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What exactly does this line by Dickens mean?
"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' (I had come out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have been for something else; but it warn't.)"
Great Expectations, chapter 42, Magwitch to Pip and Herbert
I'm not sure about the meaning of the second sentence.
Not but what is another way of saying Nevertheless.
Nevertheless
- in spite of what has just been said
(MWD)
So, instead, the sentence could read:
"I had come out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Nevertheless it might have been for something else; but it warn't."
Which means that, despite what was just said, the speaker could've been in jail for something else, but wasn't.
