My real name is Philip, but when I was younger, I was only able to say Pip, so Pip became my name and this was what everybody called me. I came from a small village in Essex. I lived there with my elder sister. she was older than me by more than twenty years. Her husband's name was Joe Gergery, who was the village ironworker. My sister raised me because my parents had died when I was a baby. I was not able to remember them at all. still, I would often go to visit the churchyard, which was about a mile from the village. They were buried there in the graveyard, and I would go to look at their names on the stones.

“I promise I’ll do what you ask, sir,” I answered. My whole body was shaking from fright.

“My friend, who’s just over there, cooks boys’ hearts and eats them. So wherever you are, he’ll find you and take our heart out. Bring the tool I need and the food to that wooden building over there by early tomorrow morning. Remember, you promised!”

Then he turned and walked across the wetlands. The chain around his leg made it difficult for him. After he disappeared from sight, I ran home as fast as I could.

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, raised me since I was a little boy. She believed that all children had to be brought up “by hand”. Nobody explained to me what fact that she had brought me up “by hand”. She had both a hard and a heavy hand, and she used it freely on Joe as well as me. I believed it safe to say that Joe and I were both brought up by hand. In other words, my sister brought us up most strictly. In looks she was not a beauty, being much too tall and thin, with black hair and eyes and a very red face. She often complained about Joe and I causing her a world of trouble, which I guess we did as she always complained about us. Joe, on the other hand, was a gentle and kind man. He had light hair and blue accepting eyes.

Joe and I were good friends because we were in the same position, that is, of being scolded by Mrs. Joe. Joe would try to protect me from her anger whenever he could. So later that day when I ran breathless into the kitchen after my meeting with the strange man, he gave me a friendly warning. “She’s out trying to find you, Pip! And she ahs the beating stick with her!” I knew this stick quite well. It had been used so often on me that it was quite smooth by now.

Just then my sister rushed in.

“And where have you been, you monkey?” she shouted. I hid behind Joe so that she couldn’t hit me with the stick.

“Only to the churchyard,” I whispered. I almost started to cry.

“Churchyard! If I hadn’t decided to bring you up, the churchyard’s where you’d be right now---- dead with our parents! One day you’ll send me to the churchyard!”

For the rest of the evening I couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger I had met on the wetlands. When the wind blew outside, I imagined I could hear his voice and the voice of the young man who ate boys’ hearts.

Just before going to bed, we heard the sound of a big gun out on the wetlands. “Was that a gun, Joe?” I asked.

“Ah, yes!” said Joe. “It
means another prisoner has escaped. I heard that one prisoner managed to escape last night.”

“Is it the police that fires the gun?” I asked. I look at Joe and he shook his head as if to warn me.

My sister replied by angrily butting me short. “Too many questions,” she frowned. “If you must know it’s those men in the prison-ships who fire the gun.”

I really wanted to know more so I managed to ask in a quiet way, “I wonder who is in prison-ships, and why?”

This questioning of mine was too much for Mrs. Joe. “Listen, you! I didn’t bring you up by hand to bother people all the time! The river has ships on it that are used as prisons. These places are for thieves and murderers, and they stay on those ships for years sometimes. And when they were little they would ask too many questions! Now, go to bed!”

I wasn’t able to sleep all night. I was afraid of the young man who would take my heart, I was afraid of the stranger with the iron chain, and I was afraid that my sister would later discover that some food had been stolen. As soon as the sky became a little bright outside my window, I got out of bed and quietly went down to the kitchen. I stole some bread and cheese, and a big meat pie. I was hoping that nobody would notice the food that was missing, as there was a lot of food ready for Christmas. I wasn’t brave enough ot take the whole bottle of wine for that would surely be noticed. So I poured some wine into a smaller bottle and put it in my bog. Then I filled up the big wwine bottle with what I thought was water from a big brown bottle. Then I went to Joe’s box of tools to find the tool the stranger wanted. When I ran outside, it was still quite dark.

The mist was so thick that I wasn’t able to see anything. It was difficult finding my wasy to the wooden building and I almost got lost. When I was near the building I saw a man sitting on the ground, half asleep. I went up to him and touched his shoulder. He jumped up in surprise and then I realized it was the wrong man! It was another man dressed in grey, and he also had an iron chain on his leg. He quickly took off into the mist.

“Oh no!” I thought. “It’s the young man who eats boys’ hearts!” A feeling of pain came into my heart.

When I reached the building, I saw the stranger I had met before. He looked so cold and hungry that I even felt sorry for him. Shaking violently, he swallowed the wine and ate the food as quickly as he could. He looked like a hunted animal as he kept looking around all the time for danger.