Pip soon learned that Compeyson was their spy. Wopsle, who in Pip's boyhood had been the clerk in the village church, had turned actor (he made, to be sure, a very poor one!), and was now playing in London. In the theater one night he recognized in the audience the pale-faced convict whom he had once, with Joe, the blacksmith, and little Pip, seen dragged back to capture by his more powerful fellow. Pip had long ago learned from Magwitch that this man was Compeyson, and when Wopsle said he had seen him sitting directly back of Pip at the play, the latter realized that they had this bitter enemy to reckon with, and that Magwitch was in terrible danger. Only once was this time of waiting interrupted, and that was by a letter from Miss Havisham begging Pip to come to see her. He went, and she told him she realized now too late how wicked her plans had been, and begged him with tears to try to forgive her. Pip, sore as his own heart was, forgave her freely, and he was glad ever afterward that he had done so, for that same evening, while he was standing near her, her yellowed wedding veil, sweeping too near the hearth, caught fire and in an instant her whole dress burst into flame. Pip worked desperately to put out the fire, but she was so frightfully burned that it was plain she could not live long. His own hands and arms were painfully injured, so that he returned to London with one arm, for the time being, almost useless. Compeyson, meanwhile, made friends with Orlick, and between them they wrote Pip a letter, decoying him to a lonely hut in the marshes. When he came there Orlick threw a noose over his head, tied him to the wall and would have killed him with a great stone-hammer but for Herbert, who broke down the door and rushed in just in time to put Orlick to flight and to save Pip's life. Herbert had picked up the letter Pip had thrown down, read it, seen in it something suspicious, and had followed from London. Pip saw now there was no time to lose if he would save Magwitch. They made haste to London, and when night fell, took the convict in the rowboat and rowing a few miles down the river, waited to board a steamer bound for Germany. What happened next happened very speedily. They were about to board the steamer when a boat containing Compeyson and some police shot out from the bank, Compeyson calling on Magwitch to surrender. The two boats clashed together, and the steamer, unable to stop, ran them both down. At the same moment Magwitch seized Compeyson and they went into the water together. When Pip came to himself the steamer had gone, his own boat had sunk and he and Herbert had been dragged aboard the other. A few minutes later Magwitch was picked up, badly injured in the chest, and was handcuffed. But they did not find Compeyson--the other had killed him in that fearful struggle under water.