endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed delusion,
"and you may haim at what you like, but a
gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or
again your leave, and you can't help
yourself—-"

"My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, taking
hold of his coat, "don't go on in that way. I
never thought of making Miss Havisham any
present."

"No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been
contending for that, all along; "and what I say
to you, is, you are right, Pip."

"Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was,
that as we are rather slack just now, if you could
give me a half holiday to-morrow, I think I
would go up-town and make a call on Miss Est—
Havisham."

"Which her name," said Joe, gravely, " ain't
Estavisham, Pip, unless she have been
rechris'ened"

"I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine.
What do you think of it, Joe?"

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well
of it, he thought well of it. But, he was
particular in stipulating that if I were not received
with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to
repeat my visit as a visit which had no ulterior
object but was simply one of gratitude for a
favour received, then this experimental trip
should have no successor. By these conditions
I promised to abide.

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages
whose name was Orlick. He pretended that his
Christian name was Dolge— a clear impossibility
—but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition
that I believe him to have been the prey of
no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to
have imposed that name upon the village as an
affront to its understanding. He was a broad-
shouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great
strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching.
He never even seemed to come to his work
on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere
accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen
to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he
would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew,
as if he had no idea where he was going and no
intention of ever coming back. He lodged at a
sluice-keeper's out on the marshes, and on working
days would come slouching from his
hermitage, with his hands in his pockets and his
dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck
and dangling on his back. On Sundays he
mostly lay all day on sluice gates, or stood
against ricks and barns. He aiways slouched,
locomotively, with his eyes on the ground;
and, when accosted or otherwise required to
them, he looked up in a half resentful, half
puzzled way, as though the only thought he
ever had, was, that it was rather an odd and
injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

This morose journeyman had no liking for
me.  When I was very small and timid, he gave
me to understand that the Devil lived in a black
corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend
very well : also that it was necessary to make
up the fire once in every seven years, with a live
boy, and that I might consider myself fuel.
When I became Joe's 'prentice, he was perhaps
confirmed in some suspicion that I should
displace him ; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not
that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly
importing hostility ; I only noticed that he always
beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever
I sang Old Clem, he came in out of time.

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next
day, when I reminded Joe of my half-holiday.
He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe
had just got a piece of hot iron between them and
I was at the bellows; but by-and-by he said,
leaning on his hammer:

"Now, master! Sure you're not a going to
favour only one of us. If Young Pip has a
half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I
suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but he
usually spoke of himself as an ancient person.

"Why what'll you do with a half-holiday, if
you get it ?" said Joe.

"What'll I do with it! What'll he do with
it? I'll do as much with it as him" said
Orlick.

"As to Pip, he's going up-town," said Joe.

"Well then as to Old Orlick, he's going up-
town," retorted that worthy. "Two can go
up-town. Tan't only one wot can go up-town."

" Don't lose your temper," said Joe.

"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. " Some
and their up-towning! Now, master! Come.
No favouring in this shop. Be a man!"

The master refusing to entertain the subject
until the journeyman was in a better temper,
Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-
hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going
to run it through my body, whisked it round my
head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out as if
it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my
spirting blood— and finally said, when he had
hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and he
again leaned on his hammer:

"Now, master!"

"Are you all right now?" demanded Joe.

"Ah! I am all right," said gruff Old Orlick.

"Then, as in general you stick to your work
as well as most men, " said Joe, " let it be a half-
holiday for all."

My sister had been standing silent in the
yard, within hearing— she was a most unscrupulous
spy and listener— and she instantly
looked in at one of the windows.

"Like you, you fool!" said she to Joe,
"giving holidays to great idle hulkers like
that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to
waste wages in that way. I wish I was his
master!"

"You'd be everybody's master, if you durst,"
retorted Orlick, with an ill-favoured grin.

("Let her alone," said Joe.)

'I'd be a match for all noodles and all
rogues," returned my sister, beginning to work
herself into a mighty rage. " And I couldn't
be a match for the noodles without being a
match for your master, who's the dunder-headed
king of the noodles. And I couldn't be a match
for the rogues, without being a match for you,