t
distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of
state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the
tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through
the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof,
the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to
the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labor, and the hour
come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened
axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his
hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and
the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that
tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an instant the blow was
struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.

Chapter XXXIX

I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I heard to
enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my twenty-third
birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard's Inn more than a year,
and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in Garden-court, down by the
river.

Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original
relations, though we continued on the best terms. Notwithstanding my
inability to settle to anything,--which I hope arose out of the restless
and incomplete tenure on which I held my means,--I had a taste for
reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That matter of
Herbert's was still progressing, and everything with me was as I have
brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter.

Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was alone, and
had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, long hoping
that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, and long disappointed, I
sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend.

It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud,
mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been
driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East
there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts,
that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs;
and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills
carried away; and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of
shipwreck an