Great Expectations - Noyemi

By Charles Dickens

sumever, and you shall be let to live.  You fail, or you go from my

words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart

and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate.  Now, I ain't

alone, as you may think I am.  There's a young man hid with me, in

comparison with which young man I am a Angel.  That young man hears

the words I speak.  That young man has a secret way pecooliar to

himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.

It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young

man.  A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself

up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself

comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and

creep his way to him and tear him open.  I am a-keeping that young

man from harming of you at the present moment, with great

difficulty.  I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your

inside.  Now, what do you say?"



I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what

broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the

Battery, early in the morning.



"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.



I said so, and he took me down.



"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you

remember that young man, and you get home!"



"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.



"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat.

"I wish I was a frog.  Or a eel!"



At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms -

clasping himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped

towards the low church wall.  As I saw him go, picking his way among

the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he

looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead

people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a

twist upon his ankle and pull him in.



When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man

whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for

me.  When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made

the best use of my legs.  But presently I looked over my shoulder,

and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself

in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the

great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for

stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.



The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I

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Great Expectations - Noyemi

By Charles Dickens

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