and sat looking up at his furrowed bald head
with its iron grey hair at the sides.

"I mustn't see my gentleman a footing it in
the mire of the streets; there mustn't be no
mud on his boots. My gentleman must have
horses, Pip! Horses to ride, and horses to
drive as well. Shall colonists have their horses
(and blood 'uns, if you please, good Lord!) and
not my London gentleman? No, no. We'll
show 'em another pair of shoes than that, Pip;
won't us?"

He took out of his pocket a great thick
pocket-book, bursting with papers, and tossed
it on the table.

"There's something worth spending in that
there book, dear boy. It's yourn. All I've
got ain't mine; it's yourn. Don't you be afeerd
on it. There's more where that come from.
I've come to the old country fur to see my gentleman
spend his money like a gentleman.
That'll be my pleasure. My pleasure 'ull be
fur to see him do it. And blast you all!"
he wound up, looking round the room and
snapping his fingers once with a loud snap,
"blast you every one, from the judge in his wig,
to the colonist a stirring up the dust, I'll show a
better gentleman than the whole kit on you put
together!"

"Stop!" said I, almost in a frenzy of fear
and dislike, "I want to speak to you. I want
to know what is to be done. I want to know
how you are to be kept out of danger, how long
you are going to stay, what projects you have."

"Look'ee here, Pip," said he, laying his
hand on my arm in a suddenly altered and subdued
manner; "first of all, look'ee here. I
forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said
was low; that's what it was; low. Look'ee
here, Pip. Look over it. I ain't a going to be
low."

"First," I resumed, half groaning, "what
precautions can be taken against your being
recognised and seized?"

"No, dear boy," he said, in the same tone as
before, "that don't go first. Lowness goes first.
I ain't took so many year to make a gentleman,
not without knowing what's due to him. Look'ee
here, Pip. I was low; that's what I was; low.
Look over it, dear boy."

Some sense of the grimly-ludicrous moved me
to a fretful laugh, as I replied, "I have looked
over it. In Heaven's name, don't harp upon
it!"

"Yes, but look'ee here," he persisted. "Dear
boy, I ain't come so fur to be low. Now, go
on, dear boy. You was a saying—"

"How are you to be guarded from the danger
you have incurred?"

"Well, dear boy, the danger ain't so great,
Without I was informed agen, the danger ain't
so much to signify. There's Jaggers, and
there's Wemmick, and there's you. Who else
is there to inform?"

"Is there no chance person who might identify
you in the street?" said I.

"Well," he returned, "there ain't many.
Nor yet I don't intend to advertise myself in
the papers by the name of A. M. come back
from Botany Bay; and years have rolled away,
and who's to gain by it? Still, look'ee here,
Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as great,
I should ha' come to see you, mind you, just the
same."

"And how long do you remain?"

"How long?" said he, taking his black pipe
from his mouth, and dropping his jaw as he
stared at me. "I'm not a going back. I've
come for good."

"Where are you to live?" said I. "What
is to be done with you? Where will you be
safe?"

"Dear boy," he returned, "there's disguising
wigs can be bought for money, and there's hair
powder, and spectacles, and black clothes—
shorts and what not. Others has done it safe
afore, and what others has done afore, others can
do agen. As to the where and how of living,
dear boy, give me your own opinions on it."

"You take it smoothly now," said I, "but
you were very serious last night, when you swore
it was Death."

"And so I swear it is Death," said he, putting
his pipe back in his mouth, "and Death by the
rope, in the open street not fur from this, and
it's serious that you should fully understand it to
be so. What then, when that's once done? Here
I am. To go back now, 'ud be as bad as to stand
ground—worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here, because
I've meant it by you, years and years. As to
what I dare, I'm a old bird now, as has dared
all manner of traps since first he was fledged, and
I'm not afeerd to perch upon a scarecrow. If
there's Death hid inside of it, there is, and let him
come out, and I'll face him, and then I'll believe
in him and not afore. And now let me have a
look at my gentleman agen."

Once more he took me by both hands and surveyed
me with an air of admiring proprietorship:
smoking with great complacency all the while.

It appeared to me that I could do no better
than secure him some quiet lodging hard by, of
which he might take possession when Herbert
returned: whom I expected in two or three
days. That the secret must be confided to
Herbert as a matter of unavoidable necessity,
even if I could have put the immense relief I
should derive from sharing it with him out of
the question, was plain to me. But it was by
no means so plain to Mr. Provis (I resolved to
call him by that name), who reserved his consent
to Herbert's participation until he should
have seen him and formed a favourable judgment
of his physiognomy. "And even then,
dear boy," said he, pulling a greasy little clasped
black Testament out of his pocket, "we'll have
him on his oath."

To state that my terrible patron carried this
little black book about the world solely to
swear people on in cases of emergency, would
be to state what I never quite established—but
this I can say, that I never knew him put it
to any other use. The book itself had the appearance
of having been stolen from some court