e explicit than Pip. So
I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

My mother and father both being dead, I was brought up by my sister, Mrs.
Joe Gargery, who was more than twenty years older than I, and a veritable
shrew by nature. She had acquired a great reputation among the neighbours
because she had brought me up by hand. Not understanding this expression,
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.

Joe, her husband, was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going,
foolish, dear fellow, with light curly hair and blue eyes, and he and I
were great chums, as well as fellow-sufferers under the rule of my
sharp-tongued sister.

One afternoon I was wandering in the church-yard where my mother and
father were buried, when I was accosted by a fearful man all in coarse
grey, with a great iron on his leg. He wore no hat and had broken shoes,
and an old rag tied round his head. He limped and shivered, and glared and
growled, his teeth chattering, 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,"

"Show us where you live," he said. "Point out the place!"

I pointed to where our village lay, and then the man, after looking at me
for a moment, turned me upside down and emptied my pockets, but there was
nothing in them except 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,--I was seated on a high tombstone trembling, while he ate the bread
ravenously. Then he came nearer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and
tilted me back as far as he could hold me, looking into my eyes.

"Now lookee here," he said, "you get me a file and you get me wittles; you
bring both to me to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You
bring the lot to me at that old Battery yonder. You do it, and you never
dare to say a word concerning your having seen such a person as me, and
you shall be let live. You fail in any partickler and your heart and your
liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate! Now I ain't alone, as you may
think. There is a young man hid with me who hears the words I speak. It is
in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy
may lock his door, may