I got the name of being hardened. "This is a terrible hardened
one," they says to prison wisitors, picking out me. "May be said
to live in jails, this boy." Then they looked at me, and I looked at
them, and they measured my head, some on 'em--they had better
a measured my stomach--and others on 'em giv me tracts what I
couldn't read, and made me speeches what I couldn't understand.
They always went on agen me about the Devil. But what the
devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach, mustn't
I?--Howsomever, I'm a getting low, and I know what's due. Dear
boy and Pip's comrade, don't you be afeerd of me being low.

'Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could
--though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the
question whether you would ha' been over-ready to give me work
yourselves--a bit of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a wag-
goner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things
that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting
soldier in a Traveller's Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a
lot of taturs, learnt me to read; and a travelling Giant what signed
his name at a penny a time learnt me to write. I warn't locked up
as often now as formerly, but I wore out my good share of key-
metal still.

'At Epson races, a matter of over twenty year ago, I got ac-
quainted wi' a man whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the
claw of a lobster, if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was
Compeyson; and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me pound-
ing in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade
arter I was gone last night.

'He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a
public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to
talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-
looking too. It was the night afore the great race, when I found
him on the heath, in a booth that I know'd on. Him and some
more was a sitting among the tables when I went in, and the land-
lord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called
him out, and said, "I think this is a man that might suit you"--
meaning I was.

'Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him.

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