Chapter 39: in this chapter time passes and pip is now 23. One night during a thunderstorm, he hears heavy foot steps coming up the stairs. A old sailor enters Pip’s apartment, and Pip treats him nervously before recognizing him. Its Pip’s convict, the same man who terrorized him in the cemetery and on the marsh when he was a little boy. Pip finds out that the convict went to Australia, where he worked in sheep ranching and earned a huge fortune. Moved by Pip’s kindness to him on the marsh, he arranged to use his wealth to make Pip a gentleman. The convict, not Miss Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor. Pip is not meant to marry Estella at all.

Chapter 40: in this chapter Pip trips over a shadowy man crouching on his staircase. He runs to fetch the watchman, but when they return the man is gone. Pip turns his attention to the convict, who gives his name as Abel Magwitch. To keep the servants from finding out the truth, Pip decides to call Magwitch “Uncle Provis,” an alias Magwitch made up for himself on the ship from Australia to England. Pip arranges a disguise and calls Mr Jaggers to confirm Magwitch’s story. Magwitch messes around in the apartment, embarrassing Pip, “his” gentleman, with his bad table manners and rough speech.