phantly, "or he wouldn't have given it to the boy! Let's look at
it."

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. "But what's
this?" said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the
paper. "Two One-Pound notes?"

Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have
been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle-markets in
the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly
Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down
on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure
that the man would not be there.

Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he,
Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes.
Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under
some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in
the state parlor. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and many
a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the
strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily
coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with
convicts,--a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten.
I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least
expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by
thinking of Miss Havisham's, next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw
the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I
screamed myself awake.

Chapter XI

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my hesitating
ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting
me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage
where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the
candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously
saying, "You are to come this way to-day," and took me to quite another
part of the house.

The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square
basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square,
however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and
opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in
a small paved courtyard, the opposite side of which was formed by a
detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once belonged t