I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

     These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.

     "This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."

     With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

     "What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"

     "I can't guess what it is, ma'am."

     "It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"