“Steady!” I thought. I asked him
then, “Which of the two do you suppose you saw?”
“The one who had been mauled,” he answered
readily, “and I’ll swear I saw him!
The more I think of him, the more certain I am of
him.”
“This is very curious!” said I, with the
best assumption I could put on, of its being nothing
more to me. “Very curious indeed!”
I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which
this conversation threw me, or the special and peculiar
terror I felt at Compeyson’s having been behind
me “like a ghost.” For, if he had
ever been out of my thoughts for a few moments together
since the hiding had begun, it was in those very moments
when he was closest to me; and to think that I should
be so unconscious and off my guard after all my care,
was as if I had shut an avenue of a hundred doors
to keep him out, and then had found him at my elbow.
I could not doubt either that he was there, because
I was there, and that however slight an appearance
of danger there might be about us, danger was always
near and active.
I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the
man come in? He could not tell me that; he saw
me, and over my shoulder he saw the man. It
was not until he had seen him for some time that he
began to identify him; but he had from the first vaguely
associated him with me, and known him as somehow belonging
to me in the old village time. How was he dressed?
Prosperously, but not noticeably otherwise; he thought,
in black. Was his face at all disfigured?
No, he believed not. I believed not, too, for,
although in my brooding state I had taken no especial
notice of the people behind me, I thought it likely
that a face at all disfigured would have attracted
my attention.
When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could
recall or I extract, and when I had treated him to
a little appropriate refreshment after the fatigues
of the evening, we parted. It was between twelve
and one o’clock when I reached the Temple, and
the gates were shut. No one was near me when
I went in and went home.
Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council
by the fire. But there was nothing to be done,
saving to communicate to Wemmick what I had that night
found out, and to remind him that we waited for his
hint. As I thought that I might compromise him
if I went too often to the Castle, I made this communication
by letter. I wrote it before I went to bed, and
went out and posted it; and again no one was near
me. Herbert and I agreed that we could do nothing
else but be very cautious. And we were very cautious
indeed - more cautious than before, if that were possible
— and I for my part never went near Chinks’s
Basin, except when I rowed by, and then I only looked
at Mill Pond Bank as I looked at anything else.
