He was full of plans "for his gentleman's
coming out strong, and like a gentleman," and
urged me to begin speedily upon the pocketbook
which he had Ieft in my possession, He
considered the chambers and his own lodging as
temporary residences and advised me to look
out at once for "a fashionable  crib" in which he
could have "a shake-down," near Hyde Park.
"When he had made an end of his breakfast, and
was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him,
without a word of preface:

' After you were gone, last night, I told my
friend of the struggle that the soldiers found
you engaged in on the marshes, when we came
up. You remember!"

"Remember!" said he. "I think so!"

"We want to know something about that
man—and about you. It is strange to know no
more about either, and particularly you, than I
was able to tell last night. Is not this as good
a time as another for our knowing more?"

Well !" he said, after consideration. "You're
on your oath, you know, Pip's comrade?"

"Assuredly," replied Herbert.

"As to anything I say, you know," he
insisted "The oath applies to all."

"I understand it to do so."

"And look'ee here! "Whatever I done, is
worke out and paid for," he insisted again.

"So be it."

He took out his black pipe and was going to
fill it with negro-head, when, looking at the
tangle, of tobacco in his hand, he seemed to
think it might perplex the thread of his
narrative. He put it back again, stuck his pipe in
a button-hole of his coat, spread a hand on each
knee and, after turning an angry eye on the
fire for a few silent moments, looked round at
us and said what follows.

CHAPTER XLIL.

"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a
going fur to tell you my life, like a song or a
story-book. But to give it you short and handy,
I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English.
In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail,
in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it.
That's my life pretty much, down to such
times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my
friend.

"I've been done everything to, pretty well—
except hanged. I've been locked up, as much
as a silver tea-kettle. I've been carted here
and carted there and put out of this town and
put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks,
and whipped and worried and drove. I've no
notion where I was born than you have—
if so much. I first become aware of myself,
down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living.
Summun had run away from me—a man—a
tinker—and he'd took the fire with him, and left
me very cold.

"I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd
Abel. How did I know it ? Much as I
know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be
chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have
thought it was all lies together, only as the
birds' names come out true, I supposed mine
did.

"So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul
that see young Abel Magwitch, with as little on
him as in him, but wot caught fright at him,
and either drove him off, or took him up. I
was took up, took up, took up, to that extent
I reg'larly grow'd up took up.

"This is the way it was, that when I was a
ragged little creetur as much to be pitied as ever
I see (not that I looked in the glass, for there
warn't many insides of furnished houses known
to me), I got the name of being hardened. ' This
is a terrible hardened one,' they says to prison
wisitors, picking out me. ' May be said to live
in jails, this boy.' Then they looked at me, and
I looked at them, and they measured my head,
some on 'em—they had better a measured my
stomach —and others on 'em giv me tracts what
I couldn't read, and made me speeches what I
couldn't unnerstand. They always went on
agen me about the Devil. But what the Devil
was I to do ? I must put something into my
stomach, mustn't I?— Howsomever, I'm a
getting low, and I know what's due. Dear boy and
Pip's comrade, don't you be afeerd of me being
low.

"Tramping, begging, thieving, working
sometimes wlien I could—though that warn't
as often as you may think, till you put the
question whether you would ha' been over
ready to give me work yourselves—a bit of a
poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a
waggoner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a
bit of most things that don't pay and lead to
trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting
soldier in a Travellers' Rest, wot lay hid up to the
chin under a lot of taturs, learnt me to read;
and a travelling Giant wot signed his name at
a penny a time learnt me to write. I warn't
locked up as often now as formerly, but I wore
out my good share of key-metal still.

"At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty year
ago, I got acquainted wi' a man whose skull I'd
crack wi' this poker, like the claw of a lobster,
if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was
Compeyson; and that's the man, dear boy, wot
you see me pounding in the ditch, according to
wot you truly told your comrade arter I was
gone last night.

"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson,
and he'd been to a public boarding-school and
had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and
was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was
good-looking too. It was the night afore the
great race, when I found him on the heath in a
booth that I know'd on. Him and some more
was a sitting among the tables when I went in,
and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me,
and was a sporting one) called him out, and
said, ' I think this is a man that might suit you'
—meaning I was.

"Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and
I look at him. He has a watch and a chain and
a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of
clothes.