dinner before going to Mill Pond Bank that
evening; that he should not go there at all,
to-morrow evening, Tuesday; that he should
prepare Provis to come down to some stairs
hard by the house, on Wednesday, when he saw
us approach, and not sooner; that all the
arrangements with him should be concluded that
Monday night; and that he should be
communicated with no more in any way, until we
took him on board.

These precautions well understood by both of
us, I went home.

On opening the outer door of our chambers
with my key, I found a letter in the box,
directed to me; a very dirty letter, though not
ill-written. It had been delivered by hand (of
course since I left home), and its contents were
these:

"If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes
to-night or to-morrow night at Nine, and to come to
the little sluice-house by the limekiln, you had better
come. If you want information regarding your
uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell
no one and lose no time. You must come alone.
Bring this with you."

I had had load enough upon my mind before
the receipt of this strange letter. What to
do now, I could not tell. And the worst was,
that I must decide quickly, or I should miss the
afternoon coach, which would take me down in
time for to-night. To-morrow night I could
not think of going, for it would be too close
upon the time of the flight. And again, for
anything I knew, the proffered information
might have some important bearing on the flight
itself.

If I had had ample time for consideration, I
believe I should still have gone. Having hardly
any time for consideration—my watch showing
me that the coach started within half an hour—
I resolved to go. I should certainly not have
gone, but for the reference to my Uncle
Provis; that, coming on Wemmick's letter and
the morning's busy preparation, turned the
scale.

It is so difficult to become clearly possessed
of the contents of almost any letter, in a violent
hurry, that I had to read this mysterious epistle
again, twice, before its injunction to me to be
secret got mechanically into my mind. Yielding
to it in the same mechanical kind of way, I
left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling him that
as I should be so soon going away, I knew not
for how long, I had decided to hurry down and
back, to ascertain for myself how Miss Havisham
was faring. I had then barely time to get my
great-coat, lock up the chambers, and make for
the coach-office by the short by-ways. If I had
taken a hackney-chariot and gone by the streets
I should have missed my aim; going as I did, I
caught the coach just as it came out of the
yard. I was the only inside passenger, jolting
away knee-deep in straw, when I came to
myself.

For, I really had not been myself since the
receipt of the letter; it had so bewildered me
ensuing on the hurry of the morning. The
morning hurry and flutter had been great, for,
long and anxiously as I had waited for
Wemmick, his hint had come like a surprise at last.
And now I began to wonder at myself for being
in the coach, and to doubt whether I had sufficient
reason for being there, and to consider
whether I should get out presently and go
back, and to argue against ever heeding an
anonymous communication, and, in short, to
pass through all those phases of contradiction
and indecision to which I suppose very few
hurried people are strangers. Still, the reference
to Provis by name, mastered everything. I
reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing
it—if that be reasoning—in case any harm
should befal him through my not going, how
could I ever forgive myself!

It was dark before we got down, and the
journey seemed long and dreary to me who
could see little of it inside, and who could not
go outside in my disabled state. Avoiding the
Blue Boar, I put up at an inn of minor
reputation down the town, and ordered some
dinner. While it was preparing, I went to Satis
House and inquired for Miss Havisham; she
was still very ill, though considered something
better.

My inn had once been a part of an ancient
ecclesiastical house, and I dined in a little
octagonal common-room, like a font. As I was
not able to cut my dinner, the old landlord with
a shining bald head did it for me. This bringing
us into conversation, he was so good as to
entertain me with my own story—of course with
the popular feature that Pumblechook was my
earliest benefactor and the founder of my
fortunes.

"Do you know the young man?" said I.

"Know him!" repeated the landlord. "Ever
since he was no height at all."

"Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?"

"Ay, he comes back," said the landlord, "to
his great friends now and again, and gives the
cold shoulder to the man that made him."

"What man is that?"

"Him that I speak of," said the landlord.
"Mr. Pumblechook."

"Is he ungrateful to no one else?"

"No doubt he would be, if he could,"
returned the landlord, "but he can't. And
why? Because Pumblechook done everything
for him."

"Does Pumblechook say so?"

"Say so!" replied the landlord. "He han't
no call to say so."

"But does he say so?"

"It would turn a man's blood to white wine
winegar to hear him tell of it, sir," said the
landlord.

I thought, "Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never
tell of it. Long-suffering and loving Joe,
you never complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered
Biddy!"

"Your appetite's been touched like, by your
accident," said the landlord, glancing at the