Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand

It was at this time that Mr Pancks, in discharge of his compact
with Clennam, revealed to him the whole of his gipsy story, and
told him Little Dorrit's fortune. Her father was heir-at-law to a
great estate that had long lain unknown of, unclaimed, and
accumulating. His right was now clear, nothing interposed in his
way, the Marshalsea gates stood open, the Marshalsea walls were
down, a few flourishes of his pen, and he was extremely rich.

In his tracking out of the claim to its complete establishment, Mr
Pancks had shown a sagacity that nothing could baffle, and a
patience and secrecy that nothing could tire. 'I little thought,
sir,' said Pancks, 'when you and I crossed Smithfield that night,
and I told you what sort of a Collector I was, that this would come
of it. I little thought, sir, when I told you you were not of the
Clennams of Cornwall, that I was ever going to tell you who were of
the Dorrits of Dorsetshire.' He then went on to detail. How,
having that name recorded in his note-book, he was first attracted
by the name alone. How, having often found two exactly similar
names, even belonging to the same place, to involve no traceable
consanguinity, near or distant, he did not at first give much heed
to this, except in the way of speculation as to what a surprising
change would be made in the condition of a little seamstress, if
she could be shown to have any interest in so large a property.
How he rather supposed himself to have pursued the idea into its
next degree, because there was something uncommon in the quiet
little seamstress, which pleased him and provoked his curiosity.

How he had felt his way inch by inch, and 'Moled it out, sir' (that
was Mr Pancks's expression), grain by grain. How, in the beginning
of the labour described by this new verb, and to render which the
more expressive Mr Pancks shut his eyes in pronouncing it and shook
his hair over them, he had alternated from sudden lights and hopes
to sudden darkness and no hopes, and back again, and back again.
How he had made acquaintances in the Prison, expressly that he
might come and go there as all other comers and goers did; and how
his first ray of light was unconsciously given him by Mr Dorrit
himself and by his son; to both of whom he easily became known;
with both of whom he talked much, casually ('but always Moleing
you'll observe,' said Mr Pancks): and from whom he derived, without
being at all suspected, two or three little points of family
history which, as he began to hold clues of his own, suggested
others. How it had at length become plain to Mr Pancks that he had
made a real discovery of the heir-at-law to a great fortune, and