Nothing was needed but this; the wretched
man, after loading wretched me with his gold
and silver chains for years, had risked his life to
come to me, and I held it there in my keeping!
If I had loved him instead of abhorring him; if
I had been attracted to him by the strongest
admiration and affection, instead of shrinking
from him with the strongest repugnance; it
could have been no worse. On the contrary, it
would have been better, for his preservation
would then have naturally and tenderly addressed
my heart.

My first care was to close the shutters, so that
no light might be seen from without, and then
to close and make fast the doors. While I did
so, he stood at the table drinking rum and eating
biscuit; and when I saw him thus engaged, I
saw my convict on the marshes at his meal
again. It almost seemed to me as if he must
stoop down presently, to file at his leg.

When I had gone into Herbert's room, and
had shut off any other communication between
it and the staircase than through the room in
which our conversation had been held, I asked
him if he would go to bed? He said yes, but
asked me for some of my "gentleman's linen"
to put on in the morning. I brought it out,
and laid it ready for him, and my blood again
ran cold when he again took me by both hands
to give me good night.

I got away from him, without knowing how I
did it, and mended the fire in the room where
we had been together, and sat down by it, afraid
to go to bed. For an hour or more, I remained
too stunned to think, and it was not until I
began to think, that I began fully to know how
wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I
had sailed was gone to pieces.

Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all
a mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I
only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a
sting for the greedy relations, a model with a
mechanical heart to practise on when no other
practice was at hand; those were the first
smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain
of all—it was for the convict, guilty of I knew
not what crimes and liable to be taken out of
those rooms where I sat thinking, and hanged
at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe.

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I
would not have gone back to Biddy now, for any
consideration: simply, I suppose, because my
sense of my own worthless conduct to them was
greater than every consideration. No wisdom
on earth could have given me the comfort that
I should have derived from their simplicity and
fidelity; but I could never, never, never, undo
what I had done.

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I
heard pursuers. Twice, I could have sworn
there was a knocking and whispering at the
outer door. With these fears upon me, I began
either to imagine or recal that I had had
mysterious warnings of this man's approach. That
for weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the
streets which I had thought like his. That
these likenesses had grown more numerous, as
he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer.
That his wicked spirit had somehow sent these
messengers to mine, and that now on this
stormy night he was as good as his word, and
with me.

Crowding up with these reflections came the
reflection that I had seen him with my childish
eyes to be a desperately violent man; that I had
heard that other convict reiterate that he had
tried to murder him; that I had seen him
down in the ditch tearing and fighting like a
wild beast. Out of such remembrances I
brought into the light of the fire, a half-formed
terror that it might not be safe to be shut up
there with him in the dead of the wild solitary
night. This dilated until it filled the room, and
impelled me to take a candle and go in and
Iook at my dreadful burden.

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head,
and his face was set and lowering in his sleep.
But he was asleep, and quietly too, though he had
a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I
softly removed the key to the outside of his door,
and turned it on him before I again sat down by
the fire. Gradually I slipped from the chair and
lay on the floor. When I awoke, without having
parted in my sleep with the perception of my
wretchedness, the clocks of the Eastward
churches were striking five, the candles were
wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind
and rain intensified the thick black darkness.

THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE
OF PlP'S EXPECTATIONS.

MUSIC AMONG THE JAPANESE.

LET us render partial justice to our often
misappreciated Oriental friends, in respect of a
faculty which has uniformly, and rather
unfairly, been denied them. "They have no
musical perceptions," is the general verdict,
even of those who have gone beyond mere
superficial observations. Their simple lutes and
rude guitars have been denounced as instruments
of torture, rather than of tune, at least to
European ears; and as to their vocal flights—
what synonym of cacophony has not been
invoked to stigmatise their horrors? Have we
not all read, until our ears tingled with
sympathy, of the sufferings of such incautious
foreigners as have occasionally ventured within
sound of a Yeddo serenade, or a Yokuhama
chorus? Everybody remembers how Mr.
Oliphant fell a victim to a thin partition and a
morning music lesson next door, or something
equally dreadful in the same way. And from
first to last, we have hardly a record of Japanese
vicissitudes, in which the infliction of the
national music does not play its melancholy part.
It is possible that the tourists from whom we
have received these unfavourable reports, have
been obliged to deal a little carelessly in this
delicate question of Japanese art. Perhaps
they have judged the Japanese music, as everything