hat is my name. There is nothing the matter?"

"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man came on.

I made out that the man was roughly but substantially dressed; that he
had iron-grey hair; that his age was about sixty; that he was a muscular
man, hardened by exposure to weather. I saw nothing that in the least
explained him, but I saw that he was holding out both his hands to me.

I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him. No need to take a
file from his pocket and show it to me. I knew my convict, in spite of
the intervening years, as distinctly as I knew him in the churchyard
when we first stood face to face.

He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his
forehead with his large brown hands.

"You acted nobly, my boy," said he.

I told him that I hoped he had mended his way of life, and was doing
well.

"I've done wonderful well," he said. And then he asked me if I was doing
well. And when I mentioned that I had been chosen to succeed to some
property, he asked whose property? And, after that, if my
lawyer-guardian's name began with "J."

All the truth of my position came flashing on me, and quickly I
understood that Miss Havisham's intentions towards me were all a mere
dream.

"Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you. It's me wot has done
it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea
should go to you. I swore afterwards, sure as ever I spec'lated and got
rich, that you should get rich. Look 'ee here, Pip. I'm your second
father. You're my son--more to me nor any son. I've put away money, only
for you to spend. You ain't looked slowly forward to this as I have. You
wasn't prepared for this as I wos. It warn't easy, Pip, for me to leave
them parts, nor it wasn't safe. Look 'ee here, dear boy; caution is
necessary."

"How do you mean?" I said. "Caution?"

"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."

As Herbert was away, I put the man in the spare room, and gave out that
he was my uncle.

He told me something of his story next day, and when Herbert came back
and we had found a bed-room for our visitor in Essex Street, he told us
all of it. His name was Magwitch--Abel Magwitch--he called himself
Provis now--and he had been left by a travelling tinker to grow up
alone. "In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail--that's my life