re he had broken into a house
where a blacksmith lived, near a church, and had stolen a pork pie. Joe
heard this and so Pip knew that he himself would be clear of any blame.

The convicts were taken back to their cells and Joe and Pip went home to
tell the company of their adventure. But neither then nor ever afterward
did Pip find courage to tell Joe the part he had played; for Pip loved
the honest blacksmith and did not want him to think him worse than he
really was.

Time went on and Pip grew older and bigger, and though he never forgot
the adventure of the churchyard, yet the memory of it grew dimmer. In
the next few years only one thing happened to recall it to him.

One evening Mrs. Joe sent Pip to the village inn, The Three Jolly
Bargemen, with a message. Pip found Joe there, sitting with a
stranger--a secret-looking man, who held his head on one side and kept
one eye perpetually shut as if he were taking aim with a gun. This man,
when he heard Pip's name, looked at him with a curious wink, and when no
one but Pip was looking he took out of his pocket, to stir his drink
with, the very file Pip had stolen from Joe's forge.

Pip knew that minute that the man was a friend of the convict he had
aided. When Pip left the inn the stranger called him back and gave him a
shilling wrapped up in a piece of paper.

When he got home Mrs. Joe (who took the prize away from him) discovered
that the piece of paper was in reality two bank-notes, and both Joe and
she wondered at it. The blacksmith tried next day to find the stranger
to restore the money, but he had left the inn.

So it always remained a mystery--to all but Pip of course, who knew in
his heart that the convict had remembered his aid and had taken this
means of repaying him.

II

THE QUEER MISS HAVISHAM

One day, when Pip was considerably older, Uncle Pumblechook brought Mrs.
Joe word that a Miss Havisham, a lady who lived in his own town, had
heard of Pip, and wanted him to come to her house to see her.

Miss Havisham was a very queer lady, indeed; so queer that some said she
was crazy. But she was rich, and for this reason Mrs. Joe scrubbed Pip
and dressed him in his best clothes and sent him off in care of Uncle
Pumblechook, who took him as far as Miss Havisham's gate.

Miss Havisham, when a beautiful young lady, had been engaged to marry a
man named Compeyson, whom she loved very much. He was a wicked,
heartless villain, however, and had made her l