t not. Others has done it safe afore, and what
others has done afore, others can do agen. As to the where and how of
living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it."

"You take it smoothly now," said I, "but you were very serious last
night, when you swore it was Death."

"And so I swear it is Death," said he, putting his pipe back in his
mouth, "and Death by the rope, in the open street not fur from this, and
it's serious that you should fully understand it to be so. What then,
when that's once done? Here I am. To go back now 'ud be as bad as to
stand ground--worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here, because I've meant it by
you, years and years. As to what I dare, I'm a old bird now, as has
dared all manner of traps since first he was fledged, and I'm not afeerd
to perch upon a scarecrow. If there's Death hid inside of it, there is,
and let him come out, and I'll face him, and then I'll believe in him
and not afore. And now let me have a look at my gentleman agen."

Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an air of
admiring proprietorship: smoking with great complacency all the while.

It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure him some
quiet lodging hard by, of which he might take possession when Herbert
returned: whom I expected in two or three days. That the secret must
be confided to Herbert as a matter of unavoidable necessity, even if I
could have put the immense relief I should derive from sharing it with
him out of the question, was plain to me. But it was by no means so
plain to Mr. Provis (I resolved to call him by that name), who reserved
his consent to Herbert's participation until he should have seen him
and formed a favorable judgment of his physiognomy. "And even then, dear
boy," said he, pulling a greasy little clasped black Testament out of
his pocket, "we'll have him on his oath."

To state that my terrible patron carried this little black book about
the world solely to swear people on in cases of emergency, would be to
state what I never quite established; but this I can say, that I never
knew him put it to any other use. The book itself had the appearance of
having been stolen from some court of justice, and perhaps his knowledge
of its antecedents, combined with his own experience in that wise, gave
him a reliance on its powers as a sort of legal spell or charm. On this
first occasion of his producing it, I recalled how he had made me swear
fidelity in the churchyard long