Pip whispered, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them," and Joe answered "I'd give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip." But the soldiers soon caught them, and one was Pip's miserable acquaintance, and once when the man looked at Pip, the child shook his head to try and let him know he had said nothing. But the convict, without looking at anyone, told the Sergeant he wanted to say something to prevent other people being under suspicion, and said he had taken some "wittles" from the blacksmith's. "It was some broken wittles, that's what it was, and a dram of liquor, and a pie." "Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?" enquired the Sergeant. "My wife did, at the very moment when you came in." "So," said the convict, looking at Joe, "you're the blacksmith, are you? Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie." "God knows you're welcome to it," said Joe. "We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow creature. Would us, Pip?" Then the boat came, and the convicts were taken back to prison, and Joe carried Pip home. Some years after, some mysterious friend sent money for Pip to be educated and brought up as a gentleman, but it was only when Pip was quite grown up that he discovered this mysterious friend was the wretched convict who had frightened him so dreadfully that cold, dark Christmas Eve. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Text in italics is indicated with underscores: _italics_. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. Punctuation has been corrected without note. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows: Page 7: Fren changed to Fern Page 25: Joe changed to Jo Page 31: DORRITT changed to DORRIT Page 34: needlwork changed to needlework Page 40: distresed changed to distressed Page 41: grandfaather changed to grandfather Page 56: hugh changed to huge