ter I had been
out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the
hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old
London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there
was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But I
knew well enough how to 'shoot' the bridge after seeing it done, and so
began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith.
The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a
pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards
the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three
times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of intelligence
that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was cause for alarm,
and I could not get rid of the notion of being watched. Once received,
it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning persons I suspected of
watching me, it would be hard to calculate.

In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in hiding.
Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to stand at
one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down, and to
think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards Clara. But
I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch, and that
any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going swiftly,
silently, and surely, to take him.

Chapter XLVII

Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick,
and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain, and
had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at the
Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him as I
did.

My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed
for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the
want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve
it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But
I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more
money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and
plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to
hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction--whether it
was a false kind or a true, I hardly know--in not having profited by his
generosity since his revelation of himself.

As the time wore on,