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

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Today we'll be continuing great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter 16 with my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister, or at all events, that, as her near relation, popularly known to be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than anyone else.

But when, in the clear light of next morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.

Joe had been at the three Jolly Bargemen smoking his pipe from a quarter after 08:00 to a quarter before ten.

While he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door and had exchanged goodnight with a farm laborer going home.

The man could not be more particular as to the time at which he saw her.

He got into dense confusion when he tried to be then that it must have been before nine when Joe went home.

At five minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the floor and promptly called an assistance.

The fire had not then burnt unusually low.

Nor was the snuff of the candle very long.

The candle, however, had been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house, neither beyond the blowing out of the candle, which stood on a table between the door and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and was struck.

Was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, accepting, such as she herself had made, and falling and bleeding?

But there was one remarkable piece of evidence on the spot.

She had been struck with something blunt and heavy on the head and spine.

After the blows were dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable violence.

As she lay on her face and on the ground beside her when Joe picked her up, was a convict's leg iron which had been filed asunder.

Now Joe, examining this iron with the smith's eye, declared it to have been filed asunder some time ago.

The hue and cry going off to the hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron.

Joe's opinion was corroborated.

They did not undertake to say when it had left the prison ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged, but they claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last night.

Further, one of those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself in his iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here.

I believed the iron to be my convict's iron, the iron I had seen and heard him filing at on the marshes.

But my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its latest use.

For I believed one of two other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.

Either Orlich or the strange man who had shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlich, he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we picked him up at the turnpike.

He had been seen about town all the evening.

He had been in divers'companies, in several public houses, and he had come back with myself and Mr.

Wobsel.

There was nothing against him save the quarrel.

And my sister had quarrelled with him and with everybody else about her 10,000 times.

As to the strange man, if he had come back for his two banknotes, there could have been no dispute about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore them.

Besides, there had been no altercation.

The assailant had come in so silently and suddenly that she had been felled before she could look round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon however undesignedly.

But I could hardly think otherwise.

I suffered unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the story.

For months afterwards I every day settled the question finally in the negative, and reopened and re argued it next morning.

The contention came, after all, to this.

The secret, with such an old one now had so grown into me and become a part of myself that I could not tear it away.

In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me.

If he believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal cutlets as a monstrous invention.

However, I temporized with myself, of course, for was I not wavering between right and wrong when the thing is always done, and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of the assailant, the constables and the Bow street men from London.

For this happened in the days of the extinct red waist coated police, or about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what I've heard and read of, like authorities doing in other such cases.

They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit them circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.

Also, they stood about the door of the jolly bargemen with knowing and reserved looks that filled the whole neighborhood with admiration, and they had a mysterious manner of taking their drink that was almost as good as taking the culprit, but not quite, for they never did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay very ill in bed.

Her sight was disturbed to that she saw objects multiplied and grasped at visionary teacups and wine glasses instead of the realities.

Her hearing was greatly impaired, her memory also, and her speech was unintelligible.

When at last she came round so far as to be helped downstairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate in writing what she could not indicate in speech, as she was very bad handwriting apart a more than indifferent speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader.

Extraordinary complications arose between them, which I was always called in to solve.

The administration of mutton Instead of medicine, the substitution of tea for Joe and the baker for Bacon were among the mildest of my own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient.

A tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or three months, she would often put her hands to her head.

And would then remain for about a week at a time.

In some gloomy aberration of mind.

We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her.

Until a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us.

Mr.

Wapsel's great aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living.

Into which she had fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.

It may have been about a month after my sister's reappearance in the kitchen.

When Biddy came to us with a small speckled box.

Containing the whole of her worldly effects.

And became a blessing to the household.

Above all, she was a blessing to Joe.

For the dear old fellow was sadly cut up.

By the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife.

And had been accustomed while attending on her of an evening, to turn to me every now and then and say with his blue eyes moistened, such a fine figure of a woman as she once were.

Pipy, instantly taking the cleverest charge of her.

As though she had studied her from infancy.

Joe became able in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life.

And to get down to the Jolly bargeman now and then for a change, that did him good.

It was characteristic of the police people.

That they had all more or less suspected poor Joe, though he never knew it, and that they had to.

A man concurred in regarding him.

As one of the deepest spirits they had ever encountered.

Midi's first triumph in her new office.

Was to solve a difficulty that had completely vanquished me.

I had tried hard at it, but had made nothing of it.

Thus it was.

Again and again and again my sister had traced upon the slate a character that looked like a curious tea, and then with the utmost eagerness, had called her attention to it as something she particularly wanted.

I had in vain tried everything producible that began with a tea from tar to toast and tub.

At length it had come into my head that the sign looked like a hammer.

And on my lustily calling that word in my sister's ear, she'd begun to hammer on the table.

And had expressed a qualified assent.

Thereupon I had brought in all our hammers, one after another, but without avail.

Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village.

And displayed it to my sister with considerable confidence.

But she shook her head to that extent when she was shown it that we were terrified, lest in her weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate.

Biddy looked thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe, who was always represented on the slate by his initial letter, and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.

Why, of course, cried Biddy with an exultant face.

Don't you see it's him, Orlick.

Without a doubt, she had lost his name and could only signify him by his hammer.

We told him why we wanted him to come into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out with a curious, loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly distinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I was disappointed by the different result.

She manifested the greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much pleased by his being at length produced and motioned that she would have him given something to drink.

She watched his countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly to his reception.

She showed every possible desire to conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation in all she did, such as I've seen pervade the bearing of a child towards a hard master.

After that day, a day rarely passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick slouching in and standing doggedly before her as if he knew no more than I did what to make of it.

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

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of great expectations.

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You, adventures and mountains we can climb.

Take it word for word, line by line, one bite at a time, close.