How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been
my own fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's,
is now of no moment to me or to any one. The change was made in
me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcus-
ably, it was done.

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
shirt sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be dis-
tinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of the small coal, and that I had a
weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a
feather. There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as
in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had
fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from any-
thing save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain
dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched
out straight before me through the newly-entered road of appren-
ticeship to Joe.

I remember that at a later period of my 'time,' I used to stand
about the churchyard on Sunday evenings, when night was falling,
comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and
making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and
low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and
a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first
working-day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time; but I am
glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my in-
dentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know of
myself in that connection.

For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of
what I proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faithful,
but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a
soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the
virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue
of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.
It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable
honest-hearted duty-going man flies out into the world; but it is
very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by,
and I know right well that any good that inter-mixed itself with my

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