the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into the studious youth of
England, without laying themselves open to severe punishment.
For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at the
kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before go-
ing on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce
upon me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trous-
ers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead
of night. I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's
teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, as I
devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory circum-
stance when I should be haled before the Judges.

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the
deed of violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmi-
dons of Justice, specially sent down from London, would be lying
in ambush behind the gate? Whether Miss Havisham, preferring
to take personal vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might
rise in those grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me
dead? Whether suborned boys--a numerous band of mercenaries
--might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery, and cuff me
until I was no more? It was high testimony to my confidence in
the spirit of the pale young gentleman, that I never imagined
him accessory to these retaliations; they always came into my mind
as the acts of injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of
his visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features.

However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, and go I did. And be-
hold! nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in
any way, and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the
premises. I found the same gate open, and I explored the garden,
and even looked in at the windows of the detached house; but,
my view was suddenly stopped by the closed shutters within, and
all was lifeless. Only in the corner where the combat had taken
place, could I detect any evidence of the young gentlman's exist-
ence. There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered
them with garden-mould from the eye of man.

On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and
that other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a gar-
den-chair--a light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind.
It had been placed there since my last visit, and I entered, that

-89-