"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.