fell into a doze before it. I seemed to have
been dozing a whole night when the clocks
struck six. As there was full an hour and a half
between me and daylight, I dozed again; now,
waking up uneasily, with prolix conversations
about nothing, in my ears; now, making
thunder of the wind in the chimney; at length
falling off into a profound sleep from which the
daylight woke me with a start.

All this time I had never been able to consider
my own situation, nor could I do so yet.
I had not the power to attend to it. I was
greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent
wholesale sort of way. As to forming
any plan for the future, I could as soon have
formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters
and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a
leaden hue; when I walked from room to room;
when I sat down again shivering, before the fire,
waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought
how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or
how long I had been so, or on what day of the
week I made the reflection, or even who I was
that made it.

At length the old woman and the niece came
in—the latter with a head not easily distinguishable
from her dusty broom—and testified surprise
at sight of me and the fire. To whom I imparted
how my uncle had come in the night and was
then asleep, and how the breakfast preparations
were to be modified accordingly. Then l washed
and dressed while they knocked the furniture
about and made a dust, and so, in a sort of
dream or sleep-waking, I found myself sitting by
the fire again, waiting for—Him—to come to
breakfast.

By-and-by, his door opened and he came out.
I could not bring myself to bear the sight of
him, and I thought he had a worse look by daylight.

"I do not even know," said I, speaking low
as he took his seat at the table, "by what name
to call you. I have given out that you are my
uncle."

"That's it, dear boy! Call me uncle."

"You assumed some name, I suppose, on
board ship?"

"Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis."

"Do you mean to keep that name?"

"Why, yes, dear boy, it's as good as another
—unless you'd like another."

"What is your real name?" I asked him in
a whisper.

"Magwitch," he answered, in the same tone;
"chris'en'd Abel."

"What were you brought up to be?"

"A warmint, dear boy."

He answered quite seriously, and used the
word as if it denoted some profession.

"When you came into the Temple last
night—" said I, pausing to wonder whether
that could really have been last night, which
seemed so long ago.

"Yes, dear boy?"

"When you came in at the gate and asked the
watchman the way here, had you any one with
you?"

"With me? No, dear boy."

"But there was some one there?"

"I didn't take particular notice," he said,
dubiously, "not knowing the ways of the place.
But I think there was a person, too, come in
alonger me."

"Are you known in London?"

"I hope not!" said he, giving his neck a jerk
with his forefinger that made me turn hot and
sick.

"Were you known in London, once?"

"Not over and above, dear boy. I was in
the provinces mostly."

"Were you—tried—in London?"

"Which time?" said he, with a sharp look.

"The last time."

He nodded. "First knowed Mr. Jaggers
that way. Jaggers was for me."

It was on my lips to ask him what he was
tried for, but he took up a knife, gave it a
flourish, and with the words, "And whatever I
done is worked out and paid for!" fell to at his
breakfast.

He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable,
and all his actions were uncouth,
noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had failed
him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as
he turned his food in his mouth, and turned his
head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to
bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old
dog. If I had begun with any appetite, he would
have taken it away, and I should have sat much
as I did— repelled from him by an insurmountable
aversion, and gloomily looking at the cloth.

"I'm a heavy grubber, dear boy," he said,
as a polite kind of apology when he had made
an end of his meal, "but I always was. If it
had been in my constitution to be a lighter
grubber, I might ha' got into lighter trouble.
Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I
was first hired out as shepherd t'other side the
world, it's my belief I should ha' turned into a
molloncolly-mad sheep myself, if I hadn't a had
my smoke."

As he said so, he got up from table, and putting
his hand into the breast of the pea-coat he
wore, brought out a short black pipe, and a
handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is
called Negro-head. Having filled his pipe, he
put the surplus tobacco back again, as if his
pocket were a drawer. Then he took a live
coal from the fire with the tongs, and lighted
his pipe at it, and then turned round on the
hearthrug with his back to the fire, and went
through his favourite action of holding out both
his hands for mine.

"And this," said he, dandling my hands up
and down in his, as he puffed at his pipe; " and
this is the gentleman what I made! The real
genuine One! It does me good fur to look at
you, Pip. All I stip'late, is, to stand by and
look at you, dear boy!"

I released my hands as soon as I could, and
found that I was beginning slowly to settle
down to the contemplation of my condition.
What I was chained to, and how heavily, became
intelligible to me, as I heard his hoarse voice,