know in
secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of them colonists
might fling up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I say? I says
to myself, 'I'm making a better gentleman nor ever you'll be!' When
one of 'em says to another, 'He was a convict, a few year ago, and is a
ignorant common fellow now, for all he's lucky,' what do I say? I says
to myself, 'If I ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm
the owner of such. All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a
brought-up London gentleman?' This way I kep myself a going. And this
way I held steady afore my mind that I would for certain come one day
and see my boy, and make myself known to him, on his own ground."

He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought that for
anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood.

"It warn't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn't
safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held, for
I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it. Dear boy,
I done it!"

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout, I had
seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain than to him;
even now, I could not separate his voice from those voices, though those
were loud and his was silent.

"Where will you put me?" he asked, presently. "I must be put somewheres,
dear boy."

"To sleep?" said I.

"Yes. And to sleep long and sound," he answered; "for I've been
sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months."

"My friend and companion," said I, rising from the sofa, "is absent; you
must have his room."

"He won't come back to-morrow; will he?"

"No," said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my utmost
efforts; "not to-morrow."

"Because, look'ee here, dear boy," he said, dropping his voice, and
laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, "caution is
necessary."

"How do you mean? Caution?"

"By G----, it's Death!"

"What's death?"

"I was sent for life. It's death to come back. There's been overmuch
coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be hanged if
took."

Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after loading wretched me
with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked his life to come
to me, and I held it there in my keeping! If I had loved him instead
of abhorring him; if I had been attracted to him by the strongest
admiration and affection, instead of