Read an extract from "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens in which Pip tries to understand who attacked his sister. Complete the sentences with the correct words.
With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister, or at all events that as her near relation, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than anyone else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.
Joe had been at the pub "Three Jolly Bargemen", smoking his pipe, from a quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had exchanged Good Night with a farm labourer going home. The man could not be more particular as to the time at which he saw her, than that it must have been before nine. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance.
Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond the blowing out of the candle — which stood on a table between the door and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and was struck — was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been filed asunder.
Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to have been filed asunder long ago. The hue and cry going off to the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, confirmed Joe's opinion. They did not undertake to say when it had left the prison to which it undoubtedly had once belonged, but they claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further, one of those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his iron.
Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed the iron to be my convict's iron — the iron I had seen and heard him filing at, on the marshes — but my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its latest use. For, I believed one of two other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account. Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.
Choose the correct option.
A farm labourer [could not|could] remember exactly when he had last seen Pip's sister.
The attacker's weapon [was|was not] sharp.
The [prison chains| file|attacker's weapon] found at the crime scene belonged to the Hulks.
Pip thought [Orlick|Orlick or the stranger with the file|the man from the marshes] had attacked his sister.