Pip said it was because he was a coward, and had not the moral
courage to go to sleep with a lie on his soul, for fear he might
wake up and see an angel with a fiery sword standing by his
bedside. And I must sorrowfully acknowledge this seemed a truer
view of the case than believing the boy was really impressed
with the heinousness of his offence and anxious to make amends.
For the very next day, if occasion sufficiently strong offered,
he would fall again, and the very next night would creep up to
somebody and whimper, with his knuckles in his eyes, that he had
"t--t--told a s--s--story, boo--hoo!"

By seven o'clock this particular, evening he was miserably
repentant; several tears had trickled down, his cheeks and mingled
with the ink of the map he was engaged upon for Miss Marsh. He
established himself at Meg's elbow, and kept looking up into her
face in a yearning love-and-forgive-me kind of way that she found
infinitely embarrassing; for she had begun to suspect, from his
strange conduct, that he had in some way learned the contents
of her note, and was trying to discourage her from her enterprise.
The more he gazed at her the redder and more uncomfortable she
became.

"You can have my new c--c--catapult," he whispered once, giving
her a tearful, imploring look, that she interpreted as an entreaty
to stay safely at home.

At last the clock had travelled up to eight, and the children being
engaged in a wordy warfare over the possession of a certain stray
dog that had come to Misrule in the afternoon, she slipped out of
the room unobserved. No one was in the hall, and she picked up