settle that he had to himself. He wore a
flapping broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, and
under it a handkerchief tied over his head in
the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair.
As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a
cunning expression, followed by a half laugh,
come into his face.

“I am not acquainted with this country,
gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards
the river.”

“Most marshes is solitary,” said Joe.

“No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any
gipsies, now, or tramps, or vagrants of any sort
out there?”

“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway
convict now and then. And we don’t find them,
easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”

Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of
old discomfiture, assented; but not warmly.

“Seems you have been out after such?” asked
the stranger.

“Once,” returned Joe. “Not that we wanted
to take them, you understand; we went out as
lookers-on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip.
Didn’t us, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

The stranger looked at me again—still cocking
his eye, as if he were expressly taking aim
at me with his invisible gun—and said, “He’s
a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it
you call him?”

“Pip,” said Joe.

“Christened Pip?”

“No, not christened Pip.”

“Surname Pip?”

“No,” said Joe, “it’s a kind of a family name
what he gave himself when a infant, and is
called by.”

“Son of yours?”

“Well,” said Joe, meditatively—not, of
course, that it could be in any wise necessary
to consider about it, but because it was the way
at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider
deeply about everything that was discussed
over pipes; “well—no. No, he ain’t.”

“Nevvy?” said the strange man.

“Well,” said Joe, with the same appearance
of profound cogitation, “he is not—no, not to
deceive you he is not—my nevvy.”

“What the Blue Blazes is he?” asked the
stranger. Which appeared to me to be an
inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who
knew all about relationships, having professional
occasion to bear in mind what female
relations a man might not marry; and expounded
the ties between me and Joe. Having his hand
in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most
terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third,
and seemed to think he had done quite enough
to account for it when he added “—as the
poet says.”

And here I may remark that when Mr.
Wopsle referred to me, he considered it a
necessary part of such reference to rumple my
hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot
conceive why everybody of his standing who visited
at our house should always have put me through
the same inflammatory process under similar
circumstances. Yet I do not call to mind that
I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of
remark in our social family circle, but some
large-handed person took some such opthalmic
steps to patronise me.

All this while the strange man looked at
nobody but me, and looked at me as if he were
determined to have a shot at me at last, and
bring me down. But he said nothing after
offering his Blue Blazes observation until the
glasses of rum-and-water were brought; and
then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary
one it was.

It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding
in dumb-show, and was pointedly addressed to
me. He stirred his rum-and-water pointedly at
me, and he tasted his rum-and-water pointedly
at me. And he stirred it and he tasted it: not
with a spoon that was brought to him, but with
a file.

He did this so that nobody but I saw the
file; and when he had done it he wiped the file
and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be
Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict
the moment I saw the instrument. I sat gazing
at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on
his settle, taking very little notice of me, and
talking principally about turnips.

There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up
and making a quiet pause before going on in
life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights,
which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an
hour longer on Saturdays than at other times.
The half-hour and the rum-and-water running
out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by
the hand.

"Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery," said the
strange man. "I think I've got a bright new
shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have
the boy shall have it."

He looked it out from a handful of small
change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and
gave it to me. "Yours!" said he. "Mind!
Your own."

I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the
bounds of good manners, and holding tight to
Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave
Mr. Wopsle good-night (who went out with us),
and he gave me only a look with his aiming eye
—no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders
may be done with an eye by hiding it.

On the way home, if I had been in a humour
for talking, the talk must have been all on my
side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the door
of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way
home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the
rum out with as much air as possible. But I
was in a manner stupified by this turning up of
my old misdeed and old acquaintance, and could
think of nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when
we presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe
was encouraged by that unusual circumstance to
tell her about the bright shilling. "A bad un,
I'll be bound," said Mrs. Joe, triumphantly,