oat, and he and
Herbert rowed daily up and down the river, so that when the time came to
row the convict to some sea-going ship they would know the turns of the
stream.

Pip soon learned that Compeyson was their spy. Wopsle, who in Pip's
boyhood had been the clerk in the village church, had turned actor (he
made, to be sure, a very poor one!), and was now playing in London. In
the theater one night he recognized in the audience the pale-faced
convict whom he had once, with Joe, the blacksmith, and little Pip, seen
dragged back to capture by his more powerful fellow. Pip had long ago
learned from Magwitch that this man was Compeyson, and when Wopsle said
he had seen him sitting directly back of Pip at the play, the latter
realized that they had this bitter enemy to reckon with, and that
Magwitch was in terrible danger.

Only once was this time of waiting interrupted, and that was by a letter
from Miss Havisham begging Pip to come to see her. He went, and she told
him she realized now too late how wicked her plans had been, and begged
him with tears to try to forgive her. Pip, sore as his own heart was,
forgave her freely, and he was glad ever afterward that he had done so,
for that same evening, while he was standing near her, her yellowed
wedding veil, sweeping too near the hearth, caught fire and in an
instant her whole dress burst into flame. Pip worked desperately to put
out the fire, but she was so frightfully burned that it was plain she
could not live long. His own hands and arms were painfully injured, so
that he returned to London with one arm, for the time being, almost
useless.

Compeyson, meanwhile, made friends with Orlick, and between them they
wrote Pip a letter, decoying him to a lonely hut in the marshes. When he
came there Orlick threw a noose over his head, tied him to the wall and
would have killed him with a great stone-hammer but for Herbert, who
broke down the door and rushed in just in time to put Orlick to flight
and to save Pip's life. Herbert had picked up the letter Pip had thrown
down, read it, seen in it something suspicious, and had followed from
London.

Pip saw now there was no time to lose if he would save Magwitch. They
made haste to London, and when night fell, took the convict in the
rowboat and rowing a few miles down the river, waited to board a steamer
bound for Germany.

What happened next happened very speedily. They were about to board the
steamer when a boat containing C