ife, and sat
down to his meal. He was full of plans "for his gentleman's coming out
strong, and like a gentleman," and urged me to begin speedily upon
the pocket-book which he had left in my possession. He considered the
chambers and his own lodging as temporary residences, and advised me to
look out at once for a "fashionable crib" near Hyde Park, in which he
could have "a shake-down." When he had made an end of his breakfast,
and was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him, without a word of
preface,--

"After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle that
the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we came up. You
remember?"

"Remember!" said he. "I think so!"

"We want to know something about that man--and about you. It is strange
to know no more about either, and particularly you, than I was able to
tell last night. Is not this as good a time as another for our knowing
more?"

"Well!" he said, after consideration. "You're on your oath, you know,
Pip's comrade?"

"Assuredly," replied Herbert.

"As to anything I say, you know," he insisted. "The oath applies to
all."

"I understand it to do so."

"And look'ee here! Wotever I done is worked out and paid for," he
insisted again.

"So be it."

He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negro-head,
when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed to think
it might perplex the thread of his narrative. He put it back again,
stuck his pipe in a button-hole of his coat, spread a hand on each knee,
and after turning an angry eye on the fire for a few silent moments,
looked round at us and said what follows.

Chapter XLII

"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a going fur to tell you my life
like a song, or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I'll
put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in
jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it.
That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off,
arter Pip stood my friend.

"I've been done everything to, pretty well--except hanged. I've been
locked up as much as a silver tea-kittle. I've been carted here and
carted there, and put out of this town, and put out of that town, and
stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I've no more
notion where I was born than you have--if so much. I first become aware
of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. S