mr. Sleary instructing him, with
his one practicable eye, that Bitzer was the object of his
particular attentions.  Soon after dark they all three got in and
started; the learned dog (a formidable creature) already pinning
Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to the wheel on his side,
that he might be ready for him in the event of his showing the
slightest disposition to alight.

The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense.  At
eight o'clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared:
both in high spirits.

'All right, Thquire!' said Mr. Sleary, 'your thon may be aboard-a-
thip by thith time.  Childerth took him off, an hour and a half
after we left there latht night.  The horthe danthed the polka till
he wath dead beat (he would have walthed if he hadn't been in
harneth), and then I gave him the word and he went to thleep
comfortable.  When that prethiouth young Rathcal thed he'd go
for'ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-hankercher with all
four legth in the air and pulled him down and rolled him over.  Tho
he come back into the drag, and there he that, 'till I turned the
horthe'th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning.'

Mr. Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and hinted as
delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.

'I don't want money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family
man, and if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it
mightn't be unactheptable.  Likewithe if you wath to thtand a
collar for the dog, or a thet of bellth for the horthe, I thould be
very glad to take 'em.  Brandy and water I alwayth take.'  He had
already called for a glass, and now called for another.  'If you
wouldn't think it going too far, Thquire, to make a little thpread
for the company at about three and thixth ahead, not reckoning
Luth, it would make 'em happy.'

All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Gradgrind very
willingly undertook to render.  Though he thought them far too
slight, he said, for such a service.

'Very well, Thquire; then, if you'll only give a Horthe-riding, a
bethpeak, whenever you can, you'll more than balanthe the account.
Now, Thquire, if your daughter will ethcuthe me, I thould like one
parting word with you.'

Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr. Sleary,
stirring and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:

'Thquire, - you don't need to be told that dogth ith wonderful
animalth.'

'Their instinct,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'is surprising.'

'Whatever you call it - and I'm bletht if I know what to call it' -
said Sleary, 'it ith athtonithing.  The way in whith a dog'll find
you - the dithtanthe he'll come!'

'His scent,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'being so fine.'

'I'm bletht if I know what to call it,' repeated Sleary, shaking
his head, 'but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that
made me think whether that dog hadn't gone to another dog, and
thed, "You don't happen to know a perthon of the name of Thleary,
do you?  Perthon of the name of Thleary, in the Horthe-Riding way -
thtout man - game eye?"  And whether that dog mightn't have thed,
"Well, I can't thay I know him mythelf, but I know a dog that I
think would be likely to be acquainted with him."  And whether that
dog mightn't have thought it over, and thed, "Thleary, Thleary!  O
yeth, to be thure!  A friend of mine menthioned him to me at one
time.  I can get you hith addreth directly."  In conthequenth of my
being afore the public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there
mutht be a number of dogth acquainted with me, Thquire, that I
don't know!'

Mr. Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.

'Any way,' said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and
water, 'ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at
Chethter.  We wath getting up our Children in the Wood one morning,
when there cometh into our Ring, by the thtage door, a dog.  He had
travelled a long way, he wath in a very bad condithon, he wath
lame, and pretty well blind.  He went round to our children, one
after another, as if he wath a theeking for a child he know'd; and
then he come to me, and throwd hithelf up behind, and thtood on
hith two forelegth, weak ath he wath, and then he wagged hith tail
and died.  Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth.'

'Sissy's father's dog!'

'Thethilia'th father'th old dog.  Now, Thquire, I can take my oath,
from my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead - and buried
- afore that dog come back to me.  Joth'phine and Childerth and me
talked it over a long time, whether I thould write or not.  But we
agreed, "No.  There'th nothing comfortable to tell; why unthettle
her mind, and make her unhappy?"  Tho, whether her father bathely
detherted her; or whether he broke hith own heart alone, rather
than pull her down along with him; never will be known, now,
Thquire, till - no, not till we know how the dogth findth uth out!'

'She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she
will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life,' said
Mr. Gradgrind.

'It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don't it,
Thquire?' said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths
of his brandy and water:  'one, that there ith a love in the world,
not all Thelf-interetht after all, but thomething very different;
t'other, that it bath a way of ith own of calculating or not
calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to
give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith!'

Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply.  Mr. Sleary
emptied his glass and recalled the ladies.

'Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye!  Mith Thquire, to thee
you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht
and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight
to me.  I hope your brother may live to be better detherving of
you, and a greater comfort to you.  Thquire, thake handth, firtht
and latht!  Don't be croth with uth poor vagabondth.  People mutht
be amuthed.  They can't be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can't
be alwayth a working, they an't made for it.  You mutht have uth,
Thquire.  Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the
betht of uth; not the wurtht!'

'And I never thought before,' said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in
at the door again to say it, 'that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!'

Chapter IX - Final



IT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain
blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself.  Mr.
Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him,
and presumed to be wiser than he.  Inappeasably indignant with her
for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this
presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over
and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a
great snowball.  At last he made the discovery that to discharge
this highly connected female - to have it in his power to say, 'She
was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn't
have it, and got rid of her' - would be to get the utmost possible
amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same
time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.

Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby came
in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former
days, where his portrait was.  Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, with
her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was
posting.

Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for
Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition.  In
virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look,
which woful look she now bestowed upon her patron.

'What's the matter now, ma'am?' said Mr. Bounderby, in a very
short, rough way.

'Pray, sir,' returned Mrs. Sparsit, 'do not bite my nose off.'

'Bite your nose off, ma'am?' repeated Mr. Bounderby.  'Your nose!'
meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a
nose for the purpose.  After which offensive implication, he cut
himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.

Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, 'Mr.
Bounderby, sir!'

'Well, ma'am?' retorted Mr. Bounderby.  'What are you staring at?'

'May I ask, sir,' said Mrs. Sparsit, 'have you been ruffled this
morning?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'May I inquire, sir,' pursued the injured woman, 'whether I am the
unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?'

'Now, I'll tell you what, ma'am,' said Bounderby, 'I am not come
here to be bullied.  A female may be highly connected, but she
can't be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, and I
am not going to put up with it.'  (Mr. Bounderby felt it necessary
to get on:  foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would be
beaten.)

Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian
eyebrows; gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.

'Sir,' said she, majestically.  'It is apparent to me that I am in
your way at present.  I will retire to my own apartment.'

'Allow me to open the door, ma'am.'

'Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.'

'You had better allow me, ma'am,' said Bounderby, passing her, and
getting his hand upon the lock; 'because I can take the opportunity
of saying a word to you, before you go.  Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am, I
rather think you are cramped here, do you know?  It appears to me,
that, under my humble roof, there's hardly opening enough for a
lady of your genius in other people's affairs.'

Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with
great politeness, 'Really, sir?'

'I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have
happened, ma'am,' said Bounderby; 'and it appears to my poor
judgment - '

'Oh!  Pray, sir,' Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly
cheerfulness, 'don't disparage your judgment.  Everybody knows how
unerring Mr. Bounderby's judgment is.  Everybody has had proofs of
it.  It must be the theme of general conversation.  Disparage
anything in yourself but your judgment, sir,' said Mrs. Sparsit,
laughing.

Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:

'It appears to me, ma'am, I say, that a different sort of
establishment altogether would bring out a lady of your powers.
Such an establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers's, now.
Don't you think you might find some affairs there, ma'am, to
interfere with?'

'It never occurred to me before, sir,' returned Mrs. Sparsit; 'but
now you mention it, should think it highly probable.'

'Then suppose you try, ma'am,' said Bounderby, laying an envelope
with a cheque in it in her little basket.  'You can take your own
time for going, ma'am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be
more agreeable to a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals
by herself, and not to be intruded upon.  I really ought to
apologise to you - being only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown - for
having stood in your light so long.'

'Pray don't name it, sir,' returned Mrs. Sparsit.  'If that
portrait could speak, sir - but it has the advantage over the
original of not possessing the power of committing itself and
disgusting others, - it would testify, that a long period has
elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the picture of a
Noodle.  Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or
indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire
contempt.'

Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal
struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, surveyed him
fixedly from head to foot, swept disdainfully past him, and
ascended the staircase.  Mr. Bounderby closed the door, and stood
before the fire; projecting himself after his old explosive manner
into his portrait - and into futurity.


Into how much of futurity?  He saw Mrs. Sparsit fighting out a
daily fight at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury,
with the grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers,
still laid up in bed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her
insufficient income down by about the middle of every quarter, in a
mean little airless lodging, a mere closet for one, a mere crib for
two; but did he see more?  Did he catch any glimpse of himself
making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the rising young man, so
devoted to his master's great merits, who had won young Tom's
place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times when
by various rascals he was spirited away?  Did he see any faint
reflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby
five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each
taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should
for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby
buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep
under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported out of a
Bounderby estate, and for ever nauseate all healthy stomachs, with
a vast amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster?  Had he any
prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street, and this same
precious will was to begin its long career of quibble, plunder,
false pretences, vile example, little service and much law?
Probably not.  Yet the portrait was to see it all out.

Here was Mr. Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same hour,
sitting thoughtful in his own room.  How much of futurity did he
see?  Did he see himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending his
hitherto inflexible theories to appointed circumstances; making his
facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity; and no
longer trying to grind that Heavenly trio in his dusty little
mills?  Did he catch sight of himself, therefore much despised by
his late political associates?  Did he see them, in the era of its
being quite settled that the national dustmen have only to do with
one another, and owe no duty to an abstraction called a People,
'taunting the honourable gentleman' with this and with that and
with what not, five nights a-week, until the small hours of the
morning?  Probably he had that much foreknowledge, knowing his men.


Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the fire as
in days of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler face.  How
much of the future might arise before her vision?  Broadsides in
the streets, signed with her father's name, exonerating the late
Stephen Blackpool, weaver, from misplaced suspicion, and publishing
the guilt of his own son, with such extenuation as his years and
temptation (he could not bring himself to add, his education) might
beseech; were of the Present.  So, Stephen Blackpool's tombstone,
with her father's record of his death, was almost of the Present,
for she knew it was to be.  These things she could plainly see.
But, how much of the Future?

A working woman, christened Rachael, after a long illness once
again appearing at the ringing of the Factory bell, and passing to
and fro at the set hours, among the Coketown Hands; a woman of
pensive beauty, always dressed in black, but sweet-tempered and
serene, and even cheerful; who, of all the people in the place,
alone appeared to have compassion on a degraded, drunken wretch of
her own sex, who was sometimes seen in the town secretly begging of
her, and crying to her; a woman working, ever working, but content
to do it, and preferring to do it as her natural lot, until she
should be too old to labour any more?  Did Louisa see this?  Such a
thing was to be.

A lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on paper
blotted with tears, that her words had too soon come true, and that
all the treasures in the world would be cheaply bartered for a
sight of her dear face?  At length this brother coming nearer home,
with hope of seeing her, and being delayed by illness; and then a
letter, in a strange hand, saying 'he died in hospital, of fever,
such a day, and died in penitence and love of you:  his last word
being your name'?  Did Louisa see these things?  Such things were
to be.

Herself again a wife - a mother - lovingly watchful of her
children, ever careful that they should have a childhood of the
mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even
a more beautiful thing, and a possession, any hoarded scrap of
which, is a blessing and happiness to the wisest?  Did Louisa see
this?  Such a thing was never to be.

But, happy Sissy's happy children loving her; all children loving
her; she, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent and
pretty fancy ever to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler
fellow-creatures, and to beautify their lives of machinery and
reality with those imaginative graces and delights, without which
the heart of infancy will wither up, the sturdiest physical manhood
will be morally stark death, and the plainest national prosperity
figures can show, will be the Writing on the Wall, - she holding
this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood,
or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, or fancy
fair; but simply as a duty to be done, - did Louisa see these
things of herself?  These things were to be.

Dear reader!  It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields
of action, similar things shall be or not.  Let them be!  We shall
sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our
fires turn gray and cold.

Chapter 1


My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip,
my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more
explicit than Pip.  So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called
Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his
tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the
blacksmith.  As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw
any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the
days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were
like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.  The shape of
the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a
square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair.  From the character
and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I
drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.
To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long,
which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were
sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up
trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal
struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained
that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in
their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state
of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river
wound, twenty miles of the sea.  My first most vivid and broad
impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been
gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.  At such a time
I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with
nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this
parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried;
and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant
children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the
dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes
and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the
marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and
that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was
the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it
all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from
among the graves at the side of the church porch.  "Keep still, you
little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg.  A
man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied
round his head.  A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered
in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by
nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared
and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me
by the chin.

"O!  Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror.  "Pray don't do
it, sir."

"Tell us your name!" said the man.  "Quick!"

"Pip, sir."

"Once more," said the man, staring at me.  "Give it mouth!"

"Pip.  Pip, sir."

"Show us where you live," said the man.  "Pint out the place!"

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the
alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down,
and emptied my pockets.  There was nothing in them but a piece of
bread.  When the church came to itself - for he was so sudden and
strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the
steeple under my feet - when the church came to itself, I say, I
was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread
ravenously.

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks
you ha' got."

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for
my years, and not strong.

"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening
shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to
the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon
it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

"Now lookee here!" said the man.  "Where's your mother?"

"There, sir!" said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his
shoulder.

"There, sir!" I timidly explained.  "Also Georgiana.  That's my
mother."

"Oh!" said he, coming back.  "And is that your father alonger your
mother?"

"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."

"Ha!" he muttered then, considering.  "Who d'ye live with -
supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind
about?"

"My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery, the
blacksmith, sir."

"Blacksmith, eh?" said he.  And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came
closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as
far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully
down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to
be let to live.  You know what a file is?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you know what wittles is?"

"Yes, sir."

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give
me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

"You get me a file."  He tilted me again.  "And you get me wittles."
He tilted me again.  "You bring 'em both to me."  He tilted me again.
"Or I'll have your heart and liver out."  He tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with
both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep
upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could
attend more."

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church
jumped over its own weather-cock.  Then, he held me by the arms, in
an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these
fearful terms:

"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles.
You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder.  You do
it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person
sumever, and you shall be let to live.  You fail, or you go from my
words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart
and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate.  Now, I ain't
alone, as you may think I am.  There's a young man hid with me, in
comparison with which young man I am a Angel.  That young man hears
the words I speak.  That young man has a secret way pecooliar to
himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.
It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young
man.  A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself
up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself
comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and
creep his way to him and tear him open.  I am a-keeping that young
man from harming of you at the present moment, with great
difficulty.  I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your
inside.  Now, what do you say?"

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what
broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the
Battery, early in the morning.

"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you
remember that young man, and you get home!"

"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.

"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat.
"I wish I was a frog.  Or a eel!"

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms -
clasping himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped
towards the low church wall.  As I saw him go, picking his way among
the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he
looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead
people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a
twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man
whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for
me.  When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made
the best use of my legs.  But presently I looked over my shoulder,
and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself
in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the
great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for
stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I
stopped to look after him; and the river was just another
horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky
was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines
intermixed.  On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the
only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be
standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors
steered - like an unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when
you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to
it which had once held a pirate.  The man was limping on towards
this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down,
and going back to hook himself up again.  It gave me a terrible turn
when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to
gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too.  I looked
all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of
him.  But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without
stopping.

Chapter 2


My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than
I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the
neighbours because she had brought me up "by hand."  Having at that
time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing
her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of
laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe
Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general
impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand.
Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his
smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they
seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites.  He was a
mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear
fellow - a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing
redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was
possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.
She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron,
fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square
impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles.
She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach
against Joe, that she wore this apron so much.  Though I really see
no reason why she should have worn it at all:  or why, if she did
wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her
life.

Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many
of the dwellings in our country were - most of them, at that time.
When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe
was sitting alone in the kitchen.  Joe and I being fellow-sufferers,
and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me,
the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him
opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip.  And
she's out now, making it a baker's dozen."

"Is she?"

"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with
her."

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my
waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the
fire.  Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by
collision with my tickled frame.

"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at
Tickler, and she Ram-paged out.  That's what she did," said Joe,
slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and
looking at it:  "she Ram-paged out, Pip."

"Has she been gone long, Joe?"  I always treated him as a larger
species of child, and as no more than my equal.

"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on
the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip.  She's a-
coming!  Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel
betwixt you."

I took the advice.  My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,
and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the
cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation.  She
concluded by throwing me - I often served as a connubial missile -
at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into
the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

"Where have you been, you young monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her
foot.  "Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with
fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if
you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys."

"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool, crying
and rubbing myself.

"Churchyard!" repeated my sister.  "If it warn't for me you'd have
been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there.  Who brought you
up by hand?"

"You did," said I.

"And why did I do it, I should like to know?" exclaimed my sister.

I whimpered, "I don't know."

"I don't!" said my sister.  "I'd never do it again!  I know that.  I
may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you
were.  It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a Gargery)
without being your mother."

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately
at the fire.  For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed
leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful
pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering
premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.

"Hah!" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station.  "Churchyard,
indeed!  You may well say churchyard, you two."  One of us,
by-the-bye, had not said it at all.  "You'll drive me to the
churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious
pair you'd be without me!"

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me
over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and
calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the
grievous circumstances foreshadowed.  After that, he sat feeling his
right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about
with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter for
us, that never varied.  First, with her left hand she jammed the
loaf hard and fast against her bib - where it sometimes got a pin
into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our
mouths.  Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and
spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were
making a plaister - using both sides of the knife with a slapping
dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the
crust.  Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of
the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf:  which
she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two
halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my
slice.  I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful
acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man.  I
knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that
my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.
Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the
leg of my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this
purpose, I found to be quite awful.  It was as if I had to make up
my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a
great depth of water.  And it was made the more difficult by the
unconscious Joe.  In our already-mentioned freemasonry as
fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it
was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices,
by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then
- which stimulated us to new exertions.  To-night, Joe several times
invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to enter
upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me, each time,
with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched
bread-and-butter on the other.  At last, I desperately considered
that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be
done in the least improbable manner consistent with the
circumstances.  I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just
looked at me, and got my bread-and-butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my
loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice,
which he didn't seem to enjoy.  He turned it about in his mouth much
longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all
gulped it down like a pill.  He was about to take another bite, and
had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when
his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the
threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape
my sister's observation.

"What's the matter now?" said she, smartly, as she put down her
cup.

"I say, you know!" muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very
serious remonstrance.  "Pip, old chap!  You'll do yourself a
mischief.  It'll stick somewhere.  You can't have chawed it, Pip."

"What's the matter now?" repeated my sister, more sharply than
before.

"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do
it," said Joe, all aghast.  "Manners is manners, but still your
elth's your elth."

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe,
and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little
while against the wall behind him:  while I sat in the corner,
looking guiltily on.

"Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter," said my sister,
out of breath, "you staring great stuck pig."

Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite, and
looked at me again.

"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his
cheek and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite
alone, "you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell
upon you, any time.  But such a--" he moved his chair and looked
about the floor between us, and then again at me - "such a most
oncommon Bolt as that!"

"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried my sister.

"You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe,
with his bite still in his cheek, "I Bolted, myself, when I was
your age - frequent - and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters;
but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you
ain't Bolted dead."

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair:  saying
nothing more than the awful words, "You come along and be dosed."

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine
medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;
having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness.  At
the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as
a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling
like a new fence.  On this particular evening the urgency of my case
demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat,
for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm,
as a boot would be held in a boot-jack.  Joe got off with half a
pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he
sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire), "because he had
had a turn."  Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a
turn afterwards, if he had had none before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but
when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with
another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can
testify) a great punishment.  The guilty knowledge that I was going
to rob Mrs. Joe - I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I
never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his - united
to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter
as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small
errand, almost drove me out of my mind.  Then, as the marsh winds
made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside,
of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy,
declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until to-morrow, but
must be fed now.  At other times, I thought, What if the young man
who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands
in me, should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should
mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart
and liver to-night, instead of to-morrow!  If ever anybody's hair
stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then.  But,
perhaps, nobody's ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day,
with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock.  I
tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh
of the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency of
exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle, quite
unmanageable.  Happily, I slipped away, and deposited that part of
my conscience in my garret bedroom.

"Hark!" said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final
warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; "was that
great guns, Joe?"

"Ah!" said Joe.  "There's another conwict off."

"What does that mean, Joe?" said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said,
snappishly, "Escaped.  Escaped."  Administering the definition like
Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put
my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, "What's a convict?"  Joe
put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate
answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word
"Pip."

"There was a conwict off last night," said Joe, aloud, "after
sun-set-gun.  And they fired warning of him.  And now, it appears
they're firing warning of another."

"Who's firing?" said I.

"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her
work, "what a questioner he is.  Ask no questions, and you'll be
told no lies."

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should
be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions.  But she never was
polite, unless there was company.

At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the
utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the
form of a word that looked to me like "sulks."  Therefore, I
naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of
saying "her?"  But Joe wouldn't hear of that, at all, and again
opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic
word out of it.  But I could make nothing of the word.

"Mrs. Joe," said I, as a last resort, "I should like to know - if
you wouldn't much mind - where the firing comes from?"

"Lord bless the boy!" exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't quite
mean that, but rather the contrary.  "From the Hulks!"

"Oh-h!" said I, looking at Joe.  "Hulks!"

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, "Well, I told you
so."

"And please what's Hulks?" said I.

"That's the way with this boy!" exclaimed my sister, pointing me
out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me.  "Answer
him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly.  Hulks are
prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes."  We always used that name
for marshes, in our country.

"I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put there?"
said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose.  "I tell you
what, young fellow," said she, "I didn't bring you up by hand to
badger people's lives out.  It would be blame to me, and not praise,
if I had.  People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and
because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they
always begin by asking questions.  Now, you get along to bed!"

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling - from Mrs. Joe's
thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last
words - I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the
Hulks were handy for me.  I was clearly on my way there.  I had begun
by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought
that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, under
terror.  No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be
terror.  I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart
and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the
ironed leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful
promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my
all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to
think of what I might have done, on requirement, in the secrecy of
my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself
drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a
ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I
passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be
hanged there at once, and not put it off.  I was afraid to sleep,
even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint
dawn of morning I must rob the pantry.  There was no doing it in the
night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to
have got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and
have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was
shot with grey, I got up and went down stairs; every board upon the
way, and every crack in every board, calling after me, "Stop
thief!" and "Get up, Mrs. Joe!" In the pantry, which was far more
abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very
much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather
thought I caught, when my back was half turned, winking.  I had no
time for verification, no time for selection, no time for anything,
for I had no time to spare.  I stole some bread, some rind of
cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my
pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some brandy from a
stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly
used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water,
up in my room:  diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen
cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful
round compact pork pie.  I was nearly going away without the pie,
but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that
was put away so carefully in a covered earthen ware dish in a
corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope that
it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some
time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I
unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's
tools.  Then, I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the
door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it,
and ran for the misty marshes.

Chapter 3


It was a rimy morning, and very damp.  I had seen the damp lying on
the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying
there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like
a coarser sort of spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig
and blade to blade.  On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the
marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post
directing people to our village - a direction which they never
accepted, for they never came there - was invisible to me until I
was quite close under it.  Then, as I looked up at it, while it
dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom
devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that
instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at
me.  This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind.  The gates and
dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they
cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebody-else's pork pie!
Stop him!"  The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring
out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Holloa,
young thief!"  One black ox, with a white cravat on - who even had
to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air - fixed me so
obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such
an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him,
"I couldn't help it, sir!  It wasn't for myself I took it!"  Upon
which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose,
and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his
tail.

All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast
I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed
riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was
running to meet.  I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for
I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an
old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him regularly
bound, we would have such Larks there!  However, in the confusion of
the mist, I found myself at last too far to the right, and
consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the bank of
loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out.
Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a
ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just
scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting
before me.  His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and
was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his
breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and
touched him on the shoulder.  He instantly jumped up, and it was not
the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a great
iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was
everything that the other man was; except that he had not the same
face, and had a flat broad-brimmed low-crowned felt that on.  All
this, I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in:  he
swore an oath at me, made a hit at me - it was a round weak blow
that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for it made him
stumble - and then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went,
and I lost him.

"It's the young man!" I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I
identified him.  I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver,
too, if I had known where it was.

I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was the right
man-hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
night left off hugging and limping - waiting for me.  He was awfully
cold, to be sure.  I half expected to see him drop down before my
face and die of deadly cold.  His eyes looked so awfully hungry,
too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the
grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had
not seen my bundle.  He did not turn me upside down, this time, to
get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I opened
the bundle and emptied my pockets.

"What's in the bottle, boy?" said he.

"Brandy," said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most
curious manner - more like a man who was putting it away somewhere
in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it - but he left off
to take some of the liquor.  He shivered all the while, so
violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the
neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.

"I think you have got the ague," said I.

"I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he.

"It's bad about here," I told him.  "You've been lying out on the
meshes, and they're dreadful aguish.  Rheumatic too."

"I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he.
"I'd do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows
as there is over there, directly afterwards.  I'll beat the shivers
so far, I'll bet you."

He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie,
all at once:  staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all
round us, and often stopping - even stopping his jaws - to listen.
Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing
of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said,
suddenly:

"You're not a deceiving imp?  You brought no one with you?"

"No, sir!  No!"

"Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?"

"No!"

"Well," said he, "I believe you.  You'd be but a fierce young hound
indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched
warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched
warmint is!"

Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in him like a
clock, and was going to strike.  And he smeared his ragged rough
sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled
down upon the pie, I made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it."

"Did you speak?"

"I said I was glad you enjoyed it."

"Thankee, my boy.  I do."

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now
noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and
the man's.  The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the
dog.  He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon
and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate,
as if he thought there was danger in every direction, of somebody's
coming to take the pie away.  He was altogether too unsettled in his
mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have
anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at
the visitor.  In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

"I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him," said I, timidly;
after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness
of making the remark.  "There's no more to be got where that came
from."  It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer
the hint.

"Leave any for him?  Who's him?" said my friend, stopping in his
crunching of pie-crust.

"The young man.  That you spoke of.  That was hid with you."

"Oh ah!" he returned, with something like a gruff laugh.  "Him?  Yes,
yes!  He don't want no wittles."

"I thought he looked as if he did," said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny
and the greatest surprise.

"Looked?  When?"

"Just now."

"Where?"

"Yonder," said I, pointing; "over there, where I found him nodding
asleep, and thought it was you."

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think
his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

"Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat," I explained,
trembling; "and - and" - I was very anxious to put this delicately
- "and with - the same reason for wanting to borrow a file.  Didn't
you hear the cannon last night?"

"Then, there was firing!" he said to himself.

"I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I returned, "for
we heard it up at home, and that's further away, and we were shut
in besides."

"Why, see now!" said he.  "When a man's alone on these flats, with a
light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he
hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling.
Hears?  He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the
torches carried afore, closing in round him.  Hears his number
called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets,
hears the orders 'Make ready!  Present!  Cover him steady, men!' and
is laid hands on - and there's nothin'!  Why, if I see one pursuing
party last night - coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp,
tramp - I see a hundred.  And as to firing!  Why, I see the mist
shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day - But this man;" he
had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there; "did
you notice anything in him?"

"He had a badly bruised face," said I, recalling what I hardly knew
I knew.

"Not here?" exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly,
with the flat of his hand.

"Yes, there!"

"Where is he?"  He crammed what little food was left, into the
breast of his grey jacket.  "Show me the way he went.  I'll pull him
down, like a bloodhound.  Curse this iron on my sore leg!  Give us
hold of the file, boy."

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man,
and he looked up at it for an instant.  But he was down on the rank
wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or
minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody,
but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it
than the file.  I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had
worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much
afraid of keeping away from home any longer.  I told him I must go,
but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was
to slip off.  The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee
and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient
imprecations at it and at his leg.  The last I heard of him, I
stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.

Chapter 4


I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to
take me up.  But not only was there no Constable there, but no
discovery had yet been made of the robbery.  Mrs. Joe was
prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of
the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen door-step to keep
him out of the dust-pan - an article into which his destiny always
led him sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the
floors of her establishment.

"And where the deuce ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas
salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols.  "Ah! well!" observed Mrs.
Joe.  "You might ha' done worse."  Not a doubt of that, I thought.

"Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same
thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear
the Carols," said Mrs. Joe.  "I'm rather partial to Carols, myself,
and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any."

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dust-pan had
retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a
conciliatory air when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her
eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and
exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross
temper.  This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would
often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental
Crusaders as to their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled
pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls.  A handsome
mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the
mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding was already on the
boil.  These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off
unceremoniously in respect of breakfast; "for I an't," said Mrs.
Joe, "I an't a-going to have no formal cramming and busting and
washing up now, with what I've got before me, I promise you!"

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops
on a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took
gulps of milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug
on the dresser.  In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains
up, and tacked a new flowered-flounce across the wide chimney to
replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlour across
the passage, which was never uncovered at any other time, but
passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which
even extended to the four little white crockery poodles on the
mantelshelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in his
mouth, and each the counterpart of the other.  Mrs. Joe was a very
clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her
cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by
their religion.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously;
that is to say, Joe and I were going.  In his working clothes, Joe
was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday
clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than
anything else.  Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to
belong to him; and everything that he wore then, grazed him.  On the
present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe
bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday
penitentials.  As to me, I think my sister must have had some
general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur
Policemen had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her,
to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law.  I
was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in
opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and
against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.  Even when I
was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to
make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me
have the free use of my limbs.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving
spectacle for compassionate minds.  Yet, what I suffered outside,
was nothing to what I underwent within.  The terrors that had
assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of
the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my
mind dwelt on what my hands had done.  Under the weight of my wicked
secret, I pondered whether the Church would be powerful enough to
shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man, if I
divulged to that establishment.  I conceived the idea that the time
when the banns were read and when the clergyman said, "Ye are now
to declare it!" would be the time for me to rise and propose a
private conference in the vestry.  I am far from being sure that I
might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to
this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no
Sunday.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble
the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe's uncle,
but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do corn-chandler
in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart.  The dinner hour
was half-past one.  When Joe and I got home, we found the table
laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front
door unlocked (it never was at any other time) for the company to
enter by, and everything most splendid.  And still, not a word of
the robbery.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings,
and the company came.  Mr.  Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a
large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was
uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his
acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would
read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the
Church was "thrown open," meaning to competition, he would not
despair of making his mark in it.  The Church not being "thrown
open," he was, as I have said, our clerk.  But he punished the
Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm - always giving
the whole verse - he looked all round the congregation first, as
much as to say, "You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with
your opinion of this style!"

I opened the door to the company - making believe that it was a
habit of ours to open that door - and I opened it first to Mr.
Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle
Pumblechook.  N.B., I was not allowed to call him uncle, under the
severest penalties.

"Mrs. Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook:  a large hard-breathing
middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes,
and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as
if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to;
"I have brought you, as the compliments of the season - I have
brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine - and I have brought you,
Mum, a bottle of port wine."

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty,
with exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like
dumb-bells.  Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now
replied, "Oh, Un - cle Pum - ble - chook!  This IS kind!"  Every
Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted, "It's no more than
your merits.  And now are you all bobbish, and how's Sixpennorth of
halfpence?" meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the
nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour; which was a change
very like Joe's change from his working clothes to his Sunday
dress.  My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and
indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble
than in other company.  I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly
sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally juvenile
position, because she had married Mr. Hubble - I don't know at what
remote period - when she was much younger than he.  I remember Mr
Hubble as a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty
fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart:  so that in my
short days I always saw some miles of open country between them
when I met him coming up the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't
robbed the pantry, in a false position.  Not because I was squeezed
in at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the table in my
chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was
not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I was
regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and
with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living,
had had the least reason to be vain.  No; I should not have minded
that, if they would only have left me alone.  But they wouldn't
leave me alone.  They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they
failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and
stick the point into me.  I might have been an unfortunate little
bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these
moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner.  Mr. Wopsle said grace
with theatrical declamation - as it now appears to me, something
like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the
Third - and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be
truly grateful.  Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and
said, in a low reproachful voice, "Do you hear that?  Be grateful."

"Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which
brought you up by hand."

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful
presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that
the young are never grateful?"  This moral mystery seemed too much
for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying,
"Naterally wicious."  Everybody then murmured "True!" and looked at
me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible)
when there was company, than when there was none.  But he always
aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and
he always did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were
any.  There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate,
at this point, about half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with
some severity, and intimated - in the usual hypothetical case of
the Church being "thrown open" - what kind of sermon he would have
given them.  After favouring them with some heads of that discourse,
he remarked that he considered the subject of the day's homily,
ill-chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were
so many subjects "going about."

"True again," said Uncle Pumblechook.  "You've hit it, sir!  Plenty of
subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their
tails.  That's what's wanted.  A man needn't go far to find a
subject, if he's ready with his salt-box."  Mr. Pumblechook added,
after a short interval of reflection, "Look at Pork alone.  There's
a subject!  If you want a subject, look at Pork!"

"True, sir.  Many a moral for the young," returned Mr. Wopsle; and I
knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; "might be
deduced from that text."

("You listen to this," said my sister to me, in a severe
parenthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

"Swine," pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his
fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name;
"Swine were the companions of the prodigal.  The gluttony of Swine
is put before us, as an example to the young."  (I thought this
pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so
plump and juicy.)  "What is detestable in a pig, is more detestable
in a boy."

"Or girl," suggested Mr. Hubble.

"Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," assented Mr. Wopsle, rather
irritably, "but there is no girl present."

"Besides," said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, "think what
you've got to be grateful for.  If you'd been born a Squeaker--"

"He was, if ever a child was," said my sister, most emphatically.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

"Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker," said Mr. Pumblechook.  "If
you had been born such, would you have been here now?  Not you--"

"Unless in that form," said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.

"But I don't mean in that form, sir," returned Mr. Pumblechook, who
had an objection to being interrupted; "I mean, enjoying himself
with his elders and betters, and improving himself with their
conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury.  Would he have been
doing that?  No, he wouldn't.  And what would have been your
destination?" turning on me again.  "You would have been disposed of
for so many shillings according to the market price of the article,
and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay in
your straw, and he would have whipped you under his left arm, and
with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a penknife
from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would have shed your
blood and had your life.  No bringing up by hand then.  Not a bit of
it!"

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.

"He was a world of trouble to you, ma'am," said Mrs. Hubble,
commiserating my sister.

"Trouble?" echoed my sister; "trouble?" and then entered on a
fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and
all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high
places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled
into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she
had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go
there.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with
their noses.  Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in
consequence.  Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose so aggravated me,
during the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to
pull it until he howled.  But, all I had endured up to this time,
was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that took
possession of me when the pause was broken which ensued upon my
sister's recital, and in which pause everybody had looked at me (as
I felt painfully conscious) with indignation and abhorrence.

"Yet," said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the
theme from which they had strayed, "Pork - regarded as biled - is
rich, too; ain't it?"

"Have a little brandy, uncle," said my sister.

O Heavens, it had come at last!  He would find it was weak, he would
say it was weak, and I was lost!  I held tight to the leg of the
table under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone
bottle, and poured his brandy out:  no one else taking any.  The
wretched man trifled with his glass - took it up, looked at it
through the light, put it down - prolonged my misery.  All this
time, Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie
and pudding.

I couldn't keep my eyes off him.  Always holding tight by the leg of
the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature
finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back,
and drink the brandy off.  Instantly afterwards, the company were
seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to
his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic
whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he then became
visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating,
making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him.  I didn't know
how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow.
In my dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back,
and, surveying the company all round as if they had disagreed with
him, sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, "Tar!"

I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug.  I knew he would
be worse by-and-by.  I moved the table, like a Medium of the present
day, by the vigour of my unseen hold upon it.

"Tar!" cried my sister, in amazement.  "Why, how ever could Tar come
there?"

But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen,
wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously
waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot gin-and-water.
My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ
herself actively in getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and
the lemon-peel, and mixing them.  For the time being at least, I was
saved.  I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now
with the fervour of gratitude.

By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of
pudding.  Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding.  All partook of pudding.
The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under
the genial influence of gin-and-water.  I began to think I should
get over the day, when my sister said to Joe, "Clean plates -
cold."

I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it
to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend
of my soul.  I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I
really was gone.

"You must taste," said my sister, addressing the guests with her
best grace, "You must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and
delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook's!"

Must they!  Let them not hope to taste it!

"You must know," said my sister, rising, "it's a pie; a savoury
pork pie."

The company murmured their compliments.  Uncle Pumblechook, sensible
of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said - quite
vivaciously, all things considered - "Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our
best endeavours; let us have a cut at this same pie."

My sister went out to get it.  I heard her steps proceed to the
pantry.  I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife.  I saw re-awakening
appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle.  I heard Mr. Hubble
remark that "a bit of savoury pork pie would lay atop of anything
you could mention, and do no harm," and I heard Joe say, "You shall
have some, Pip."  I have never been absolutely certain whether I
uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily
hearing of the company.  I felt that I could bear no more, and that
I must run away.  I released the leg of the table, and ran for my
life.

But, I ran no further than the house door, for there I ran head
foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets:  one of whom
held out a pair of handcuffs to me, saying, "Here you are, look
sharp, come on!"

Chapter 5


The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the butt-ends of
their loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to
rise from table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe re-entering the
kitchen empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering
lament of "Gracious goodness gracious me, what's gone - with the -
pie!"

The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring;
at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses.  It was
the sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking round at
the company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in
his right hand, and his left on my shoulder.

"Excuse me, ladies and gentleman," said the sergeant, "but as I
have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver" (which he
hadn't), "I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the
blacksmith."

"And pray what might you want with him?" retorted my sister, quick
to resent his being wanted at all.

"Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, "speaking for myself, I
should reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife's
acquaintance; speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done."

This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr
Pumblechook cried audibly, "Good again!"

"You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, who had by this time
picked out Joe with his eye, "we have had an accident with these,
and I find the lock of one of 'em goes wrong, and the coupling
don't act pretty.  As they are wanted for immediate service, will
you throw your eye over them?"

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would
necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer
two hours than one, "Will it?  Then will you set about it at once,
blacksmith?" said the off-hand sergeant, "as it's on his Majesty's
service.  And if my men can beat a hand anywhere, they'll make
themselves useful."  With that, he called to his men, who came
trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms
in a corner.  And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with
their hands loosely clasped before them; now, resting a knee or a
shoulder; now, easing a belt or a pouch; now, opening the door to
spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard.

All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I
was in an agony of apprehension.  But, beginning to perceive that
the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got
the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a
little more of my scattered wits.

"Would you give me the Time?" said the sergeant, addressing himself
to Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative powers justified
the inference that he was equal to the time.

"It's just gone half-past two."

"That's not so bad," said the sergeant, reflecting; "even if I was
forced to halt here nigh two hours, that'll do.  How far might you
call yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts?  Not above a mile, I
reckon?"

"Just a mile," said Mrs. Joe.

"That'll do.  We begin to close in upon 'em about dusk.  A little
before dusk, my orders are.  That'll do."

"Convicts, sergeant?" asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-course way.

"Ay!" returned the sergeant, "two.  They're pretty well known to be
out on the marshes still, and they won't try to get clear of 'em
before dusk.  Anybody here seen anything of any such game?"

Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence.  Nobody
thought of me.

"Well!" said the sergeant, "they'll find themselves trapped in a
circle, I expect, sooner than they count on.  Now, blacksmith!  If
you're ready, his Majesty the King is."

Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his leather
apron on, and passed into the forge.  One of the soldiers opened its
wooden windows, another lighted the fire, another turned to at
the bellows, the rest stood round the blaze, which was soon
roaring.  Then Joe began to hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and
we all looked on.

The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the general
attention, but even made my sister liberal.  She drew a pitcher of
beer from the cask, for the soldiers, and invited the sergeant to
take a glass of brandy.  But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, "Give him
wine, Mum.  I'll engage there's no Tar in that:"  so, the sergeant
thanked him and said that as he preferred his drink without tar, he
would take wine, if it was equally convenient.  When it was given
him, he drank his Majesty's health and Compliments of the Season,
and took it all at a mouthful and smacked his lips.

"Good stuff, eh, sergeant?" said Mr. Pumblechook.

"I'll tell you something," returned the sergeant; "I suspect that
stuff's of your providing."

Mr.  Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, "Ay, ay?  Why?"

"Because," returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder,
"you're a man that knows what's what."

"D'ye think so?" said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh.  "Have
another glass!"

"With you.  Hob and nob," returned the sergeant.  "The top of mine to
the foot of yours - the foot of yours to the top of mine - Ring
once, ring twice - the best tune on the Musical Glasses!  Your
health.  May you live a thousand years, and never be a worse judge
of the right sort than you are at the present moment of your life!"

The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for
another glass.  I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality
appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, but took
the bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about
in a gush of joviality.  Even I got some.  And he was so very free of
the wine that he even called for the other bottle, and handed that
about with the same liberality, when the first was gone.

As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the forge,
enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good sauce for
a dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was.  They had not
enjoyed themselves a quarter so much, before the entertainment was
brightened with the excitement he furnished.  And now, when they
were all in lively anticipation of "the two villains" being taken,
and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to
flare for them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to
hammer and clink for them, and all the murky shadows on the wall to
shake at them in menace as the blaze rose and sank and the red-hot
sparks dropped and died, the pale after-noon outside, almost seemed
in my pitying young fancy to have turned pale on their account,
poor wretches.

At last, Joe's job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped.
As Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some of
us should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the hunt.
Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of a pipe and
ladies' society; but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would.  Joe
said he was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved.  We
never should have got leave to go, I am sure, but for Mrs. Joe's
curiosity to know all about it and how it ended.  As it was, she
merely stipulated, "If you bring the boy back with his head blown
to bits by a musket, don't look to me to put it together again."

The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and parted from Mr.
Pumblechook as from a comrade; though I doubt if he were quite as
fully sensible of that gentleman's merits under arid conditions, as
when something moist was going.  His men resumed their muskets and
fell in.  Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict charge to keep in
the rear, and to speak no word after we reached the marshes.  When
we were all out in the raw air and were steadily moving towards our
business, I treasonably whispered to Joe, "I hope, Joe, we shan't
find them." and Joe whispered to me, "I'd give a shilling if they
had cut and run, Pip."

We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather
was cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, darkness
coming on, and the people had good fires in-doors and were keeping
the day.  A few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after
us, but none came out.  We passed the finger-post, and held straight
on to the churchyard.  There, we were stopped a few minutes by a
signal from the sergeant's hand, while two or three of his men
dispersed themselves among the graves, and also examined the porch.
They came in again without finding anything, and then we struck out
on the open marshes, through the gate at the side of the
churchyard.  A bitter sleet came rattling against us here on the
east wind, and Joe took me on his back.

Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they little
thought I had been within eight or nine hours and had seen both men
hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, if we
should come upon them, would my particular convict suppose that it
was I who had brought the soldiers there?  He had asked me if I was
a deceiving imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young hound
if I joined the hunt against him.  Would he believe that I was both
imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him?

It was of no use asking myself this question now.  There I was, on
Joe's back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches
like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman
nose, and to keep up with us.  The soldiers were in front of us,
extending into a pretty wide line with an interval between man and
man.  We were taking the course I had begun with, and from which I
had diverged in the mist.  Either the mist was not out again yet, or
the wind had dispelled it.  Under the low red glare of sunset, the
beacon, and the gibbet, and the mound of the Battery, and the
opposite shore of the river, were plain, though all of a watery
lead colour.

With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe's broad shoulder, I
looked all about for any sign of the convicts.  I could see none, I
could hear none.  Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more than once,
by his blowing and hard breathing; but I knew the sounds by this
time, and could dissociate them from the object of pursuit.  I got a
dreadful start, when I thought I heard the file still going; but it
was only a sheep bell.  The sheep stopped in their eating and looked
timidly at us; and the cattle, their heads turned from the wind and
sleet, stared angrily as if they held us responsible for both
annoyances; but, except these things, and the shudder of the dying
day in every blade of grass, there was no break in the bleak
stillness of the marshes.

The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery,
and we were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a
sudden, we all stopped.  For, there had reached us on the wings of
the wind and rain, a long shout.  It was repeated.  It was at a
distance towards the east, but it was long and loud.  Nay, there
seemed to be two or more shouts raised together - if one might
judge from a confusion in the sound.

To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking under
their breath, when Joe and I came up.  After another moment's
listening, Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr. Wopsle (who
was a bad judge) agreed.  The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that
the sound should not be answered, but that the course should be
changed, and that his men should make towards it "at the double."
So we slanted to the right (where the East was), and Joe pounded
away so wonderfully, that I had to hold on tight to keep my seat.

It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words
he spoke all the time, "a Winder."  Down banks and up banks, and
over gates, and splashing into dykes, and breaking among coarse
rushes:  no man cared where he went.  As we came nearer to the
shouting, it became more and more apparent that it was made by more
than one voice.  Sometimes, it seemed to stop altogether, and then
the soldiers stopped.  When it broke out again, the soldiers made
for it at a greater rate than ever, and we after them.  After a
while, we had so run it down, that we could hear one voice calling
"Murder!" and another voice, "Convicts!  Runaways!  Guard!  This way
for the runaway convicts!"  Then both voices would seem to be
stifled in a struggle, and then would break out again.  And when it
had come to this, the soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too.

The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down,
and two of his men ran in close upon him.  Their pieces were cocked
and levelled when we all ran in.

"Here are both men!" panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom
of a ditch.  "Surrender, you two! and confound you for two wild
beasts!  Come asunder!"

Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being
sworn, and blows were being struck, when some more men went down
into the ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately,
my convict and the other one.  Both were bleeding and panting and
execrating and struggling; but of course I knew them both directly.

"Mind!" said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged
sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers:  "I took him!  I give
him up to you!  Mind that!"

"It's not much to be particular about," said the sergeant; "it'll do
you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself.
Handcuffs there!"

"I don't expect it to do me any good.  I don't want it to do me more
good than it does now," said my convict, with a greedy laugh.  "I
took him.  He knows it.  That's enough for me."

The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old
bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all
over.  He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they
were both separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep
himself from falling.

"Take notice, guard - he tried to murder me," were his first words.

"Tried to murder him?" said my convict, disdainfully.  "Try, and not
do it?  I took him, and giv' him up; that's what I done.  I not only
prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here -
dragged him this far on his way back.  He's a gentleman, if you
please, this villain.  Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again,
through me.  Murder him?  Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I
could do worse and drag him back!"

The other one still gasped, "He tried - he tried - to - murder me.
Bear - bear witness."

"Lookee here!" said my convict to the sergeant.  "Single-handed I
got clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it.  I could
ha' got clear of these death-cold flats likewise - look at my leg:
you won't find much iron on it - if I hadn't made the discovery that
he was here.  Let him go free?  Let him profit by the means as I found
out?  Let him make a tool of me afresh and again?  Once more?  No, no,
no.  If I had died at the bottom there;" and he made an emphatic
swing at the ditch with his manacled hands; "I'd have held to him
with that grip, that you should have been safe to find him in my
hold."

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
companion, repeated, "He tried to murder me.  I should have been a
dead man if you had not come up."

"He lies!" said my convict, with fierce energy.  "He's a liar born,
and he'll die a liar.  Look at his face; ain't it written there?  Let
him turn those eyes of his on me.  I defy him to do it."

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile - which could not,
however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set
expression - looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the
marshes and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.

"Do you see him?" pursued my convict.  "Do you see what a villain he
is?  Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes?  That's how he
looked when we were tried together.  He never looked at me."

The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his
eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a
moment on the speaker, with the words, "You are not much to look
at," and with a half-taunting glance at the bound hands.  At that
point, my convict became so frantically exasperated, that he would
have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the soldiers.
"Didn't I tell you," said the other convict then, "that he would
murder me, if he could?"  And any one could see that he shook with
fear, and that there broke out upon his lips, curious white flakes,
like thin snow.

"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant.  "Light those torches."

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went
down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the
first time, and saw me.  I had alighted from Joe's back on the brink
of the ditch when we came up, and had not moved since.  I looked at
him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and
shook my head.  I had been waiting for him to see me, that I might
try to assure him of my innocence.  It was not at all expressed to
me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look
that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment.  But if he
had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have
remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more attentive.

The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or
four torches, and took one himself and distributed the others.  It
had been almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon
afterwards very dark.  Before we departed from that spot, four
soldiers standing in a ring, fired twice into the air.  Presently we
saw other torches kindled at some distance behind us, and others on
the marshes on the opposite bank of the river.  "All right," said
the sergeant.  "March."

We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a
sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear.  "You are
expected on board," said the sergeant to my convict; "they know you
are coming.  Don't straggle, my man.  Close up here."

The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate
guard.  I had hold of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one of the
torches.  Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was resolved to
see it out, so we went on with the party.  There was a reasonably
good path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence
here and there where a dyke came, with a miniature windmill on it
and a muddy sluice-gate.  When I looked round, I could see the other
lights coming in after us.  The torches we carried, dropped great
blotches of fire upon the track, and I could see those, too, lying
smoking and flaring.  I could see nothing else but black darkness.
Our lights warmed the air about us with their pitchy blaze, and the
two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as they limped along in
the midst of the muskets.  We could not go fast, because of their
lameness; and they were so spent, that two or three times we had to
halt while they rested.

After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden
hut and a landing-place.  There was a guard in the hut, and they
challenged, and the sergeant answered.  Then, we went into the hut
where there was a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright
fire, and a lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low
wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the machinery,
capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at once.  Three or
four soldiers who lay upon it in their great-coats, were not much
interested in us, but just lifted their heads and took a sleepy
stare, and then lay down again.  The sergeant made some kind of
report, and some entry in a book, and then the convict whom I call
the other convict was drafted off with his guard, to go on board
first.

My convict never looked at me, except that once.  While we stood in
the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or
putting up his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully
at them as if he pitied them for their recent adventures.  Suddenly,
he turned to the sergeant, and remarked:

"I wish to say something respecting this escape.  It may prevent
some persons laying under suspicion alonger me."

"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing coolly
looking at him with his arms folded, "but you have no call to say
it here.  You'll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear
about it, before it's done with, you know."

"I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter.  A man can't
starve; at least I can't.  I took some wittles, up at the willage
over yonder - where the church stands a'most out on the marshes."

"You mean stole," said the sergeant.

"And I'll tell you where from.  From the blacksmith's."

"Halloa!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

"Halloa, Pip!" said Joe, staring at me.

"It was some broken wittles - that's what it was - and a dram of
liquor, and a pie."

"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?"
asked the sergeant, confidentially.

"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in.  Don't you know,
Pip?"

"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner,
and without the least glance at me; "so you're the blacksmith, are
you?  Than I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."

"God knows you're welcome to it - so far as it was ever mine,"
returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe.  "We don't know
what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for
it, poor miserable fellow-creatur.  - Would us, Pip?"

The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man's
throat again, and he turned his back.  The boat had returned, and
his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made
of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which
was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself.  No one seemed
surprised to see him, or interested in seeing him, or glad to see
him, or sorry to see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in
the boat growled as if to dogs, "Give way, you!" which was the
signal for the dip of the oars.  By the light of the torches, we saw
the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like
a wicked Noah's ark.  Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty
chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like
the prisoners.  We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken
up the side and disappear.  Then, the ends of the torches were flung
hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with
him.