"You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t'other side the world, I was always a looking to this side; and it come flat to be there, for all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, and Magwitch could come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody's head would be troubled about him. They ain't so easy concerning me here, dear boy,--wouldn't be, leastwise, if they knowed where I was."

     "If all goes well," said I, "you will be perfectly free and safe again within a few hours."

     "Well," he returned, drawing a long breath, "I hope so."

     "And think so?"

     He dipped his hand in the water over the boat's gunwale, and said, smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:--

     "Ay, I s'pose I think so, dear boy. We'd be puzzled to be more quiet and easy-going than we are at present. But--it's a flowing so soft and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes me think it--I was a thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no more see to the bottom of the next few hours than we can see to the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can't no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it's run through my fingers and gone, you see!" holding up his dripping hand.