Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh?
Now you pays for it.
You done it; now you pays for it."
He drank again, and became more ferocious.
I saw by his tilting of the bottle that there was no great quantity left in it.
I distinctly understood that he was working himself up with its contents to make an end of me.
I knew that every drop it held was a drop of my life.
I knew that when I was changed into a part of the vapor that had crept towards me but a little while before, like my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my sister's case,—make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching about there drinking at the alehouses.
My rapid mind pursued him to the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the white vapor creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved.
It was not only that I could have summed up years and years and years while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say presented pictures to me, and not mere words.
In the excited and exalted state of my brain, I could not think of a place without seeing it, or of persons without seeing them.
It is impossible to overstate the vividness of these images, and yet I was so intent, all the time, upon him himself,—who would not be intent on the tiger crouching to spring!—that I knew of the slightest action of his fingers.
When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench on which he sat, and pushed the table aside.
Then, he took up the candle, and, shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its light on me, stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the sight.
"Wolf, I'll tell you something more.
It was Old Orlick as you tumbled over on your stairs that night."
I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps.
I saw the shadows of the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the watchman's lantern on the wall.
I saw the rooms that I was never to see again; here, a door half open; there, a door closed; all the articles of furniture around.
"And why was Old Orlick there?
I'll tell you something more, wolf.
You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far as getting a easy living in it goes, and I've took up with new companions, and new masters.
Some of 'em writes my letters when I wants 'em wrote,—do you mind?—writes my letters, wolf!
They writes fifty hands; they're not like sneaking you, as writes but one.
I've had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, since you was down here at your sister's burying.
I han't seen a way to get you safe, and I've looked arter you to know your ins and outs.
For, says Old Orlick to himself, 'Somehow or another I'll have him!'
What!
When I looks for you, I finds your uncle Provis, eh?"
Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper Ropewalk, all so clear and plain!
Provis in his rooms, the signal whose use was over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old Bill Barley on his back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of my life fast running out to sea!
"You with a uncle too!
Why, I know'd you at Gargery's when you was so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this finger and thumb and chucked you away dead (as I'd thoughts o' doing, odd times, when I see you loitering amongst the pollards on a Sunday), and you hadn't found no uncles then. No, not you!
But when Old Orlick come for to hear that your uncle Provis had most like wore the leg-iron wot Old Orlick had picked up, filed asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot he kep by him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock, as he means to drop you—hey?—when he come for to hear that—hey?"
In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at me that I turned my face aside to save it from the flame.
"Ah!" he cried, laughing, after doing it again, "the burnt child dreads the fire!
Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick knowed you was smuggling your uncle Provis away, Old Orlick's a match for you and know'd you'd come to-night!
Now I'll tell you something more, wolf, and this ends it.
There's them that's as good a match for your uncle Provis as Old Orlick has been for you.
Let him 'ware them, when he's lost his nevvy!
Let him 'ware them, when no man can't find a rag of his dear relation's clothes, nor yet a bone of his body.
There's them that can't and that won't have Magwitch,—yes, I know the name!—alive in the same land with them, and that's had such sure information of him when he was alive in another land, as that he couldn't and shouldn't leave it unbeknown and put them in danger.
P'raps it's them that writes fifty hands, and that's not like sneaking you as writes but one.
'Ware Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows!"
He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and for an instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he replaced the light on the table.
I had thought a prayer, and had been with Joe and Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards me again.
There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the opposite wall.
Within this space, he now slouched backwards and forwards.
His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than ever before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy at his sides, and with his eyes scowling at me.
I had no grain of hope left.