Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the third chapter of Great Expectations.

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My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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Today we'll be continuing Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Chapter three.

It was a remy morning and very damp.

I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night and using the window for a pocket handkerchief.

Now I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spider's web hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade on every rail and gate.

Wet lake clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there was invisible to me until I was quite close under it.

Then, as I looked up at it while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.

This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind.

The gates and dikes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be a boy with somebody else's pork pie.

Stop him.

The cattle came upon me with like suddenness staring out of their eyes and steaming out of their nostrils.

Hello, young thief.

One black ox with a white cravat on who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air, fixed me so obstinately with his eyes and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round that I blubbered out to him.

I couldn't help it, sir.

It wasn't for myself I took it upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose and vanished with a kick up of his hind legs and a flourish of his tail.

All this time I was getting on towards the river but however fast I went, I couldn't warm my feet, which the damp cold seemed riveted as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet.

I knew my way to the Battery pretty straight, for I'd been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was prenticed to him regularly bound, we would have such larks there.

However, in the confusion of the mist I found myself at last too far to the right and consequently had to try back along the riverside on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out.

Making my way along here with all despatch.

I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me.

His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on the shoulder.

He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but another man.

And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray too, and had a great iron on his leg and was lame and hoarse and cold and was everything that the other man was except that he had not the same face and had a flat, broad, brimmed, low crown felt hat on.

All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in.

He sworn oath at me, made a hit at me.

It was a round, weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself down for it made him stumble.

And then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went, and I lost him.

It's the young man, I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified him.

I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver too, if I had known where it was.

I was soon at the Battery after that and there was the right man, hugging himself and limping to and fro as if he had never all night left off hugging and limping, waiting for me.

He was awfully cold, to be sure.

I half expected to see him drop down before my face and die of deadly cold.

His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too that when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it if he had not seen my bundle.

He did not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets.

What's in the bottle, boy?

Said he.

Brandy, said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious manner more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent hurry than a man who was eating it muddy left off to take some of the liquor.

He shivered all the while so violently that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between its teeth without biting it off.

I think you've got the egg, you said I'm.

Much of your opinion, boy, said he.

It's bad about here, I told him.

You've been lying out on the meshes and they're dreadful egguish rheumatic too.

I'll eat my breakfast before there's a.

Death of me, said he.

I'd do that if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is over there directly afterwards.

I'll beat the shivers.

So far.

I'll bet you he was gobbling mince meat, meatbone, bread, cheese and pork pie all at once, staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round us and often stopping, even stopping its jaws to listen some real or fancied sound some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the marsh now gave him a start and he said.

Suddenly you're not a deceiving imp?

You brought no one with you?

No, sir.

No.

Nor give no one the office to follow you?

No.

Well, said he, I believe you.

You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed if all the time of your life you could help hunt a wretched warmont hunted as near death and Dung Hill as his poor wretched Warmant is.

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock and was going to strike.

And he smeared his ragged, rough sleeve over his eyes, pitying his desolation and watching him as he gradually settled down upon the pie I made bold to say I'm glad you enjoy it.

Did you speak?

I said I was glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you, my boy, I do.

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating and the man's.

The man took strong, sharp, sudden bites just like the dog.

He swallowed or rather snapped up every mouthful too soon and too fast and he looked sideways here and there while he ate as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie away.

He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor, in all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him, said I timidly, after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making the remark.

There's no more to be got where that came from.

It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.

Leave any for him?

Who's, him?

Said my friend, stopping in his crunching of pie crust.

The young man that you spoke of that was hid with you.

Oh.

Ah.

He returned with something like a gruff laugh.

Him?

Yes, yes he don't want no widows, I thought.

He looked as if he did, said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise.

Looked when?

Just now.

Where?

Yonder.

Said I, pointing over there, where I found him nodding asleep, and thought it was you.

He held me by the collar and stared at me so that I began to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat, I explained, trembling, and I was very anxious to put this delicately, and with the same reason for wanting to borrow a file.

Did you hear the cannon last night?

Then there was firing, he said to.

Himself, I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that.

I returned, for we heard it up at home, and that's farther away, and we were shut in besides.

Why, see now, said he, when a man's alone on these flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears nothing all night but guns firing and voices calling here's he sees the soldiers with their red coat slided up by the torches carried afore, closing in round him.

Here's his number called, here's himself challenged, here's the rattle of the muskets.

Here's the orders make ready, present.

Cover him steady, men, and is laid hands on.

And there's nothing.

Why, if I see one pursuing party last night coming up in order d*** with their tramp, tramp.

I see a hundred.

And as to firing, why, see the mist shake with a cannon utter.

It was broad day, but this man.

He had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there.

Did you notice anything in him?

He had a badly bruised face, said I, recalling what I hardly knew, I knew not.

Here.

Exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly with the flat of his hand.

Yes, there.

Where is he?

He crammed what little food was left into the breast of his gray jacket.

Show me the way.

He went I'll pull him down like a bloodhound.

Curse this iron on my sore leg.

Give us hold of the file, boy.

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, and he looked up at it for an instant.

But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman and not minding me or minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file.

I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into this fierce hurry.

And I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away from home any longer.

I told him I must go, but he took no notice.

So I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off.

The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient, imprecations at it and at his leg.

The last I heard of him.

I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.

Thank you for joining Byte at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlisle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Great Expectations.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@bytetimebooks.com and check out the shop.

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