To be sure, it was a deserted place, down
to the pigeon-house in the brewery-yard,
which had been blown crooked on its pole by
some high wind, and would have made the
pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had
been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But,
there were no pigeons in the dovecot, no horses
in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in the
storehouse, no smells of grains and beer in the
copper or the vat. All the uses and scents of
the brewery might have evaporated with its last
reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there was a
wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain sour
remembrance of better days lingering about
them; but it was too sour to be accepted as a
sample of the beer that was gone—and in this
respect I remember those recluses as being like
most others.

Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was
a rank garden with an old wall: not so high
but that I could struggle up and hold on long
enough to look over it, and see that the rank
garden was the garden of the house, and that it
was overgrown with tangled weeds, but that
there was a track upon the green and yellow
paths, as if some one sometimes walked there,
and that Estella was walking away from me even
then. But she seemed to be everywhere. For,
when I yielded to the temptation presented by
the casks, and began to walk on them, I saw her
walking on them at the end of the yard of casks.
She had her back to me, and held her pretty
brown hair spread out in her two hands, and
never looked round, and passed out of my view
directly. So, in the brewery itself—by which I
mean the large paved lofty place in which they
used to make the beer, and where the brewing
utensils still were. When I first went into it,
and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near
the door looking about me, I saw her pass among
the extinguished fires, and ascend some light iron
stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as
if she were going out into the sky.

It was in this place, and at this moment, that
a strange thing happened to my fancy. I thought
it a strange thing then, and I thought it a stranger
thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes—a little
dimmed by looking up at the frosty light—
towards a great wooden beam in a low nook of the
building near me on my right hand, and I saw a
figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in
yellow white, with but one shoe to the feet; and
it hung so, that I could see that the faded
trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that
the face was Miss Havisham's, with a movement
going over the whole countenance as if she were
trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the
figure, and in the terror of being certain that it
had not been there a moment before, I at first
ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my
terror was greatest of all, when I found no figure
there.

Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful
sky, the sight of people passing beyond the
bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving
influence of the rest of the bread and meat and
beer, would have brought me round. Even with
those aids, I might not have come to myself as
soon as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching
with the keys, to let me out. She would
have some fair reason for looking down upon
me, I thought, if she saw me frightened; and
she should have no fair reason.

She gave me a triumphant glance in passing
me, as if she rejoiced that my hands were so
coarse and my boots were so thick, and she
opened the gate and stood holding it. I was
passing out without looking at her, when she
touched me with a taunting hand.

"Why don't you cry?"

"Because I don't want to."

"You do," said she. " You have been crying
till you are half blind, and you are near crying
again now."

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me put,
and locked the gate upon me. I went straight
to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was immensely
relieved to find him not at home. So, leaving
word with the shopman on what day I was
wanted at Miss Havisham's again, I set off on
the four-mile walk to our forge; pondering, as
I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply
revolving that I was a common labouring-boy;
that my hands were coarse, that my boots were
thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit
of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more
ignorant than I had considered myself last night,
and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.

BLACK WEATHER FROM THE SOUTH.

ON the fourth of March, next year, office will
be taken by a President of the United States
who does not represent the feeling of the
southern states on questions relating to slave
labour. The new president is not an abolitionist.
He knows that slavery is not a benefit to any
state in which it exists as an established institution,
but he thinks that such an institution once
established is not to be instantly suppressed,
without risk of producing consequences that all
good men would avoid. His belief is that the
south might, if it would, pass gradually out of its
own bondage to the slave system, but he has
expressed no desire to enforce any restriction
upon the slave-holders; all that he is pledged
to by his known opinions, always expressed with
moderation, even when his words were weighted
with but small political responsibility, is to exert
his influence against any extension of the slave
system, or encroachment of the southern on the
privileges of the northern states. Yet, as the
new president is not the man for whom they
gave their votes, and as extension of the slave
system is their desire, the slave states are said
to be enraged at his election, and more than one
of them, as Georgia and notably South Carolina,
declare for secession from the Union. The
cabinet of the existing president, in which the
influences of the south are felt, has come to the
opinion that a severance of the Union will not
happen before the fourth of March; but that
after that date, when its own term of office shall
expire, will come the deluge.