elded to the temptation presented
by the casks, and began to walk on them, I saw her walking on them at
the end of the yard of casks. She had her back towards me, and held her
pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never looked round,
and passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery itself,--by which
I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used to make the beer,
and where the brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it,
and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking about
me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light
iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going
out into the sky.
It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened
to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I thought it a
stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes--a little dimmed by
looking up at the frosty light--towards a great wooden beam in a low
nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure
hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but
one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded
trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was
Miss Havisham's, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if
she were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure,
and in the terror of being certain that it had not been there a moment
before, I at first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror
was greatest of all when I found no figure there.
Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of
people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving
influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, would have brought
me round. Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself as soon
as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the keys, to let
me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down upon me, I
thought, if she saw me frightened; and she would have no fair reason.
She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that
my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the
gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her,
when she touched me with a taunting hand.
"Why don't you cry?"
"Because I don't want to."
"You do," said she. "You have been crying till you are half blind, and
you are near
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