I was three and twenty when the stairs creaked on a wild wet night and a man of sixty came up out of the dark. He was weather-beaten and grey, and he held out both hands to me, and I did not know him. Then he sat down and I saw the convict from the marshes. He had made a fortune in New South Wales as a sheep farmer, and every shilling of it he had sent to England for me. I lived rough that you might live smooth, he said. I am your second father. Miss Havisham had never given me a penny, and Estella had never been meant for me at all. That night I understood that I had deserted Joe for a lie, and that the money in my pocket had been earned by a hunted man who had risked hanging to come and look at me.