Volume 3

Chapter 40

A Strange Interview, Which Is a Sequel to the Last Chapter

The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman’s original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame, and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride—the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself—even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child.

She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then, bending them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected carelessness as she said:

“It’s a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken offence, and gone away, as many would have done, you’d have been sorry for it one day, and not without reason either.”

“I am very sorry if anyone has behaved harshly to you,” replied Rose. “Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me. I am the person you inquired for.”

The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner, the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, lady, lady!” she said, clasping her hands passionately before her face, “if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me—there would—there would!”

“Sit down,” said Rose, earnestly. “If you are in poverty or affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can—I shall indeed. Sit down.”

“Let me stand, lady,” said the girl, still weeping, “and do not speak to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing late. Is—is—that door shut?”

“Yes,” said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance in case she should require it. “Why?”

“Because,” said the girl, “I am about to put my life and the lives of others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little Oliver back to old Fagin’s on the night he went out from the house in Pentonville.”

“You!” said Rose Maylie.

“I, lady!” replied the girl. “I am the infamous creature you have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement.”

“What dreadful things are these!” said Rose, involuntarily falling from her strange companion.

“Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,” cried the girl, “that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and—and—something worse than all—as I have been from my cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be my deathbed.”

“I pity you!” said Rose, in a broken voice. “It wrings my heart to hear you!”

“Heaven bless you for your goodness!” rejoined the girl. “If you knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a man named Monks?”

“No,” said Rose.

“He knows you,” replied the girl; “and knew you were here, for it was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.”

“I never heard the name,” said Rose.

“Then he goes by some other amongst us,” rejoined the girl, “which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver was put into your house on the night of the robbery, I—suspecting this man—listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that Monks—the man I asked you about, you know—”

“Yes,” said Rose, “I understand.”

“—That Monks,” pursued the girl, “had seen him accidentally with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn’t make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own.”

“For what purpose?” asked Rose.

“He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of finding out,” said the girl; “and there are not many people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last night.”

“And what occurred then?”

“I’ll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard Monks say were these: ‘So the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.’ They laughed, and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil’s money safely now, he’d rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the father’s will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital felony which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit of him besides.”

“What is all this!” said Rose.

“The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,” replied the girl. “Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy’s life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he couldn’t, he’d be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life; and if he took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. ‘In short, Fagin,’ he says, ‘Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as I’ll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.’ ”

“His brother!” exclaimed Rose.

“Those were his words,” said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually. “And more. When he spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the devil, against him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged spaniel was.”

“You do not mean,” said Rose, turning very pale, “to tell me that this was said in earnest?”

“He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,” replied the girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I’d rather listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is growing late, and I have to reach home without suspicion of having been on such an errand as this. I must get back quickly.”

“But what can I do?” said Rose. “To what use can I turn this communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to companions you paint in such terrible colors? If you repeat this information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety without half an hour’s delay.”

“I wish to go back,” said the girl. “I must go back, because—how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like you?—because among the men I have told you of, there is one: the most desperate among them all; that I can’t leave: no, not even to be saved from the life I am leading now.”

“Your having interfered in this dear boy’s behalf before,” said Rose; “your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you have heard; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what you say; your evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me to believe that you might yet be reclaimed. Oh!” said the earnest girl, folding her hands as the tears coursed down her face, “do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex; the first—the first, I do believe, who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear my words, and let me save you yet, for better things.”

“Lady,” cried the girl, sinking on her knees, “dear, sweet, angel lady, you are the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!”

“It is never too late,” said Rose, “for penitence and atonement.”

“It is,” cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; “I cannot leave him now! I could not be his death.”

“Why should you be?” asked Rose.

“Nothing could save him,” cried the girl. “If I told others what I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!”

“Is it possible,” cried Rose, “that for such a man as this, you can resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue? It is madness.”

“I don’t know what it is,” answered the girl; “I only know that it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God’s wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.”

“What am I to do?” said Rose. “I should not let you depart from me thus.”

“You should, lady, and I know you will,” rejoined the girl, rising. “You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your goodness, and forced no promise from you, as I might have done.”

“Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?” said Rose. “This mystery must be investigated, or how will its disclosure to me, benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?”

“You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as a secret, and advise you what to do,” rejoined the girl.

“But where can I find you again when it is necessary?” asked Rose. “I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but where will you be walking or passing at any settled period from this time?”

“Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept, and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and that I shall not be watched or followed?” asked the girl.

“I promise you solemnly,” answered Rose.

“Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,” said the girl without hesitation, “I will walk on London Bridge if I am alive.”

“Stay another moment,” interposed Rose, as the girl moved hurriedly towards the door. “Think once again on your own condition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it. You have a claim on me: not only as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!”

“When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,” replied the girl steadily, “give away your hearts, love will carry you all lengths—even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers, everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady—pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.”

“You will,” said Rose, after a pause, “take some money from me, which may enable you to live without dishonesty—at all events until we meet again?”

“Not a penny,” replied the girl, waving her hand.

“Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,” said Rose, stepping gently forward. “I wish to serve you indeed.”

“You would serve me best, lady,” replied the girl, wringing her hands, “if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think of what I am, tonight, than I ever did before, and it would be something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have brought shame on mine!”

Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away; while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.

Chapter 41

Containing Fresh Discoveries, and Showing That Surprises, Like Misfortunes, Seldom Come Alone

Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty. While she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the mystery in which Oliver’s history was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the confidence which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed, had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl. Her words and manner had touched Rose Maylie’s heart; and, mingled with her love for her young charge, and scarcely less intense in its truth and fervour, was her fond wish to win the outcast back to repentance and hope.

They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to departing for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was now midnight of the first day. What course of action could she determine upon, which could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours? Or how could she postpone the journey without exciting suspicion?

Mr. Losberne was with them, and would be for the next two days; but Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman’s impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the first explosion of his indignation, he would regard the instrument of Oliver’s recapture, to trust him with the secret, when her representations in the girl’s behalf could be seconded by no experienced person. These were all reasons for the greatest caution and most circumspect behaviour in communicating it to Mrs. Maylie, whose first impulse would infallibly be to hold a conference with the worthy doctor on the subject. As to resorting to any legal adviser, even if she had known how to do so, it was scarcely to be thought of, for the same reason. Once the thought occurred to her of seeking assistance from Harry; but this awakened the recollection of their last parting, and it seemed unworthy of her to call him back, when—the tears rose to her eyes as she pursued this train of reflection—he might have by this time learnt to forget her, and to be happier away.

Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining now to one course and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each successive consideration presented itself to her mind; Rose passed a sleepless and anxious night. After more communing with herself next day, she arrived at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry.

“If it be painful to him,” she thought, “to come back here, how painful it will be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting me—he did when he went away. I hardly thought he would; but it was better for us both.” And here Rose dropped the pen, and turned away, as though the very paper which was to be her messenger should not see her weep.

She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times, and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter without writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been walking in the streets, with Mr. Giles for a bodyguard, entered the room in such breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken some new cause of alarm.

“What makes you look so flurried?” asked Rose, advancing to meet him.

“I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,” replied the boy. “Oh dear! To think that I should see him at last, and you should be able to know that I have told you the truth!”

“I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,” said Rose, soothing him. “But what is this?—of whom do you speak?”

“I have seen the gentleman,” replied Oliver, scarcely able to articulate, “the gentleman who was so good to me—Mr. Brownlow, that we have so often talked about.”

“Where?” asked Rose.

“Getting out of a coach,” replied Oliver, shedding tears of delight, “and going into a house. I didn’t speak to him—I couldn’t speak to him, for he didn’t see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to go up to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived there, and they said he did. Look here,” said Oliver, opening a scrap of paper, “here it is; here’s where he lives—I’m going there directly! Oh, dear me, dear me! What shall I do when I come to see him and hear him speak again!”

With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great many other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address, which was Craven Street, in the Strand. She very soon determined upon turning the discovery to account.

“Quick!” she said. “Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be ready to go with me. I will take you there directly, without a minute’s loss of time. I will only tell my aunt that we are going out for an hour, and be ready as soon as you are.”

Oliver needed no prompting to dispatch, and in little more than five minutes they were on their way to Craven Street. When they arrived there, Rose left Oliver in the coach, under pretence of preparing the old gentleman to receive him; and sending up her card by the servant, requested to see Mr. Brownlow on very pressing business. The servant soon returned, to beg that she would walk upstairs; and following him into an upper room, Miss Maylie was presented to an elderly gentleman of benevolent appearance, in a bottle-green coat. At no great distance from whom, was seated another old gentleman, in nankeen breeches and gaiters; who did not look particularly benevolent, and who was sitting with his hands clasped on the top of a thick stick, and his chin propped thereupon.

“Dear me,” said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily rising with great politeness, “I beg your pardon, young lady—I imagined it was some importunate person who—I beg you will excuse me. Be seated, pray.”

“Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir?” said Rose, glancing from the other gentleman to the one who had spoken.

“That is my name,” said the old gentleman. “This is my friend, Mr. Grimwig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes?”

“I believe,” interposed Miss Maylie, “that at this period of our interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away. If I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which I wish to speak to you.”

Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made one very stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff bow, and dropped into it again.

“I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt,” said Rose, naturally embarrassed; “but you once showed great benevolence and goodness to a very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will take an interest in hearing of him again.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Brownlow.

“Oliver Twist you knew him as,” replied Rose.

The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had been affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it with a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his features every expression but one of unmitigated wonder, and indulged in a prolonged and vacant stare; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long deep whistle, which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air, but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.

Mr. Browlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was not expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair nearer to Miss Maylie’s, and said,

“Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of the question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and of which nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in your power to produce any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I was once induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven’s name put me in possession of it.”

“A bad one! I’ll eat my head if he is not a bad one,” growled Mr. Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving a muscle of his face.

“He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart,” said Rose, colouring; “and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond his years, has planted in his breast affections and feelings which would do honour to many who have numbered his days six times over.”

“I’m only sixty-one,” said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face. “And, as the devil’s in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old at least, I don’t see the application of that remark.”

“Do not heed my friend, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow; “he does not mean what he says.”

“Yes, he does,” growled Mr. Grimwig.

“No, he does not,” said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath as he spoke.

“He’ll eat his head, if he doesn’t,” growled Mr. Grimwig.

“He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,” said Mr. Brownlow.

“And he’d uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,” responded Mr. Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor.

Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.

“Now, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow, “to return to the subject in which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me know what intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me to promise that I exhausted every means in my power of discovering him, and that since I have been absent from this country, my first impression that he had imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by his former associates to rob me, has been considerably shaken.”

Rose, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related, in a few natural words, all that had befallen Oliver since he left Mr. Brownlow’s house; reserving Nancy’s information for that gentleman’s private ear, and concluding with the assurance that his only sorrow, for some months past, had been not being able to meet with his former benefactor and friend.

“Thank God!” said the old gentleman. “This is great happiness to me, great happiness. But you have not told me where he is now, Miss Maylie. You must pardon my finding fault with you—but why not have brought him?”

“He is waiting in a coach at the door,” replied Rose.

“At this door!” cried the old gentleman. With which he hurried out of the room, down the stairs, up the coachsteps, and into the coach, without another word.

When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Grimwig lifted up his head, and converting one of the hind legs of his chair into a pivot, described three distinct circles with the assistance of his stick and the table; sitting in it all the time. After performing this evolution, he rose and limped as fast as he could up and down the room at least a dozen times, and then stopping suddenly before Rose, kissed her without the slightest preface.

“Hush!” he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this unusual proceeding. “Don’t be afraid. I’m old enough to be your grandfather. You’re a sweet girl. I like you. Here they are!”

In fact, as he threw himself at one dexterous dive into his former seat, Mr. Brownlow returned, accompanied by Oliver, whom Mr. Grimwig received very graciously; and if the gratification of that moment had been the only reward for all her anxiety and care in Oliver’s behalf, Rose Maylie would have been well repaid.

“There is somebody else who should not be forgotten, by the by,” said Mr. Brownlow, ringing the bell. “Send Mrs. Bedwin here, if you please.”

The old housekeeper answered the summons with all dispatch; and dropping a curtsey at the door, waited for orders.

“Why, you get blinder every day, Bedwin,” said Mr. Brownlow, rather testily.

“Well, that I do, sir,” replied the old lady. “People’s eyes, at my time of life, don’t improve with age, sir.”

“I could have told you that,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow; “but put on your glasses, and see if you can’t find out what you were wanted for, will you?”

The old lady began to rummage in her pocket for her spectacles. But Oliver’s patience was not proof against this new trial; and yielding to his first impulse, he sprang into her arms.

“God be good to me!” cried the old lady, embracing him; “it is my innocent boy!”

“My dear old nurse!” cried Oliver.

“He would come back—I knew he would,” said the old lady, holding him in her arms. “How well he looks, and how like a gentleman’s son he is dressed again! Where have you been, this long, long while? Ah! the same sweet face, but not so pale; the same soft eye, but not so sad. I have never forgotten them or his quiet smile, but have seen them every day, side by side with those of my own dear children, dead and gone since I was a lightsome young creature.” Running on thus, and now holding Oliver from her to mark how he had grown, now clasping him to her and passing her fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and wept upon his neck by turns.

Leaving her and Oliver to compare notes at leisure, Mr. Brownlow led the way into another room; and there, heard from Rose a full narration of her interview with Nancy, which occasioned him no little surprise and perplexity. Rose also explained her reasons for not confiding in her friend Mr. Losberne in the first instance. The old gentleman considered that she had acted prudently, and readily undertook to hold solemn conference with the worthy doctor himself. To afford him an early opportunity for the execution of this design, it was arranged that he should call at the hotel at eight o’clock that evening, and that in the meantime Mrs. Maylie should be cautiously informed of all that had occurred. These preliminaries adjusted, Rose and Oliver returned home.

Rose had by no means overrated the measure of the good doctor’s wrath. Nancy’s history was no sooner unfolded to him, than he poured forth a shower of mingled threats and execrations; threatened to make her the first victim of the combined ingenuity of Messrs. Blathers and Duff; and actually put on his hat preparatory to sallying forth to obtain the assistance of those worthies. And, doubtless, he would, in this first outbreak, have carried the intention into effect without a moment’s consideration of the consequences, if he had not been restrained, in part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr. Brownlow, who was himself of an irascible temperament, and partly by such arguments and representations as seemed best calculated to dissuade him from his hotbrained purpose.

“Then what the devil is to be done?” said the impetuous doctor, when they had rejoined the two ladies. “Are we to pass a vote of thanks to all these vagabonds, male and female, and beg them to accept a hundred pounds, or so, apiece, as a trifling mark of our esteem, and some slight acknowledgment of their kindness to Oliver?”

“Not exactly that,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow, laughing; “but we must proceed gently and with great care.”

“Gentleness and care,” exclaimed the doctor. “I’d send them one and all to—”

“Never mind where,” interposed Mr. Brownlow. “But reflect whether sending them anywhere is likely to attain the object we have in view.”

“What object?” asked the doctor.

“Simply, the discovery of Oliver’s parentage, and regaining for him the inheritance of which, if this story be true, he has been fraudulently deprived.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Losberne, cooling himself with his pocket-handkerchief; “I almost forgot that.”

“You see,” pursued Mr. Brownlow; “placing this poor girl entirely out of the question, and supposing it were possible to bring these scoundrels to justice without compromising her safety, what good should we bring about?”

“Hanging a few of them at least, in all probability,” suggested the doctor, “and transporting the rest.”

“Very good,” replied Mr. Brownlow, smiling; “but no doubt they will bring that about for themselves in the fullness of time, and if we step in to forestall them, it seems to me that we shall be performing a very quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest—or at least to Oliver’s, which is the same thing.”

“How?” inquired the doctor.

“Thus. It is quite clear that we shall have extreme difficulty in getting to the bottom of this mystery, unless we can bring this man, Monks, upon his knees. That can only be done by stratagem, and by catching him when he is not surrounded by these people. For, suppose he were apprehended, we have no proof against him. He is not even (so far as we know, or as the facts appear to us) concerned with the gang in any of their robberies. If he were not discharged, it is very unlikely that he could receive any further punishment than being committed to prison as a rogue and vagabond; and of course ever afterwards his mouth would be so obstinately closed that he might as well, for our purposes, be deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot.”

“Then,” said the doctor impetuously, “I put it to you again, whether you think it reasonable that this promise to the girl should be considered binding; a promise made with the best and kindest intentions, but really—”

“Do not discuss the point, my dear young lady, pray,” said Mr. Brownlow, interrupting Rose as she was about to speak. “The promise shall be kept. I don’t think it will, in the slightest degree, interfere with our proceedings. But, before we can resolve upon any precise course of action, it will be necessary to see the girl; to ascertain from her whether she will point out this Monks, on the understanding that he is to be dealt with by us, and not by the law; or, if she will not, or cannot do that, to procure from her such an account of his haunts and description of his person, as will enable us to identify him. She cannot be seen until next Sunday night; this is Tuesday. I would suggest that in the meantime, we remain perfectly quiet, and keep these matters secret even from Oliver himself.”

Although Mr. Losberne received with many wry faces a proposal involving a delay of five whole days, he was fain to admit that no better course occurred to him just then; and as both Rose and Mrs. Maylie sided very strongly with Mr. Brownlow, that gentleman’s proposition was carried unanimously.

“I should like,” he said, “to call in the aid of my friend Grimwig. He is a strange creature, but a shrewd one, and might prove of material assistance to us; I should say that he was bred a lawyer, and quitted the Bar in disgust because he had only one brief and a motion of course, in twenty years, though whether that is recommendation or not, you must determine for yourselves.”

“I have no objection to your calling in your friend if I may call in mine,” said the doctor.

“We must put it to the vote,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “who may he be?”

“That lady’s son, and this young lady’s—very old friend,” said the doctor, motioning towards Mrs. Maylie, and concluding with an expressive glance at her niece.

Rose blushed deeply, but she did not make any audible objection to this motion (possibly she felt in a hopeless minority); and Harry Maylie and Mr. Grimwig were accordingly added to the committee.

“We stay in town, of course,” said Mrs. Maylie, “while there remains the slightest prospect of prosecuting this inquiry with a chance of success. I will spare neither trouble nor expense in behalf of the object in which we are all so deeply interested, and I am content to remain here, if it be for twelve months, so long as you assure me that any hope remains.”

“Good!” rejoined Mr. Brownlow. “And as I see on the faces about me, a disposition to inquire how it happened that I was not in the way to corroborate Oliver’s tale, and had so suddenly left the kingdom, let me stipulate that I shall be asked no questions until such time as I may deem it expedient to forestall them by telling my own story. Believe me, I make this request with good reason, for I might otherwise excite hopes destined never to be realised, and only increase difficulties and disappointments already quite numerous enough. Come! Supper has been announced, and young Oliver, who is all alone in the next room, will have begun to think, by this time, that we have wearied of his company, and entered into some dark conspiracy to thrust him forth upon the world.”

With these words, the old gentleman gave his hand to Mrs. Maylie, and escorted her into the supper-room. Mr. Losberne followed, leading Rose; and the council was, for the present, effectually broken up.

Chapter 42

An Old Acquaintance of Oliver’s, Exhibiting Decided Marks of Genius, Becomes a Public Character in the Metropolis

Upon the night when Nancy, having lulled Mr. Sikes to sleep, hurried on her self-imposed mission to Rose Maylie, there advanced towards London, by the Great North Road, two persons, upon whom it is expedient that this history should bestow some attention.

They were a man and woman; or perhaps they would be better described as a male and female: for the former was one of those long-limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is difficult to assign any precise age—looking as they do, when they are yet boys, like undergrown men, and when they are almost men, like overgrown boys. The woman was young, but of a robust and hardy make, as she need have been to bear the weight of the heavy bundle which was strapped to her back. Her companion was not encumbered with much luggage, as there merely dangled from a stick which he carried over his shoulder, a small parcel wrapped in a common handkerchief, and apparently light enough. This circumstance, added to the length of his legs, which were of unusual extent, enabled him with much ease to keep some half-dozen paces in advance of his companion, to whom he occasionally turned with an impatient jerk of the head: as if reproaching her tardiness, and urging her to greater exertion.

Thus, they had toiled along the dusty road, taking little heed of any object within sight, save when they stepped aside to allow a wider passage for the mail-coaches which were whirling out of town, until they passed through Highgate archway; when the foremost traveller stopped and called impatiently to his companion,

“Come on, can’t yer? What a lazybones yer are, Charlotte.”

“It’s a heavy load, I can tell you,” said the female, coming up, almost breathless with fatigue.

“Heavy! What are yer talking about? What are yer made for?” rejoined the male traveller, changing his own little bundle as he spoke, to the other shoulder. “Oh, there yer are, resting again! Well, if yer ain’t enough to tire anybody’s patience out, I don’t know what is!”

“Is it much farther?” asked the woman, resting herself against a bank, and looking up with the perspiration streaming from her face.

“Much farther! Yer as good as there,” said the long-legged tramper, pointing out before him. “Look there! Those are the lights of London.”

“They’re a good two mile off, at least,” said the woman despondingly.

“Never mind whether they’re two mile off, or twenty,” said Noah Claypole; for he it was; “but get up and come on, or I’ll kick yer, and so I give yer notice.”

As Noah’s red nose grew redder with anger, and as he crossed the road while speaking, as if fully prepared to put his threat into execution, the woman rose without any further remark, and trudged onward by his side.

“Where do you mean to stop for the night, Noah?” she asked, after they had walked a few hundred yards.

“How should I know?” replied Noah, whose temper had been considerably impaired by walking.

“Near, I hope,” said Charlotte.

“No, not near,” replied Mr. Claypole. “There! Not near; so don’t think it.”

“Why not?”

“When I tell yer that I don’t mean to do a thing, that’s enough, without any why or because either,” replied Mr. Claypole with dignity.

“Well, you needn’t be so cross,” said his companion.

“A pretty thing it would be, wouldn’t it, to go and stop at the very first public-house outside the town, so that Sowerberry, if he come up after us, might poke in his old nose, and have us taken back in a cart with handcuffs on,” said Mr. Claypole in a jeering tone. “No! I shall go and lose myself among the narrowest streets I can find, and not stop till we come to the very out-of-the-wayest house I can set eyes on. ’Cod, yer may thanks yer stars I’ve got a head; for if we hadn’t gone, at first, the wrong road a purpose, and come back across country, yer’d have been locked up hard and fast a week ago, my lady. And serve yer right for being a fool.”

“I know I ain’t as cunning as you are,” replied Charlotte; “but don’t put all the blame on me, and say I should have been locked up. You would have been if I had been, any way.”

“Yer took the money from the till, yer know yer did,” said Mr. Claypole.

“I took it for you, Noah, dear,” rejoined Charlotte.

“Did I keep it?” asked Mr. Claypole.

“No; you trusted in me, and let me carry it like a dear, and so you are,” said the lady, chucking him under the chin, and drawing her arm through his.

This was indeed the case; but as it was not Mr. Claypole’s habit to repose a blind and foolish confidence in anybody, it should be observed, in justice to that gentleman, that he had trusted Charlotte to this extent, in order that, if they were pursued, the money might be found on her: which would leave him an opportunity of asserting his innocence of any theft, and would greatly facilitate his chances of escape. Of course, he entered at this juncture, into no explanation of his motives, and they walked on very lovingly together.

In pursuance of this cautious plan, Mr. Claypole went on, without halting, until he arrived at the Angel at Islington, where he wisely judged, from the crowd of passengers and number of vehicles, that London began in earnest. Just pausing to observe which appeared the most crowded streets, and consequently the most to be avoided, he crossed into Saint John’s Road, and was soon deep in the obscurity of the intricate and dirty ways, which, lying between Gray’s Inn Lane and Smithfield, render that part of the town one of the lowest and worst that improvement has left in the midst of London.

Through these streets, Noah Claypole walked, dragging Charlotte after him; now stepping into the kennel to embrace at a glance the whole external character of some small public-house; now jogging on again, as some fancied appearance induced him to believe it too public for his purpose. At length, he stopped in front of one, more humble in appearance and more dirty than any he had yet seen; and, having crossed over and surveyed it from the opposite pavement, graciously announced his intention of putting up there, for the night.

“So give us the bundle,” said Noah, unstrapping it from the woman’s shoulders, and slinging it over his own; “and don’t yer speak, except when yer spoke to. What’s the name of the house—t-h-r—three what?”

“Cripples,” said Charlotte.

“Three Cripples,” repeated Noah, “and a very good sign too. Now, then! Keep close at my heels, and come along.” With these injunctions, he pushed the rattling door with his shoulder, and entered the house, followed by his companion.

There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, with his two elbows on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared very hard at Noah, and Noah stared very hard at him.

If Noah had been attired in his charity-boy’s dress, there might have been some reason for the Jew opening his eyes so wide; but as he had discarded the coat and badge, and wore a short smock-frock over his leathers, there seemed no particular reason for his appearance exciting so much attention in a public-house.

“Is this the Three Cripples?” asked Noah.

“That is the dabe of this ’ouse,” replied the Jew.

“A gentleman we met on the road, coming up from the country, recommended us here,” said Noah, nudging Charlotte, perhaps to call her attention to this most ingenious device for attracting respect, and perhaps to warn her to betray no surprise. “We want to sleep here tonight.”

“I’b dot certaid you cad,” said Barney, who was the attendant sprite; “but I’ll idquire.”

“Show us the tap, and give us a bit of cold meat and a drop of beer while yer inquiring, will yer?” said Noah.

Barney complied by ushering them into a small backroom, and setting the required viands before them; having done which, he informed the travellers that they could be lodged that night, and left the amiable couple to their refreshment.

Now, this backroom was immediately behind the bar, and some steps lower, so that any person connected with the house, undrawing a small curtain which concealed a single pane of glass fixed in the wall of the last-named apartment, about five feet from its flooring, could not only look down upon any guests in the backroom without any great hazard of being observed (the glass being in a dark angle of the wall, between which and a large upright beam the observer had to thrust himself), but could, by applying his ear to the partition, ascertain with tolerable distinctness, their subject of conversation. The landlord of the house had not withdrawn his eye from this place of espial for five minutes, and Barney had only just returned from making the communication above related, when Fagin, in the course of his evening’s business, came into the bar to inquire after some of his young pupils.

“Hush!” said Barney: “stradegers id the next roob.”

“Strangers!” repeated the old man in a whisper.

“Ah! Ad rub uds too,” added Barney. “Frob the cuttry, but subthig in your way, or I’b bistaked.”

Fagin appeared to receive this communication with great interest.

Mounting a stool, he cautiously applied his eye to the pane of glass, from which secret post he could see Mr. Claypole taking cold beef from the dish, and porter from the pot, and administering homeopathic doses of both to Charlotte, who sat patiently by, eating and drinking at his pleasure.

“Aha!” he whispered, looking round to Barney, “I like that fellow’s looks. He’d be of use to us; he knows how to train the girl already. Don’t make as much noise as a mouse, my dear, and let me hear ’em talk—let me hear ’em.”

He again applied his eye to the glass, and turning his ear to the partition, listened attentively: with a subtle and eager look upon his face, that might have appertained to some old goblin.

“So I mean to be a gentleman,” said Mr. Claypole, kicking out his legs, and continuing a conversation, the commencement of which Fagin had arrived too late to hear. “No more jolly old coffins, Charlotte, but a gentleman’s life for me: and, if yer like, yer shall be a lady.”

“I should like that well enough, dear,” replied Charlotte; “but tills ain’t to be emptied every day, and people to get clear off after it.”

“Tills be blowed!” said Mr. Claypole; “there’s more things besides tills to be emptied.”

“What do you mean?” asked his companion.

“Pockets, women’s ridicules, houses, mail-coaches, banks!” said Mr. Claypole, rising with the porter.

“But you can’t do all that, dear,” said Charlotte.

“I shall look out to get into company with them as can,” replied Noah. “They’ll be able to make us useful some way or another. Why, you yourself are worth fifty women; I never see such a precious sly and deceitful creetur as yer can be when I let yer.”

“Lor, how nice it is to hear yer say so!” exclaimed Charlotte, imprinting a kiss upon his ugly face.

“There, that’ll do: don’t yer be too affectionate, in case I’m cross with yer,” said Noah, disengaging himself with great gravity. “I should like to be the captain of some band, and have the whopping of ’em, and follering ’em about, unbeknown to themselves. That would suit me, if there was good profit; and if we could only get in with some gentleman of this sort, I say it would be cheap at that twenty-pound note you’ve got—especially as we don’t very well know how to get rid of it ourselves.”

After expressing this opinion, Mr. Claypole looked into the porter-pot with an aspect of deep wisdom; and having well shaken its contents, nodded condescendingly to Charlotte, and took a draught, wherewith he appeared greatly refreshed. He was meditating another, when the sudden opening of the door, and the appearance of a stranger, interrupted him.

The stranger was Mr. Fagin. And very amiable he looked, and a very low bow he made, as he advanced, and setting himself down at the nearest table, ordered something to drink of the grinning Barney.

“A pleasant night, sir, but cool for the time of year,” said Fagin, rubbing his hands. “From the country, I see, sir?”

“How do yer see that?” asked Noah Claypole.

“We have not so much dust as that in London,” replied Fagin, pointing from Noah’s shoes to those of his companion, and from them to the two bundles.

“Yer a sharp feller,” said Noah. “Ha! ha! only hear that, Charlotte!”

“Why, one need be sharp in this town, my dear,” replied the Jew, sinking his voice to a confidential whisper; “and that’s the truth.”

Fagin followed up this remark by striking the side of his nose with his right forefinger—a gesture which Noah attempted to imitate, though not with complete success, in consequence of his own nose not being large enough for the purpose. However, Mr. Fagin seemed to interpret the endeavour as expressing a perfect coincidence with his opinion, and put about the liquor which Barney reappeared with, in a very friendly manner.

“Good stuff that,” observed Mr. Claypole, smacking his lips.

“Dear!” said Fagin. “A man need be always emptying a till, or a pocket, or a woman’s reticule, or a house, or a mail-coach, or a bank, if he drinks it regularly.”

Mr. Claypole no sooner heard this extract from his own remarks than he fell back in his chair, and looked from the Jew to Charlotte with a countenance of ashy paleness and excessive terror.

“Don’t mind me, my dear,” said Fagin, drawing his chair closer. “Ha! ha! it was lucky it was only me that heard you by chance. It was very lucky it was only me.”

“I didn’t take it,” stammered Noah, no longer stretching out his legs like an independent gentleman, but coiling them up as well as he could under his chair; “it was all her doing; yer’ve got it now, Charlotte, yer know yer have.”

“No matter who’s got it, or who did it, my dear,” replied Fagin, glancing, nevertheless, with a hawk’s eye at the girl and the two bundles. “I’m in that way myself, and I like you for it.”

“In what way?” asked Mr. Claypole, a little recovering.

“In that way of business,” rejoined Fagin; “and so are the people of the house. You’ve hit the right nail upon the head, and are as safe here as you could be. There is not a safer place in all this town than is the Cripples; that is, when I like to make it so. And I have taken a fancy to you and the young woman; so I’ve said the word, and you may make your minds easy.”

Noah Claypole’s mind might have been at ease after this assurance, but his body certainly was not; for he shuffled and writhed about, into various uncouth positions: eyeing his new friend meanwhile with mingled fear and suspicion.

“I’ll tell you more,” said Fagin, after he had reassured the girl, by dint of friendly nods and muttered encouragements. “I have got a friend that I think can gratify your darling wish, and put you in the right way, where you can take whatever department of the business you think will suit you best at first, and be taught all the others.”

“Yer speak as if yer were in earnest,” replied Noah.

“What advantage would it be to me to be anything else?” inquired Fagin, shrugging his shoulders. “Here! Let me have a word with you outside.”

“There’s no occasion to trouble ourselves to move,” said Noah, getting his legs by gradual degrees abroad again. “She’ll take the luggage upstairs the while. Charlotte, see to them bundles.”

This mandate, which had been delivered with great majesty, was obeyed without the slightest demur; and Charlotte made the best of her way off with the packages while Noah held the door open and watched her out.

“She’s kept tolerably well under, ain’t she?” he asked as he resumed his seat: in the tone of a keeper who had tamed some wild animal.

“Quite perfect,” rejoined Fagin, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re a genius, my dear.”

“Why, I suppose if I wasn’t, I shouldn’t be here,” replied Noah. “But, I say, she’ll be back if yer lose time.”

“Now, what do you think?” said Fagin. “If you was to like my friend, could you do better than join him?”

“Is he in a good way of business? that’s where it is!” responded Noah, winking one of his little eyes.

“The top of the tree; employs a power of hands; has the very best society in the profession.”

“Regular town-maders?” asked Mr. Claypole.

“Not a countryman among ’em; and I don’t think he’d take you, even on my recommendation, if he didn’t run rather short of assistants just now,” replied Fagin.

“Should I have to hand over?” said Noah, slapping his breeches-pocket.

“It couldn’t possibly be done without,” replied Fagin, in a most decided manner.

“Twenty pound, though—it’s a lot of money!”

“Not when it’s in a note you can’t get rid of,” retorted Fagin. “Number and date taken, I suppose? Payment stopped at the bank? Ah! It’s not worth much to him. It’ll have to go abroad, and he couldn’t sell it for a great deal in the market.”

“When could I see him?” asked Noah doubtfully.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Um!” said Noah. “What’s the wages?”

“Live like a gentleman—board and lodging, pipes and spirits free—half of all you earn, and half of all the young woman earns,” replied Mr. Fagin.

Whether Noah Claypole, whose rapacity was none of the least comprehensive, would have acceded even to these glowing terms, had he been a perfectly free agent, is very doubtful; but as he recollected that, in the event of his refusal, it was in the power of his new acquaintance to give him up to justice immediately (and more unlikely things had come to pass), he gradually relented, and said he thought that would suit him.

“But, yer see,” observed Noah, “as she will be able to do a good deal, I should like to take something very light.”

“A little fancy work?” suggested Fagin.

“Ah! something of that sort,” replied Noah. “What do you think would suit me now? Something not too trying for the strength, and not very dangerous, you know. That’s the sort of thing!”

“I heard you talk of something in the spy way upon the others, my dear,” said Fagin. “My friend wants somebody who would do that well, very much.”

“Why, I did mention that, and I shouldn’t mind turning my hand to it sometimes,” rejoined Mr. Claypole slowly; “but it wouldn’t pay by itself, you know.”

“That’s true!” observed the Jew, ruminating or pretending to ruminate. “No, it might not.”

“What do you think, then?” asked Noah, anxiously regarding him. “Something in the sneaking way, where it was pretty sure work, and not much more risk than being at home.”

“What do you think of the old ladies?” asked Fagin. “There’s a good deal of money made in snatching their bags and parcels, and running round the corner.”

“Don’t they holler out a good deal, and scratch sometimes?” asked Noah, shaking his head. “I don’t think that would answer my purpose. Ain’t there any other line open?”

“Stop!” said Fagin, laying his hand on Noah’s knee. “The kinchin lay.”

“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Claypole.

“The kinchins, my dear,” said Fagin, “is the young children that’s sent on errands by their mothers, with sixpences and shillings; and the lay is just to take their money away—they’ve always got it ready in their hands—then knock ’em into the kennel, and walk off very slow, as if there were nothing else the matter but a child fallen down and hurt itself. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Ha! ha!” roared Mr. Claypole, kicking up his legs in an ecstasy. “Lord, that’s the very thing!”

“To be sure it is,” replied Fagin; “and you can have a few good beats chalked out in Camden Town, and Battle Bridge, and neighborhoods like that, where they’re always going errands; and you can upset as many kinchins as you want, any hour in the day. Ha! ha! ha!”

With this, Fagin poked Mr. Claypole in the side, and they joined in a burst of laughter both long and loud.

“Well, that’s all right!” said Noah, when he had recovered himself, and Charlotte had returned. “What time tomorrow shall we say?”

“Will ten do?” asked Fagin, adding, as Mr. Claypole nodded assent, “What name shall I tell my good friend.”

“Mr. Bolter,” replied Noah, who had prepared himself for such emergency. “Mr. Morris Bolter. This is Mrs. Bolter.”

“Mrs. Bolter’s humble servant,” said Fagin, bowing with grotesque politeness. “I hope I shall know her better very shortly.”

“Do you hear the gentleman, Charlotte?” thundered Mr. Claypole.

“Yes, Noah, dear!” replied Mrs. Bolter, extending her hand.

“She calls me Noah, as a sort of fond way of talking,” said Mr. Morris Bolter, late Claypole, turning to Fagin. “You understand?”

“Oh yes, I understand—perfectly,” replied Fagin, telling the truth for once. “Good night! Good night!”

With many adieus and good wishes, Mr. Fagin went his way. Noah Claypole, bespeaking his good lady’s attention, proceeded to enlighten her relative to the arrangement he had made, with all that haughtiness and air of superiority, becoming, not only a member of the sterner sex, but a gentleman who appreciated the dignity of a special appointment on the kinchin lay, in London and its vicinity.

Chapter 43

Wherein Is Shown How the Artful Dodger Got Into Trouble

“And so it was you that was your own friend, was it?” asked Mr. Claypole, otherwise Bolter, when, by virtue of the compact entered into between them, he had removed next day to Fagin’s house. “ ’Cod, I thought as much last night!”

“Every man’s his own friend, my dear,” replied Fagin, with his most insinuating grin. “He hasn’t as good a one as himself anywhere.”

“Except sometimes,” replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a man of the world. “Some people are nobody’s enemies but their own, yer know.”

“Don’t believe that,” said Fagin. “When a man’s his own enemy, it’s only because he’s too much his own friend; not because he’s careful for everybody but himself. Pooh! pooh! There ain’t such a thing in nature.”

“There oughn’t to be, if there is,” replied Mr. Bolter.

“That stands to reason. Some conjurers say that number three is the magic number, and some say number seven. It’s neither, my friend, neither. It’s number one.”

“Ha! ha!” cried Mr. Bolter. “Number one forever.”

“In a little community like ours, my dear,” said Fagin, who felt it necessary to qualify this position, “we have a general number one, without considering me too as the same, and all the other young people.”

“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Mr. Bolter.

“You see,” pursued Fagin, affecting to disregard this interruption, “we are so mixed up together, and identified in our interests, that it must be so. For instance, it’s your object to take care of number one—meaning yourself.”

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Bolter. “Yer about right there.”

“Well! You can’t take care of yourself, number one, without taking care of me, number one.”

“Number two, you mean,” said Mr. Bolter, who was largely endowed with the quality of selfishness.

“No, I don’t!” retorted Fagin. “I’m of the same importance to you, as you are to yourself.”

“I say,” interrupted Mr. Bolter, “yer a very nice man, and I’m very fond of yer; but we ain’t quite so thick together, as all that comes to.”

“Only think,” said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching out his hands; “only consider. You’ve done what’s a very pretty thing, and what I love you for doing; but what at the same time would put the cravat round your throat, that’s so very easily tied and so very difficult to unloose—in plain English, the halter!”

Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt it inconveniently tight; and murmured an assent, qualified in tone but not in substance.

“The gallows,” continued Fagin, “the gallows, my dear, is an ugly finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has stopped many a bold fellow’s career on the broad highway. To keep in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with you.”

“Of course it is,” replied Mr. Bolter. “What do yer talk about such things for?”

“Only to show you my meaning clearly,” said the Jew, raising his eyebrows. “To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep my little business all snug, I depend upon you. The first is your number one, the second my number one. The more you value your number one, the more careful you must be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you at first—that a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.”

“That’s true,” rejoined Mr. Bolter, thoughtfully. “Oh! yer a cunning old codger!”

Mr. Fagin saw, with delight, that this tribute to his powers was no mere compliment, but that he had really impressed his recruit with a sense of his wily genius, which it was most important that he should entertain in the outset of their acquaintance. To strengthen an impression so desirable and useful, he followed up the blow by acquainting him, in some detail, with the magnitude and extent of his operations; blending truth and fiction together, as best served his purpose; and bringing both to bear, with so much art, that Mr. Bolter’s respect visibly increased, and became tempered, at the same time, with a degree of wholesome fear, which it was highly desirable to awaken.

“It’s this mutual trust we have in each other that consoles me under heavy losses,” said Fagin. “My best hand was taken from me, yesterday morning.”

“You don’t mean to say he died?” cried Mr. Bolter.

“No, no,” replied Fagin, “not so bad as that. Not quite so bad.”

“What, I suppose he was—”

“Wanted,” interposed Fagin. “Yes, he was wanted.”

“Very particular?” inquired Mr. Bolter.

“No,” replied Fagin, “not very. He was charged with attempting to pick a pocket, and they found a silver snuffbox on him—his own, my dear, his own, for he took snuff himself, and was very fond of it. They remanded him till today, for they thought they knew the owner. Ah! he was worth fifty boxes, and I’d give the price of as many to have him back. You should have known the Dodger, my dear; you should have known the Dodger.”

“Well, but I shall know him, I hope; don’t yer think so?” said Mr. Bolter.

“I’m doubtful about it,” replied Fagin, with a sigh. “If they don’t get any fresh evidence, it’ll only be a summary conviction, and we shall have him back again after six weeks or so; but, if they do, it’s a case of lagging. They know what a clever lad he is; he’ll be a lifer. They’ll make the Artful nothing less than a lifer.”

“What do you mean by lagging and a lifer?” demanded Mr. Bolter. “What’s the good of talking in that way to me; why don’t yer speak so as I can understand yer?”

Fagin was about to translate these mysterious expressions into the vulgar tongue; and, being interpreted, Mr. Bolter would have been informed that they represented that combination of words, “transportation for life,” when the dialogue was cut short by the entry of Master Bates, with his hands in his breeches-pockets, and his face twisted into a look of semi-comical woe.

“It’s all up, Fagin,” said Charley, when he and his new companion had been made known to each other.

“What do you mean?”

“They’ve found the gentleman as owns the box; two or three more’s a coming to ’dentify him; and the Artful’s booked for a passage out,” replied Master Bates. “I must have a full suit of mourning, Fagin, and a hatband, to wisit him in, afore he sets out upon his travels. To think of Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the Dodger—the Artful Dodger—going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box! I never thought he’d a done it under a gold watch, chain, and seals, at the lowest. Oh, why didn’t he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go out as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, without no honour nor glory!”

With this expression of feeling for his unfortunate friend, Master Bates sat himself on the nearest chair with an aspect of chagrin and despondency.

“What do you talk about his having neither honour nor glory for?” exclaimed Fagin, darting an angry look at his pupil. “Wasn’t he always top-sawyer among you all! Is there one of you that could touch him or come near him on any scent? Eh?”

“Not one,” replied Master Bates, in a voice rendered husky by regret; “not one.”

“Then what do you talk of?” replied Fagin angrily; “what are you blubbering for?”

“ ’Cause it isn’t on the record, is it?” said Charley, chafed into perfect defiance of his venerable friend by the current of his regrets; “ ’cause it can’t come out in the ’dictment; ’cause nobody will never know half of what he was. How will he stand in the Newgate Calendar? P’raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a blow it is!”

“Ha! ha!” cried Fagin, extending his right hand, and turning to Mr. Bolter in a fit of chuckling which shook him as though he had the palsy; “see what a pride they take in their profession, my dear. Ain’t it beautiful?”

Mr. Bolter nodded assent, and Fagin, after contemplating the grief of Charley Bates for some seconds with evident satisfaction, stepped up to that young gentleman and patted him on the shoulder.

“Never mind, Charley,” said Fagin soothingly; “it’ll come out, it’ll be sure to come out. They’ll all know what a clever fellow he was; he’ll show it himself, and not disgrace his old pals and teachers. Think how young he is, too! What a distinction, Charley, to be lagged at his time of life!”

“Well, it is a honour that is!” said Charley, a little consoled.

“He shall have all he wants,” continued the Jew. “He shall be kept in the Stone Jug, Charley, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman! With his beer every day, and money in his pocket to pitch and toss with, if he can’t spend it.”

“No, shall he though?” cried Charley Bates.

“Ay, that he shall,” replied Fagin, “and we’ll have a bigwig, Charley: one that’s got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes; and we’ll read it all in the papers—‘Artful Dodger—shrieks of laughter—here the court was convulsed’—eh, Charley, eh?”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Master Bates, “what a lark that would be, wouldn’t it, Fagin? I say, how the Artful would bother ’em, wouldn’t he?”

“Would!” cried Fagin. “He shall—he will!”

“Ah, to be sure, so he will,” repeated Charley, rubbing his hands.

“I think I see him now,” cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his pupil.

“So do I,” cried Charley Bates. “Ha! ha! ha! so do I. I see it all afore me, upon my soul I do, Fagin. What a game! What a regular game! All the bigwigs trying to look solemn, and Jack Dawkins addressing of ’em as intimate and comfortable as if he was the judge’s own son making a speech arter dinner—ha! ha! ha!”

In fact, Mr. Fagin had so well humoured his young friend’s eccentric disposition, that Master Bates, who had at first been disposed to consider the imprisoned Dodger rather in the light of a victim, now looked upon him as the chief actor in a scene of most uncommon and exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for the arrival of the time when his old companion should have so favourable an opportunity of displaying his abilities.

“We must know how he gets on today, by some handy means or other,” said Fagin. “Let me think.”

“Shall I go?” asked Charley.

“Not for the world,” replied Fagin. “Are you mad, my dear, stark mad, that you’d walk into the very place where—No, Charley, no. One is enough to lose at a time.”

“You don’t mean to go yourself, I suppose?” said Charley with a humorous leer.

“That wouldn’t quite fit,” replied Fagin, shaking his head.

“Then why don’t you send this new cove?” asked Master Bates, laying his hand on Noah’s arm. “Nobody knows him.”

“Why, if he didn’t mind—” observed Fagin.

“Mind!” interposed Charley. “What should he have to mind?”

“Really nothing, my dear,” said Fagin, turning to Mr. Bolter, “really nothing.”

“Oh, I dare say about that, yer know,” observed Noah, backing towards the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober alarm. “No, no—none of that. It’s not in my department, that ain’t.”

“Wot department has he got, Fagin?” inquired Master Bates, surveying Noah’s lank form with much disgust. “The cutting away when there’s anything wrong, and the eating all the wittles when there’s everything right; is that his branch?”

“Never mind,” retorted Mr. Bolter; “and don’t yer take liberties with yer superiors, little boy, or yer’ll find yerself in the wrong shop.”

Master Bates laughed so vehemently at this magnificent threat, that it was some time before Fagin could interpose, and represent to Mr. Bolter that he incurred no possible danger in visiting the police-office; that, inasmuch as no account of the little affair in which he had engaged, nor any description of his person, had yet been forwarded to the metropolis, it was very probable that he was not even suspected of having resorted to it for shelter; and that, if he were properly disguised, it would be as safe a spot for him to visit as any in London, inasmuch as it would be, of all places, the very last, to which he could be supposed likely to resort of his own free will.

Persuaded, in part, by these representations, but overborne in a much greater degree by his fear of Fagin, Mr. Bolter at length consented, with a very bad grace, to undertake the expedition. By Fagin’s directions, he immediately substituted for his own attire, a wagoner’s frock, velveteen breeches, and leather leggings: all of which articles the Jew had at hand. He was likewise furnished with a felt hat well garnished with turnpike tickets; and a carter’s whip. Thus equipped, he was to saunter into the office, as some country fellow from Covent Garden market might be supposed to do for the gratification of his curiosity; and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and rawboned a fellow as need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that he would look the part to perfection.

These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary signs and tokens by which to recognise the Artful Dodger, and was conveyed by Master Bates through dark and winding ways to within a very short distance of Bow Street. Having described the precise situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious directions how he was to walk straight up the passage, and when he got into the side, and pull off his hat as he went into the room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on alone, and promised to bide his return on the spot of their parting.

Noah Claypole, or Morris Bolter as the reader pleases, punctually followed the directions he had received, which—Master Bates being pretty well acquainted with the locality—were so exact that he was enabled to gain the magisterial presence without asking any question, or meeting with any interruption by the way.

He found himself jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women, who were huddled together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper end of which was a raised platform railed off from the rest, with a dock for the prisoners on the left hand against the wall, a box for the witnesses in the middle, and a desk for the magistrates on the right; the awful locality last named, being screened off by a partition which concealed the bench from the common gaze, and left the vulgar to imagine (if they could) the full majesty of justice.

There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding to their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions to a couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant over the table. A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail, tapping his nose listlessly with a large key, except when he repressed an undue tendency to conversation among the idlers, by proclaiming silence; or looked sternly up to bid some woman “Take that baby out,” when the gravity of justice was disturbed by feeble cries, half-smothered in the mother’s shawl, from some meagre infant. The room smelt close and unwholesome; the walls were dirt-discoloured; and the ceiling blackened. There was an old smoky bust over the mantelshelf, and a dusty clock above the dock—the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought; for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both, had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inanimate object that frowned upon it.

Noah looked eagerly about him for the Dodger; but although there were several women who would have done very well for that distinguished character’s mother or sister, and more than one man who might be supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father, nobody at all answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins was to be seen. He waited in a state of much suspense and uncertainty until the women, being committed for trial, went flaunting out; and then was quickly relieved by the appearance of another prisoner who he felt at once could be no other than the object of his visit.

It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his pocket, and his hat in his right hand, preceded the jailer, with a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in the dock, requested in an audible voice to know what he was placed in that ’ere disgraceful sitivation for.

“Hold your tongue, will you?” said the jailer.

“I’m an Englishman, ain’t I?” rejoined the Dodger. “Where are my priwileges?”

“You’ll get your privileges soon enough,” retorted the jailer, “and pepper with ’em.”

“We’ll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has got to say to the beaks, if I don’t,” replied Mr. Dawkins. “Now then! Wot is this here business? I shall thank the madg’strates to dispose of this here little affair, and not to keep me while they read the paper, for I’ve got an appointment with a genelman in the City, and as I am a man of my word and wery punctual in business matters, he’ll go away if I ain’t there to my time, and then pr’aps there won’t be an action for damage against them as kep me away. Oh no, certainly not!”

At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being very particular with a view to proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the jailer to communicate “the names of them two files as was on the bench.” Which so tickled the spectators, that they laughed almost as heartily as Master Bates could have done if he had heard the request.

“Silence there!” cried the jailer.

“What is this?” inquired one of the magistrates.

“A pick-pocketing case, your worship.”

“Has the boy ever been here before?”

“He ought to have been, a many times,” replied the jailer. “He has been pretty well everywhere else. I know him well, your worship.”

“Oh! you know me, do you?” cried the Artful, making a note of the statement. “Wery good. That’s a case of deformation of character, any way.”

Here there was another laugh, and another cry of silence.

“Now then, where are the witnesses?” said the clerk.

“Ah! that’s right,” added the Dodger. “Where are they? I should like to see ’em.”

This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped forward who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an unknown gentleman in a crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief therefrom, which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back again, after trying it on his own countenance. For this reason, he took the Dodger into custody as soon as he could get near him, and the said Dodger, being searched, had upon his person a silver snuffbox, with the owner’s name engraved upon the lid. This gentleman had been discovered on reference to the Court Guide, and being then and there present, swore that the snuffbox was his, and that he had missed it on the previous day, the moment he had disengaged himself from the crowd before referred to. He had also remarked a young gentleman in the throng, particularly active in making his way about, and that young gentleman was the prisoner before him.

“Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?” said the magistrate.

“I wouldn’t abase myself by descending to hold no conversation with him,” replied the Dodger.

“Have you anything to say at all?”

“Do you hear his worship ask if you’ve anything to say?” inquired the jailer, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Dodger, looking up with an air of abstraction. “Did you redress yourself to me, my man?”

“I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, your worship,” observed the officer with a grin. “Do you mean to say anything, you young shaver?”

“No,” replied the Dodger, “not here, for this ain’t the shop for justice: besides which, my attorney is a-breakfasting this morning with the Wice President of the House of Commons; but I shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery numerous and ’spectable circle of acquaintance as’ll make them beaks wish they’d never been born, or that they’d got their footmen to hang ’em up to their own hat-pegs, afore they let ’em come out this morning to try it on upon me. I’ll—”

“There! He’s fully committed!” interposed the clerk. “Take him away.”

“Come on,” said the jailer.

“Oh ah! I’ll come on,” replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with the palm of his hand. “Ah! (to the Bench) it’s no use your looking frightened; I won’t show you no mercy, not a ha’porth of it. You’ll pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn’t be you for something! I wouldn’t go free, now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask me. Here, carry me off to prison! Take me away!”

With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off by the collar; threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parliamentary business of it; and then grinning in the officer’s face, with great glee and self-approval.

Having seen him locked up by himself in a little cell, Noah made the best of his way back to where he had left Master Bates. After waiting here some time, he was joined by that young gentleman, who had prudently abstained from showing himself until he had looked carefully abroad from a snug retreat, and ascertained that his new friend had not been followed by any impertinent person.

The two hastened back together, to bear to Mr. Fagin the animating news that the Dodger was doing full justice to his bringing-up, and establishing for himself a glorious reputation.

Chapter 44

The Time Arrives for Nancy to Redeem Her Pledge to Rose Maylie. She Fails

Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge of the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind. She remembered that both the crafty Jew and the brutal Sikes had confided to her schemes, which had been hidden from all others: in the full confidence that she was trustworthy and beyond the reach of their suspicion. Vile as those schemes were, desperate as were their originators, and bitter as were her feelings towards Fagin, who had led her, step by step, deeper and deeper down into an abyss of crime and misery, whence was no escape; still, there were times when, even towards him, she felt some relenting, lest her disclosure should bring him within the iron grasp he had so long eluded, and he should fall at last—richly as he merited such a fate—by her hand.

But, these were the mere wanderings of a mind unable wholly to detach itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to fix itself steadily on one object, and resolved not to be turned aside by any consideration. Her fears for Sikes would have been more powerful inducements to recoil while there was yet time; but she had stipulated that her secret should be rigidly kept, she had dropped no clue which could lead to his discovery, she had refused, even for his sake, a refuge from all the guilt and wretchedness that encompassed her—and what more could she do! She was resolved.

Though all her mental struggles terminated in this conclusion, they forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left their traces too. She grew pale and thin, even within a few days. At times, she took no heed of what was passing before her, or no part in conversations where once, she would have been the loudest. At other times, she laughed without merriment, and was noisy without cause or meaning. At others—often within a moment afterwards—she sat silent and dejected, brooding with her head upon her hands, while the very effort by which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even these indications, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were occupied with matters very different and distant from those in the course of discussion by her companions.

It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the hour. Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen. The girl looked up from the low seat on which she crouched, and listened too. Eleven.

“An hour this side of midnight,” said Sikes, raising the blind to look out and returning to his seat. “Dark and heavy it is too. A good night for business this.”

“Ah!” replied Fagin. “What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there’s none quite ready to be done.”

“You’re right for once,” replied Sikes gruffly. “It is a pity, for I’m in the humour too.”

Fagin sighed, and shook his head despondingly.

“We must make up for lost time when we’ve got things into a good train. That’s all I know,” said Sikes.

“That’s the way to talk, my dear,” replied Fagin, venturing to pat him on the shoulder. “It does me good to hear you.”

“Does you good, does it!” cried Sikes. “Well, so be it.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this concession. “You’re like yourself tonight, Bill. Quite like yourself.”

“I don’t feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on my shoulder, so take it away,” said Sikes, casting off the Jew’s hand.

“It makes you nervous, Bill—reminds you of being nabbed, does it?” said Fagin, determined not to be offended.

“Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,” returned Sikes. “There never was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose he is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old ’un without any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn’t wonder at, a bit.”

Fagin offered no reply to this compliment: but, pulling Sikes by the sleeve, pointed his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage of the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and was now leaving the room.

“Hallo!” cried Sikes. “Nance. Where’s the gal going to at this time of night?”

“Not far.”

“What answer’s that?” retorted Sikes. “Do you hear me?”

“I don’t know where,” replied the girl.

“Then I do,” said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinacy than because he had any real objection to the girl going where she listed. “Nowhere. Sit down.”

“I’m not well. I told you that before,” rejoined the girl. “I want a breath of air.”

“Put your head out of the winder,” replied Sikes.

“There’s not enough there,” said the girl. “I want it in the street.”

“Then you won’t have it,” replied Sikes. With which assurance he rose, locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet from her head, flung it up to the top of an old press. “There,” said the robber. “Now stop quietly where you are, will you?”

“It’s not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,” said the girl turning very pale. “What do you mean, Bill? Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Know what I’m—Oh!” cried Sikes, turning to Fagin, “she’s out of her senses, you know, or she daren’t talk to me in that way.”

“You’ll drive me on to something desperate,” muttered the girl, placing both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some violent outbreak. “Let me go, will you—this minute—this instant.”

“No!” said Sikes.

“Tell him to let me go, Fagin. He had better. It’ll be better for him. Do you hear me?” cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the ground.

“Hear you!” repeated Sikes turning round in his chair to confront her. “Aye! And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog shall have such a grip on your throat as’ll tear some of that screaming voice out. Wot has come over you, you jade! Wot is it?”

“Let me go,” said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting herself down on the floor, before the door, she said, “Bill, let me go; you don’t know what you are doing. You don’t, indeed. For only one hour—do—do!”

“Cut my limbs off one by one!” cried Sikes, seizing her roughly by the arm, “If I don’t think the gal’s stark raving mad. Get up.”

“Not till you let me go—not till you let me go—Never—never!” screamed the girl. Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his opportunity, and suddenly pinioning her hands dragged her, struggling and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room adjoining, where he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held her down by force. She struggled and implored by turns until twelve o’clock had struck, and then, wearied and exhausted, ceased to contest the point any further. With a caution, backed by many oaths, to make no more efforts to go out that night, Sikes left her to recover at leisure and rejoined Fagin.

“Whew!” said the housebreaker, wiping the perspiration from his face. “Wot a precious strange gal that is!”

“You may say that, Bill,” replied Fagin thoughtfully. “You may say that.”

“Wot did she take it into her head to go out tonight for, do you think?” asked Sikes. “Come; you should know her better than me. Wot does it mean?”

“Obstinacy; woman’s obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.”

“Well, I suppose it is,” growled Sikes. “I thought I had tamed her, but she’s as bad as ever.”

“Worse,” said Fagin thoughtfully. “I never knew her like this, for such a little cause.”

“Nor I,” said Sikes. “I think she’s got a touch of that fever in her blood yet, and it won’t come out—eh?”

“Like enough.”

“I’ll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she’s took that way again,” said Sikes.

Fagin nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.

“She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof,” said Sikes. “We was poor too, all the time, and I think, one way or other, it’s worried and fretted her; and that being shut up here so long has made her restless—eh?”

“That’s it, my dear,” replied the Jew in a whisper. “Hush!”

As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed her former seat. Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked herself to and fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time, burst out laughing.

“Why, now she’s on the other tack!” exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of excessive surprise on his companion.

Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in a few minutes, the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took up his hat and bade him good night. He paused when he reached the room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody would light him down the dark stairs.

“Light him down,” said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. “It’s a pity he should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sightseers. Show him a light.”

Nancy followed the old man downstairs, with a candle. When they reached the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close to the girl, said, in a whisper.

“What is it, Nancy, dear?”

“What do you mean?” replied the girl, in the same tone.

“The reason of all this,” replied Fagin. “If he”—he pointed with his skinny forefinger up the stairs—“is so hard with you (he’s a brute, Nance, a brute-beast), why don’t you—”

“Well?” said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.

“No matter just now. We’ll talk of this again. You have a friend in me, Nance; a staunch friend. I have the means at hand, quiet and close. If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog—like a dog! worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes—come to me. I say, come to me. He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me of old, Nance.”

“I know you well,” replied the girl, without manifesting the least emotion. “Good night.”

She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said good night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them.

Fagin walked towards his own home, intent upon the thoughts that were working within his brain. He had conceived the idea—not from what had just passed, though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by degrees—that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker’s brutality, had conceived an attachment for some new friend. Her altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference to the interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous, and, added to these, her desperate impatience to leave home that night at a particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him at least, almost matter of certainty. The object of this new liking was not among his myrmidons. He would be a valuable acquisition with such an assistant as Nancy, and must (thus Fagin argued) be secured without delay.

There was another, and a darker object, to be gained. Sikes knew too much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less, because the wounds were hidden. The girl must know, well, that if she shook him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely wreaked—to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life—on the object of her more recent fancy.

“With a little persuasion,” thought Fagin, “what more likely than that she would consent to poison him? Women have done such things, and worse, to secure the same object before now. There would be the dangerous villain: the man I hate: gone; another secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime to back it, unlimited.”

These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short time he sat alone, in the housebreaker’s room; and with them uppermost in his thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded him, of sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting. There was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to understand his meaning. The girl clearly comprehended it. Her glance at parting showed that.

But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. “How,” thought Fagin, as he crept homeward, “can I increase my influence with her? What new power can I acquire?”

Such brains are fertile in expedients. If, without extracting a confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs, could he not secure her compliance?

“I can,” said Fagin, almost aloud. “She durst not refuse me then. Not for her life, not for her life! I have it all. The means are ready, and shall be set to work. I shall have you yet!”

He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards the spot where he had left the bolder villain; and went on his way: busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment, which he wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.

Chapter 45

Noah Claypole Is Employed by Fagin on a Secret Mission

The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.

“Bolter,” said Fagin, drawing up a chair and seating himself opposite Morris Bolter.

“Well, here I am,” returned Noah. “What’s the matter? Don’t yer ask me to do anything till I have done eating. That’s a great fault in this place. Yer never get time enough over yer meals.”

“You can talk as you eat, can’t you?” said Fagin, cursing his dear young friend’s greediness from the very bottom of his heart.

“Oh yes, I can talk. I get on better when I talk,” said Noah, cutting a monstrous slice of bread. “Where’s Charlotte?”

“Out,” said Fagin. “I sent her out this morning with the other young woman, because I wanted us to be alone.”

“Oh!” said Noah. “I wish yer’d ordered her to make some buttered toast first. Well. Talk away. Yer won’t interrupt me.”

There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him, as he had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great deal of business.

“You did well yesterday, my dear,” said Fagin. “Beautiful! Six shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day! The kinchin lay will be a fortune to you.”

“Don’t you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can,” said Mr. Bolter.

“No, no, my dear. The pint-pots were great strokes of genius: but the milk-can was a perfect masterpiece.”

“Pretty well, I think, for a beginner,” remarked Mr. Bolter complacently. “The pots I took off airy railings, and the milk-can was standing by itself outside a public-house. I thought it might get rusty with the rain, or catch cold, yer know. Eh? Ha! ha! ha!”

Fagin affected to laugh very heartily; and Mr. Bolter having had his laugh out, took a series of large bites, which finished his first hunk of bread and butter, and assisted himself to a second.

“I want you, Bolter,” said Fagin, leaning over the table, “to do a piece of work for me, my dear, that needs great care and caution.”

“I say,” rejoined Bolter, “don’t yer go shoving me into danger, or sending me to any more o’ yer police-offices. That don’t suit me, that don’t; and so I tell yer.”

“There’s not the smallest danger in it—not the very smallest,” said the Jew; “it’s only to dodge a woman.”

“An old woman?” demanded Mr. Bolter.

“A young one,” replied Fagin.

“I can do that pretty well, I know,” said Bolter. “I was a regular cunning sneak when I was at school. What am I to dodge her for? Not to—”

“Not to do anything, but to tell me where she goes, who she sees, and, if possible, what she says; to remember the street, if it is a street, or the house, if it is a house; and to bring me back all the information you can.”

“What’ll yer give me?” asked Noah, setting down his cup, and looking his employer, eagerly, in the face.

“If you do it well, a pound, my dear. One pound,” said Fagin, wishing to interest him in the scent as much as possible. “And that’s what I never gave yet, for any job of work where there wasn’t valuable consideration to be gained.”

“Who is she?” inquired Noah.

“One of us.”

“Oh Lor!” cried Noah, curling up his nose. “Yer doubtful of her, are yer?”

“She has found out some new friends, my dear, and I must know who they are,” replied Fagin.

“I see,” said Noah. “Just to have the pleasure of knowing them, if they’re respectable people, eh? Ha! ha! ha! I’m your man.”

“I knew you would be,” cried Fagin, elated by the success of his proposal.

“Of course, of course,” replied Noah. “Where is she? Where am I to wait for her? Where am I to go?”

“All that, my dear, you shall hear from me. I’ll point her out at the proper time,” said Fagin. “You keep ready, and leave the rest to me.”

That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted and equipped in his carter’s dress: ready to turn out at a word from Fagin. Six nights passed—six long weary nights—and on each, Fagin came home with a disappointed face, and briefly intimated that it was not yet time. On the seventh, he returned earlier, and with an exultation he could not conceal. It was Sunday.

“She goes abroad tonight,” said Fagin, “and on the right errand, I’m sure; for she has been alone all day, and the man she is afraid of will not be back much before daybreak. Come with me. Quick!”

Noah started up without saying a word; for the Jew was in a state of such intense excitement that it infected him. They left the house stealthily, and hurrying through a labyrinth of streets, arrived at length before a public-house, which Noah recognised as the same in which he had slept, on the night of his arrival in London.

It was past eleven o’clock, and the door was closed. It opened softly on its hinges as Fagin gave a low whistle. They entered, without noise; and the door was closed behind them.

Scarcely venturing to whisper, but substituting dumb show for words, Fagin, and the young Jew who had admitted them, pointed out the pane of glass to Noah, and signed to him to climb up and observe the person in the adjoining room.

“Is that the woman?” he asked, scarcely above his breath.

Fagin nodded yes.

“I can’t see her face well,” whispered Noah. “She is looking down, and the candle is behind her.”

“Stay there,” whispered Fagin. He signed to Barney, who withdrew. In an instant, the lad entered the room adjoining, and, under pretence of snuffing the candle, moved it in the required position, and, speaking to the girl, caused her to raise her face.

“I see her now,” cried the spy.

“Plainly?”

“I should know her among a thousand.”

He hastily descended, as the room-door opened, and the girl came out. Fagin drew him behind a small partition which was curtained off, and they held their breaths as she passed within a few feet of their place of concealment, and emerged by the door at which they had entered.

“Hist!” cried the lad who held the door. “Dow.”

Noah exchanged a look with Fagin, and darted out.

“To the left,” whispered the lad; “take the left had, and keep od the other side.”

He did so; and, by the light of the lamps, saw the girl’s retreating figure, already at some distance before him. He advanced as near as he considered prudent, and kept on the opposite side of the street, the better to observe her motions. She looked nervously round, twice or thrice, and once stopped to let two men who were following close behind her, pass on. She seemed to gather courage as she advanced, and to walk with a steadier and firmer step. The spy preserved the same relative distance between them, and followed: with his eye upon her.

Chapter 46

The Appointment Kept

The church clocks chimed three quarters past eleven, as two figures emerged on London Bridge. One, which advanced with a swift and rapid step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly about her as though in quest of some expected object; the other figure was that of a man, who slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find, and, at some distance, accommodated his pace to hers: stopping when she stopped: and as she moved again, creeping stealthily on: but never allowing himself, in the ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps. Thus, they crossed the bridge, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, when the woman, apparently disappointed in her anxious scrutiny of the foot-passengers, turned back. The movement was sudden; but he who watched her, was not thrown off his guard by it; for, shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of the bridge, and leaning over the parapet the better to conceal his figure, he suffered her to pass on the opposite pavement. When she was about the same distance in advance as she had been before, he slipped quietly down, and followed her again. At nearly the centre of the bridge, she stopped. The man stopped too.

It was a very dark night. The day had been unfavourable, and at that hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there were, hurried quickly past: very possibly without seeing, but certainly without noticing, either the woman, or the man who kept her in view. Their appearance was not calculated to attract the importunate regards of such of London’s destitute population, as chanced to take their way over the bridge that night in search of some cold arch or doorless hovel wherein to lay their heads; they stood there in silence: neither speaking nor spoken to, by anyone who passed.

A mist hung over the river, deepening the red glare of the fires that burnt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs, and rendering darker and more indistinct the murky buildings on the banks. The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side, rose heavy and dull from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon water too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of old Saint Saviour’s Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom; but the forest of shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of churches above, were nearly all hidden from sight.

The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro—closely watched meanwhile by her hidden observer—when the heavy bell of St. Paul’s tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the crowded city. The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all.

The hour had not struck two minutes, when a young lady, accompanied by a grey-haired gentleman, alighted from a hackney-carriage within a short distance of the bridge, and, having dismissed the vehicle, walked straight towards it. They had scarcely set foot upon its pavement, when the girl started, and immediately made towards them.

They walked onward, looking about them with the air of persons who entertained some very slight expectation which had little chance of being realised, when they were suddenly joined by this new associate. They halted with an exclamation of surprise, but suppressed it immediately; for a man in the garments of a countryman came close up—brushed against them, indeed—at that precise moment.

“Not here,” said Nancy hurriedly, “I am afraid to speak to you here. Come away—out of the public road—down the steps yonder!”

As she uttered these words, and indicated, with her hand, the direction in which she wished them to proceed, the countryman looked round, and roughly asking what they took up the whole pavement for, passed on.

The steps to which the girl had pointed, were those which, on the Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint Saviour’s Church, form a landing-stairs from the river. To this spot, the man bearing the appearance of a countryman, hastened unobserved; and after a moment’s survey of the place, he began to descend.

These stairs are a part of the bridge; they consist of three flights. Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone wall on the left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames. At this point the lower steps widen: so that a person turning that angle of the wall, is necessarily unseen by any others on the stairs who chance to be above him, if only a step. The countryman looked hastily round, when he reached this point; and as there seemed no better place of concealment, and, the tide being out, there was plenty of room, he slipped aside, with his back to the pilaster, and there waited: pretty certain that they would come no lower, and that even if he could not hear what was said, he could follow them again, with safety.

So tardily stole the time in this lonely place, and so eager was the spy to penetrate the motives of an interview so different from what he had been led to expect, that he more than once gave the matter up for lost, and persuaded himself, either that they had stopped far above, or had resorted to some entirely different spot to hold their mysterious conversation. He was on the point of emerging from his hiding-place, and regaining the road above, when he heard the sound of footsteps, and directly afterwards of voices almost close at his ear.

He drew himself straight upright against the wall, and, scarcely breathing, listened attentively.

“This is far enough,” said a voice, which was evidently that of the gentleman. “I will not suffer the young lady to go any farther. Many people would have distrusted you too much to have come even so far, but you see I am willing to humour you.”

“To humour me!” cried the voice of the girl whom he had followed. “You’re considerate, indeed, sir. To humour me! Well, well, it’s no matter.”

“Why, for what,” said the gentleman in a kinder tone, “for what purpose can you have brought us to this strange place? Why not have let me speak to you, above there, where it is light, and there is something stirring, instead of bringing us to this dark and dismal hole?”

“I told you before,” replied Nancy, “that I was afraid to speak to you there. I don’t know why it is,” said the girl, shuddering, “but I have such a fear and dread upon me tonight that I can hardly stand.”

“A fear of what?” asked the gentleman, who seemed to pity her.

“I scarcely know of what,” replied the girl. “I wish I did. Horrible thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them, and a fear that has made me burn as if I was on fire, have been upon me all day. I was reading a book tonight, to wile the time away, and the same things came into the print.”

“Imagination,” said the gentleman, soothing her.

“No imagination,” replied the girl in a hoarse voice. “I’ll swear I saw ‘coffin’ written in every page of the book in large black letters—aye, and they carried one close to me, in the streets tonight.”

“There is nothing unusual in that,” said the gentleman. “They have passed me often.”

“Real ones,” rejoined the girl. “This was not.”

There was something so uncommon in her manner, that the flesh of the concealed listener crept as he heard the girl utter these words, and the blood chilled within him. He had never experienced a greater relief than in hearing the sweet voice of the young lady as she begged her to be calm, and not allow herself to become the prey of such fearful fancies.

“Speak to her kindly,” said the young lady to her companion. “Poor creature! She seems to need it.”

“Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,” cried the girl. “Oh, dear lady, why ar’n’t those who claim to be God’s own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?”

“Ah!” said the gentleman. “A Turk turns his face, after washing it well, to the East, when he says his prayers; these good people, after giving their faces such a rub against the World as to take the smiles off, turn with no less regularity, to the darkest side of Heaven. Between the Mussulman and the Pharisee, commend me to the first!”

These words appeared to be addressed to the young lady, and were perhaps uttered with the view of affording Nancy time to recover herself. The gentleman, shortly afterwards, addressed himself to her.

“You were not here last Sunday night,” he said.

“I couldn’t come,” replied Nancy; “I was kept by force.”

“By whom?”

“Him that I told the young lady of before.”

“You were not suspected of holding any communication with anybody on the subject which has brought us here tonight, I hope?” asked the old gentleman.

“No,” replied the girl, shaking her head. “It’s not very easy for me to leave him unless he knows why; I couldn’t give him a drink of laudanum before I came away.”

“Did he awake before you returned?” inquired the gentleman.

“No; and neither he nor any of them suspect me.”

“Good,” said the gentleman. “Now listen to me.”

“I am ready,” replied the girl, as he paused for a moment.

“This young lady,” the gentleman began, “has communicated to me, and to some other friends who can be safely trusted, what you told her nearly a fortnight since. I confess to you that I had doubts, at first, whether you were to be implicitly relied upon, but now I firmly believe you are.”

“I am,” said the girl earnestly.

“I repeat that I firmly believe it. To prove to you that I am disposed to trust you, I tell you without reserve, that we propose to extort the secret, whatever it may be, from the fear of this man Monks. But if—if—” said the gentleman, “he cannot be secured, or, if secured, cannot be acted upon as we wish, you must deliver up the Jew.”

“Fagin,” cried the girl, recoiling.

“That man must be delivered up by you,” said the gentleman.

“I will not do it! I will never do it!” replied the girl. “Devil that he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, I will never do that.”

“You will not?” said the gentleman, who seemed fully prepared for this answer.

“Never!” returned the girl.

“Tell me why?”

“For one reason,” rejoined the girl firmly, “for one reason, that the lady knows and will stand by me in, I know she will, for I have her promise: and for this other reason, besides, that, bad life as he has led, I have led a bad life too; there are many of us who have kept the same courses together, and I’ll not turn upon them, who might—any of them—have turned upon me, but didn’t, bad as they are.”

“Then,” said the gentleman, quickly, as if this had been the point he had been aiming to attain; “put Monks into my hands, and leave him to me to deal with.”

“What if he turns against the others?”

“I promise you that in that case, if the truth is forced from him, there the matter will rest; there must be circumstances in Oliver’s little history which it would be painful to drag before the public eye, and if the truth is once elicited, they shall go scot free.”

“And if it is not?” suggested the girl.

“Then,” pursued the gentleman, “this Fagin shall not be brought to justice without your consent. In such a case I could show you reasons, I think, which would induce you to yield it.”

“Have I the lady’s promise for that?” asked the girl.

“You have,” replied Rose. “My true and faithful pledge.”

“Monks would never learn how you knew what you do?” said the girl, after a short pause.

“Never,” replied the gentleman. “The intelligence should be brought to bear upon him, that he could never even guess.”

“I have been a liar, and among liars from a little child,” said the girl after another interval of silence, “but I will take your words.”

After receiving an assurance from both, that she might safely do so, she proceeded in a voice so low that it was often difficult for the listener to discover even the purport of what she said, to describe, by name and situation, the public-house whence she had been followed that night. From the manner in which she occasionally paused, it appeared as if the gentleman were making some hasty notes of the information she communicated. When she had thoroughly explained the localities of the place, the best position from which to watch it without exciting observation, and the night and hour on which Monks was most in the habit of frequenting it, she seemed to consider for a few moments, for the purpose of recalling his features and appearances more forcibly to her recollection.

“He is tall,” said the girl, “and a strongly made man, but not stout; he has a lurking walk; and as he walks, constantly looks over his shoulder, first on one side, and then on the other. Don’t forget that, for his eyes are sunk in his head so much deeper than any other man’s, that you might almost tell him by that alone. His face is dark, like his hair and eyes; and, although he can’t be more than six or eight and twenty, withered and haggard. His lips are often discoloured and disfigured with the marks of teeth; for he has desperate fits, and sometimes even bites his hands and covers them with wounds—why did you start?” said the girl, stopping suddenly.

The gentleman replied, in a hurried manner, that he was not conscious of having done so, and begged her to proceed.

“Part of this,” said the girl, “I have drawn out from other people at the house I tell you of, for I have only seen him twice, and both times he was covered up in a large cloak. I think that’s all I can give you to know him by. Stay though,” she added. “Upon his throat: so high that you can see a part of it below his neckerchief when he turns his face: there is—”

“A broad red mark, like a burn or scald?” cried the gentleman.

“How’s this?” said the girl. “You know him!”

The young lady uttered a cry of surprise, and for a few moments they were so still that the listener could distinctly hear them breathe.

“I think I do,” said the gentleman, breaking silence. “I should by your description. We shall see. Many people are singularly like each other. It may not be the same.”

As he expressed himself to this effect, with assumed carelessness, he took a step or two nearer the concealed spy, as the latter could tell from the distinctness with which he heard him mutter, “It must be he!”

“Now,” he said, returning: so it seemed by the sound: to the spot where he had stood before, “you have given us most valuable assistance, young woman, and I wish you to be the better for it. What can I do to serve you?”

“Nothing,” replied Nancy.

“You will not persist in saying that,” rejoined the gentleman, with a voice and emphasis of kindness that might have touched a much harder and more obdurate heart. “Think now. Tell me.”

“Nothing, sir,” rejoined the girl, weeping. “You can do nothing to help me. I am past all hope, indeed.”

“You put yourself beyond its pale,” said the gentleman. “The past has been a dreary waste with you, of youthful energies misspent, and such priceless treasures lavished, as the Creator bestows but once and never grants again, but, for the future, you may hope. I do not say that it is in our power to offer you peace of heart and mind, for that must come as you seek it; but a quiet asylum, either in England, or, if you fear to remain here, in some foreign country, it is not only within the compass of our ability but our most anxious wish to secure you. Before the dawn of morning, before this river wakes to the first glimpse of daylight, you shall be placed as entirely beyond the reach of your former associates, and leave as utter an absence of all trace behind you, as if you were to disappear from the earth this moment. Come! I would not have you go back to exchange one word with any old companion, or take one look at any old haunt, or breathe the very air which is pestilence and death to you. Quit them all, while there is time and opportunity!”

“She will be persuaded now,” cried the young lady. “She hesitates, I am sure.”

“I fear not, my dear,” said the gentleman.

“No sir, I do not,” replied the girl, after a short struggle. “I am chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I cannot leave it. I must have gone too far to turn back—and yet I don’t know, for if you had spoken to me so, some time ago, I should have laughed it off. But,” she said, looking hastily round, “this fear comes over me again. I must go home.”

“Home!” repeated the young lady, with great stress upon the word.

“Home, lady,” rejoined the girl. “To such a home as I have raised for myself with the work of my whole life. Let us part. I shall be watched or seen. Go! Go! If I have done you any service all I ask is, that you leave me, and let me go my way alone.”

“It is useless,” said the gentleman, with a sigh. “We compromise her safety, perhaps, by staying here. We may have detained her longer than she expected already.”

“Yes, yes,” urged the girl. “You have.”

“What,” cried the young lady, “can be the end of this poor creature’s life!”

“What!” repeated the girl. “Look before you, lady. Look at that dark water. How many times do you read of such as I who spring into the tide, and leave no living thing, to care for, or bewail them. It may be years hence, or it may be only months, but I shall come to that at last.”

“Do not speak thus, pray,” returned the young lady, sobbing.

“It will never reach your ears, dear lady, and God forbid such horrors should!” replied the girl. “Good night, good night!”

The gentleman turned away.

“This purse,” cried the young lady. “Take it for my sake, that you may have some resource in an hour of need and trouble.”

“No!” replied the girl. “I have not done this for money. Let me have that to think of. And yet—give me something that you have worn: I should like to have something—no, no, not a ring—your gloves or handkerchief—anything that I can keep, as having belonged to you, sweet lady. There. Bless you! God bless you. Good night, good night!”

The violent agitation of the girl, and the apprehension of some discovery which would subject her to ill-usage and violence, seemed to determine the gentleman to leave her, as she requested.

The sound of retreating footsteps were audible and the voices ceased.

The two figures of the young lady and her companion soon afterwards appeared upon the bridge. They stopped at the summit of the stairs.

“Hark!” cried the young lady, listening. “Did she call! I thought I heard her voice.”

“No, my love,” replied Mr. Brownlow, looking sadly back. “She has not moved, and will not till we are gone.”

Rose Maylie lingered, but the old gentleman drew her arm through his, and led her, with gentle force, away. As they disappeared, the girl sunk down nearly at her full length upon one of the stone stairs, and vented the anguish of her heart in bitter tears.

After a time she arose, and with feeble and tottering steps ascended the street. The astonished listener remained motionless on his post for some minutes afterwards, and having ascertained, with many cautious glances round him, that he was again alone, crept slowly from his hiding-place, and returned, stealthily and in the shade of the wall, in the same manner as he had descended.

Peeping out, more than once, when he reached the top, to make sure that he was unobserved, Noah Claypole darted away at his utmost speed, and made for the Jew’s house as fast as his legs would carry him.

Chapter 47

Fatal Consequences

It was nearly two hours before daybreak; that time which in the autumn of the year, may be truly called the dead of night; when the streets are silent and deserted; when even sounds appear to slumber, and profligacy and riot have staggered home to dream; it was at this still and silent hour, that Fagin sat watching in his old lair, with face so distorted and pale, and eyes so red and bloodshot, that he looked less like a man, than like some hideous phantom, moist from the grave, and worried by an evil spirit.

He sat crouching over a cold hearth, wrapped in an old torn coverlet, with his face turned towards a wasting candle that stood upon a table by his side. His right hand was raised to his lips, and as, absorbed in thought, he hit his long black nails, he disclosed among his toothless gums a few such fangs as should have been a dog’s or rat’s.

Stretched upon a mattress on the floor, lay Noah Claypole, fast asleep. Towards him the old man sometimes directed his eyes for an instant, and then brought them back again to the candle; which with a long-burnt wick drooping almost double, and hot grease falling down in clots upon the table, plainly showed that his thoughts were busy elsewhere.

Indeed they were. Mortification at the overthrow of his notable scheme; hatred of the girl who had dared to palter with strangers; and utter distrust of the sincerity of her refusal to yield him up; bitter disappointment at the loss of his revenge on Sikes; the fear of detection, and ruin, and death; and a fierce and deadly rage kindled by all; these were the passionate considerations which, following close upon each other with rapid and ceaseless whirl, shot through the brain of Fagin, as every evil thought and blackest purpose lay working at his heart.

He sat without changing his attitude in the least, or appearing to take the smallest heed of time, until his quick ear seemed to be attracted by a footstep in the street.

“At last,” he muttered, wiping his dry and fevered mouth. “At last!”

The bell rang gently as he spoke. He crept upstairs to the door, and presently returned accompanied by a man muffled to the chin, who carried a bundle under one arm. Sitting down and throwing back his outer coat, the man displayed the burly frame of Sikes.

“There!” he said, laying the bundle on the table. “Take care of that, and do the most you can with it. It’s been trouble enough to get; I thought I should have been here, three hours ago.”

Fagin laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the cupboard, sat down again without speaking. But he did not take his eyes off the robber, for an instant, during this action; and now that they sat over against each other, face to face, he looked fixedly at him, with his lips quivering so violently, and his face so altered by the emotions which had mastered him, that the housebreaker involuntarily drew back his chair, and surveyed him with a look of real affright.

“Wot now?” cried Sikes. “Wot do you look at a man so for?”

Fagin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air; but his passion was so great, that the power of speech was for the moment gone.

“Damme!” said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm. “He’s gone mad. I must look to myself here.”

“No, no,” rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. “It’s not—you’re not the person, Bill. I’ve no—no fault to find with you.”

“Oh, you haven’t, haven’t you?” said Sikes, looking sternly at him, and ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket. “That’s lucky—for one of us. Which one that is, don’t matter.”

“I’ve got that to tell you, Bill,” said Fagin, drawing his chair nearer, “will make you worse than me.”

“Aye?” returned the robber with an incredulous air. “Tell away! Look sharp, or Nance will think I’m lost.”

“Lost!” cried Fagin. “She has pretty well settled that, in her own mind, already.”

Sikes looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew’s face, and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle there, clenched his coat collar in his huge hand and shook him soundly.

“Speak, will you!” he said; “or if you don’t, it shall be for want of breath. Open your mouth and say wot you’ve got to say in plain words. Out with it, you thundering old cur, out with it!”

“Suppose that lad that’s laying there—” Fagin began.

Sikes turned round to where Noah was sleeping, as if he had not previously observed him. “Well!” he said, resuming his former position.

“Suppose that lad,” pursued Fagin, “was to peach—to blow upon us all—first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then having a meeting with ’em in the street to paint our likenesses, describe every mark that they might know us by, and the crib where we might be most easily taken. Suppose he was to do all this, and besides to blow upon a plant we’ve all been in, more or less—of his own fancy; not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson and brought to it on bread and water—but of his own fancy; to please his own taste; stealing out at nights to find those most interested against us, and peaching to them. Do you hear me?” cried the Jew, his eyes flashing with rage. “Suppose he did all this, what then?”

“What then!” replied Sikes; with a tremendous oath. “If he was left alive till I came, I’d grind his skull under the iron heel of my boot into as many grains as there are hairs upon his head.”

“What if I did it!” cried Fagin almost in a yell. “I, that knows so much, and could hang so many besides myself!”

“I don’t know,” replied Sikes, clenching his teeth and turning white at the mere suggestion. “I’d do something in the jail that ’ud get me put in irons; and if I was tried along with you, I’d fall upon you with them in the open court, and beat your brains out afore the people. I should have such strength,” muttered the robber, poising his brawny arm, “that I could smash your head as if a loaded wagon had gone over it.”

“You would?”

“Would I!” said the housebreaker. “Try me.”

“If it was Charley, or the Dodger, or Bet, or—”

“I don’t care who,” replied Sikes impatiently. “Whoever it was, I’d serve them the same.”

Fagin looked hard at the robber; and, motioning him to be silent, stooped over the bed upon the floor, and shook the sleeper to rouse him. Sikes leant forward in his chair: looking on with his hands upon his knees, as if wondering much what all this questioning and preparation was to end in.

“Bolter, Bolter! Poor lad!” said Fagin, looking up with an expression of devilish anticipation, and speaking slowly and with marked emphasis. “He’s tired—tired with watching for her so long—watching for her, Bill.”

“Wot d’ye mean?” asked Sikes, drawing back.

Fagin made no answer, but bending over the sleeper again, hauled him into a sitting posture. When his assumed name had been repeated several times, Noah rubbed his eyes, and, giving a heavy yawn, looked sleepily about him.

“Tell me that again—once again, just for him to hear,” said the Jew, pointing to Sikes as he spoke.

“Tell yer what?” asked the sleepy Noah, shaking himself pettishly.

“That about—Nancy,” said Fagin, clutching Sikes by the wrist, as if to prevent his leaving the house before he had heard enough. “You followed her?”

“Yes.”

“To London Bridge?”

“Yes.”

“Where she met two people.”

“So she did.”

“A gentleman and a lady that she had gone to of her own accord before, who asked her to give up all her pals, and Monks first, which she did—and to describe him, which she did—and to tell her what house it was that we meet at, and go to, which she did—and where it could be best watched from, which she did—and what time the people went there, which she did. She did all this. She told it all every word without a threat, without a murmur—she did—did she not?” cried Fagin, half mad with fury.

“All right,” replied Noah, scratching his head. “That’s just what it was!”

“What did they say, about last Sunday?”

“About last Sunday!” replied Noah, considering. “Why I told yer that before.”

“Again. Tell it again!” cried Fagin, tightening his grasp on Sikes, and brandishing his other hand aloft, as the foam flew from his lips.

“They asked her,” said Noah, who, as he grew more wakeful, seemed to have a dawning perception who Sikes was, “they asked her why she didn’t come, last Sunday, as she promised. She said she couldn’t.”

“Why—why? Tell him that.”

“Because she was forcibly kept at home by Bill, the man she had told them of before,” replied Noah.

“What more of him?” cried Fagin. “What more of the man she had told them of before? Tell him that, tell him that.”

“Why, that she couldn’t very easily get out of doors unless he knew where she was going to,” said Noah; “and so the first time she went to see the lady, she—ha! ha! ha! it made me laugh when she said it, that it did—she gave him a drink of laudanum.”

“Hell’s fire!” cried Sikes, breaking fiercely from the Jew. “Let me go!”

Flinging the old man from him, he rushed from the room, and darted, wildly and furiously, up the stairs.

“Bill, Bill!” cried Fagin, following him hastily. “A word. Only a word.”

The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker was unable to open the door: on which he was expending fruitless oaths and violence, when the Jew came panting up.

“Let me out,” said Sikes. “Don’t speak to me; it’s not safe. Let me out, I say!”

“Hear me speak a word,” rejoined Fagin, laying his hand upon the lock. “You won’t be—”

“Well,” replied the other.

“You won’t be—too—violent, Bill?”

The day was breaking, and there was light enough for the men to see each other’s faces. They exchanged one brief glance; there was a fire in the eyes of both, which could not be mistaken.

“I mean,” said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise was now useless, “not too violent for safety. Be crafty, Bill, and not too bold.”

Sikes made no reply; but, pulling open the door, of which Fagin had turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets.

Without one pause, or moment’s consideration; without once turning his head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the sky, or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before him with savage resolution: his teeth so tightly compressed that the strained jaw seemed starting through his skin; the robber held on his headlong course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a muscle, until he reached his own door. He opened it, softly, with a key; strode lightly up the stairs; and entering his own room, double-locked the door, and lifting a heavy table against it, drew back the curtain of the bed.

The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it. He had roused her from her sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and startled look.

“Get up!” said the man.

“It is you, Bill!” said the girl, with an expression of pleasure at his return.

“It is,” was the reply. “Get up.”

There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the candlestick, and hurled it under the grate. Seeing the faint light of early day without, the girl rose to undraw the curtain.

“Let it be,” said Sikes, thrusting his hand before her. “There’s enough light for wot I’ve got to do.”

“Bill,” said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, “why do you look like that at me!”

The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated nostrils and heaving breast; and then, grasping her by the head and throat, dragged her into the middle of the room, and looking once towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.

“Bill, Bill!” gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of mortal fear—“I—I won’t scream or cry—not once—hear me—speak to me—tell me what I have done!”

“You know, you she devil!” returned the robber, suppressing his breath. “You were watched tonight; every word you said was heard.”

“Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,” rejoined the girl, clinging to him. “Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have the heart to kill me. Oh! think of all I have given up, only this one night, for you. You shall have time to think, and save yourself this crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot throw me off. Bill, Bill, for dear God’s sake, for your own, for mine, stop before you spill my blood! I have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have!”

The man struggled violently, to release his arms; but those of the girl were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he could not tear them away.

“Bill,” cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast, “the gentleman and that dear lady, told me tonight of a home in some foreign country where I could end my days in solitude and peace. Let me see them again, and beg them, on my knees, to show the same mercy and goodness to you; and let us both leave this dreadful place, and far apart lead better lives, and forget how we have lived, except in prayers, and never see each other more. It is never too late to repent. They told me so—I feel it now—but we must have time—a little, little time!”

The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all the force he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.

She staggered and fell: nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief—Rose Maylie’s own—and holding it up, in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.

It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her down.

Chapter 48

The Flight of Sikes

Of all bad deeds that, under cover of the darkness, had been committed within wide London’s bounds since night hung over it, that was the worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon the morning air, that was the foulest and most cruel.

The sun—the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man—burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay. It did. He tried to shut it out, but it would stream in. If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!

He had not moved; he had been afraid to stir. There had been a moan and motion of the hand; and, with terror added to rage, he had struck and struck again. Once he threw a rug over it; but it was worse to fancy the eyes, and imagine them moving towards him, than to see them glaring upward, as if watching the reflection of the pool of gore that quivered and danced in the sunlight on the ceiling. He had plucked it off again. And there was the body—mere flesh and blood, no more—but such flesh, and so much blood!

He struck a light, kindled a fire, and thrust the club into it. There was hair upon the end, which blazed and shrunk into a light cinder, and, caught by the air, whirled up the chimney. Even that frightened him, sturdy as he was; but he held the weapon till it broke, and then piled it on the coals to burn away, and smoulder into ashes. He washed himself, and rubbed his clothes; there were spots that would not be removed, but he cut the pieces out, and burnt them. How those stains were dispersed about the room! The very feet of the dog were bloody.

All this time he had, never once, turned his back upon the corpse; no, not for a moment. Such preparations completed, he moved, backward, towards the door: dragging the dog with him, lest he should soil his feet anew and carry out new evidence of the crime into the streets. He shut the door softly, locked it, took the key, and left the house.

He crossed over, and glanced up at the window, to be sure that nothing was visible from the outside. There was the curtain still drawn, which she would have opened to admit the light she never saw again. It lay nearly under there. He knew that. God, how the sun poured down upon the very spot!

The glance was instantaneous. It was a relief to have got free of the room. He whistled on the dog, and walked rapidly away.

He went through Islington; strode up the hill at Highgate on which stands the stone in honour of Whittington; turned down to Highgate Hill, unsteady of purpose, and uncertain where to go; struck off to the right again, almost as soon as he began to descend it; and taking the footpath across the fields, skirted Caen Wood, and so came on Hampstead Heath. Traversing the hollow by the Vale of Heath, he mounted the opposite bank, and crossing the road which joins the villages of Hampstead and Highgate, made along the remaining portion of the heath to the fields at North End, in one of which he laid himself down under a hedge, and slept.

Soon he was up again, and away—not far into the country, but back towards London by the high road—then back again—then over another part of the same ground as he already traversed—then wandering up and down in fields, and lying on ditches’ brinks to rest, and starting up to make for some other spot, and do the same, and ramble on again.

Where could he go, that was near and not too public, to get some meat and drink? Hendon. That was a good place, not far off, and out of most people’s way. Thither he directed his steps—running sometimes, and sometimes, with a strange perversity, loitering at a snail’s pace, or stopping altogether and idly breaking the hedges with a stick. But when he got there, all the people he met—the very children at the doors—seemed to view him with suspicion. Back he turned again, without the courage to purchase bit or drop, though he had tasted no food for many hours; and once more he lingered on the Heath, uncertain where to go.

He wandered over miles and miles of ground, and still came back to the old place. Morning and noon had passed, and the day was on the wane, and still he rambled to and fro, and up and down, and round and round, and still lingered about the same spot. At last he got away, and shaped his course for Hatfield.

It was nine o’clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and the dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the little street, crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the taproom, and some country-labourers were drinking before it.

They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the furthest corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog: to whom he cast a morsel of food from time to time.

The conversation of the men assembled here, turned upon the neighbouring land, and farmers; and when those topics were exhausted, upon the age of some old man who had been buried on the previous Sunday; the young men present considering him very old, and the old men present declaring him to have been quite young—not older, one white-haired grandfather said, than he was—with ten or fifteen year of life in him at least—if he had taken care; if he had taken care.

There was nothing to attract attention, or excite alarm in this. The robber, after paying his reckoning, sat silent and unnoticed in his corner, and had almost dropped asleep, when he was half wakened by the noisy entrance of a newcomer.

This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and suchlike wares, which he carried in a case slung to his back. His entrance was the signal for various homely jokes with the countrymen, which slackened not until he had made his supper, and opened his box of treasures, when he ingeniously contrived to unite business with amusement.

“And what be that stoof? Good to eat, Harry?” asked a grinning countryman, pointing to some composition-cakes in one corner.

“This,” said the fellow, producing one, “this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one rub with the infallible and invaluable composition. If a lady stains her honour, she has only need to swallow one cake and she’s cured at once—for it’s poison. If a gentleman wants to prove this, he has only need to bolt one little square, and he has put it beyond question—for it’s quite as satisfactory as a pistol-bullet, and a great deal nastier in the flavour, consequently the more credit in taking it. One penny a square. With all these virtues, one penny a square!”

There were two buyers directly, and more of the listeners plainly hesitated. The vendor observing this, increased in loquacity.

“It’s all bought up as fast as it can be made,” said the fellow. “There are fourteen water-mills, six steam-engines, and a galvanic battery, always a-working upon it, and they can’t make it fast enough, though the men work so hard that they die off, and the widows is pensioned directly, with twenty pound a-year for each of the children, and a premium of fifty for twins. One penny a square! Two halfpence is all the same, and four farthings is received with joy. One penny a square! Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, mud-stains, bloodstains! Here is a stain upon the hat of a gentleman in company, that I’ll take clean out, before he can order me a pint of ale.”

“Hah!” cried Sikes, starting up. “Give that back.”

“I’ll take it clean out, sir,” replied the man, winking to the company, “before you can come across the room to get it. Gentlemen all, observe the dark stain upon this gentleman’s hat, no wider than a shilling, but thicker than a half-crown. Whether it is a wine-stain, fruit-stain, beer-stain, water-stain, paint-stain, pitch-stain, mud-stain, or bloodstain—”

The man got no further, for Sikes with a hideous imprecation overthrew the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of the house.

With the same perversity of feeling and irresolution that had fastened upon him, despite himself, all day, the murderer, finding that he was not followed, and that they most probably considered him some drunken sullen fellow, turned back up the town, and getting out of the glare of the lamps of a stagecoach that was standing in the street, was walking past, when he recognised the mail from London, and saw that it was standing at the little post-office. He almost knew what was to come; but he crossed over, and listened.

The guard was standing at the door, waiting for the letter-bag. A man, dressed like a gamekeeper, came up at the moment, and he handed him a basket which lay ready on the pavement.

“That’s for your people,” said the guard. “Now, look alive in there, will you. Damn that ’ere bag, it warn’t ready night afore last; this won’t do, you know!”

“Anything new up in town, Ben?” asked the gamekeeper, drawing back to the window-shutters, the better to admire the horses.

“No, nothing that I knows on,” replied the man, pulling on his gloves. “Corn’s up a little. I heerd talk of a murder, too, down Spitalfields way, but I don’t reckon much upon it.”

“Oh, that’s quite true,” said a gentleman inside, who was looking out of the window. “And a dreadful murder it was.”

“Was it, sir?” rejoined the guard, touching his hat. “Man or woman, pray, sir?”

“A woman,” replied the gentleman. “It is supposed—”

“Now, Ben,” replied the coachman impatiently.

“Damn that ’ere bag,” said the guard; “are you gone to sleep in there?”

“Coming!” cried the office keeper, running out.

“Coming,” growled the guard. “Ah, and so’s the young ’ooman of property that’s going to take a fancy to me, but I don’t know when. Here, give hold. All ri—ight!”

The horn sounded a few cheerful notes, and the coach was gone.

Sikes remained standing in the street, apparently unmoved by what he had just heard, and agitated by no stronger feeling than a doubt where to go. At length he went back again, and took the road which leads from Hatfield to St. Albans.

He went on doggedly; but as he left the town behind him, and plunged into the solitude and darkness of the road, he felt a dread and awe creeping upon him which shook him to the core. Every object before him, substance or shadow, still or moving, took the semblance of some fearful thing; but these fears were nothing compared to the sense that haunted him of that morning’s ghastly figure following at his heels. He could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed—not running too: that would have been a relief: but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind that never rose or fell.

At times, he turned, with desperate determination, resolved to beat this phantom off, though it should look him dead; but the hair rose on his head, and his blood stood still, for it had turned with him and was behind him then. He had kept it before him that morning, but it was behind now—always. He leaned his back against a bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly out against the cold night-sky. He threw himself upon the road—on his back upon the road. At his head it stood, silent, erect, and still—a living gravestone, with its epitaph in blood.

Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that Providence must sleep. There were twenty score of violent deaths in one long minute of that agony of fear.

There was a shed in a field he passed, that offered shelter for the night. Before the door, were three tall poplar trees, which made it very dark within; and the wind moaned through them with a dismal wail. He could not walk on, till daylight came again; and here he stretched himself close to the wall—to undergo new torture.

For now, a vision came before him, as constant and more terrible than that from which he had escaped. Those widely staring eyes, so lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne to see them than think upon them, appeared in the midst of the darkness: light in themselves, but giving light to nothing. There were but two, but they were everywhere. If he shut out the sight, there came the room with every well-known object—some, indeed, that he would have forgotten, if he had gone over its contents from memory—each in its accustomed place. The body was in its place, and its eyes were as he saw them when he stole away. He got up, and rushed into the field without. The figure was behind him. He reentered the shed, and shrunk down once more. The eyes were there, before he had laid himself along.

And here he remained in such terror as none but he can know, trembling in every limb, and the cold sweat starting from every pore, when suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the noise of distant shouting, and the roar of voices mingled in alarm and wonder. Any sound of men in that lonely place, even though it conveyed a real cause of alarm, was something to him. He regained his strength and energy at the prospect of personal danger; and springing to his feet, rushed into the open air.

The broad sky seemed on fire. Rising into the air with showers of sparks, and rolling one above the other, were sheets of flame, lighting the atmosphere for miles round, and driving clouds of smoke in the direction where he stood. The shouts grew louder as new voices swelled the roar, and he could hear the cry of Fire! mingled with the ringing of an alarm-bell, the fall of heavy bodies, and the crackling of flames as they twined round some new obstacle, and shot aloft as though refreshed by food. The noise increased as he looked. There were people there—men and women—light, bustle. It was like new life to him. He darted onward—straight, headlong—dashing through brier and brake, and leaping gate and fence as madly as his dog, who careered with loud and sounding bark before him.

He came upon the spot. There were half-dressed figures tearing to and fro, some endeavouring to drag the frightened horses from the stables, others driving the cattle from the yard and outhouses, and others coming laden from the burning pile, amidst a shower of falling sparks, and the tumbling down of red-hot beams. The apertures, where doors and windows stood an hour ago, disclosed a mass of raging fire; walls rocked and crumbled into the burning well; the molten lead and iron poured down, white hot, upon the ground. Women and children shrieked, and men encouraged each other with noisy shouts and cheers. The clanking of the engine-pumps, and the spirting and hissing of the water as it fell upon the blazing wood, added to the tremendous roar. He shouted, too, till he was hoarse; and flying from memory and himself, plunged into the thickest of the throng. Hither and thither he dived that night: now working at the pumps, and now hurrying through the smoke and flame, but never ceasing to engage himself wherever noise and men were thickest. Up and down the ladders, upon the roofs of buildings, over floors that quaked and trembled with his weight, under the lee of falling bricks and stones, in every part of that great fire was he; but he bore a charmed life, and had neither scratch nor bruise, nor weariness nor thought, till morning dawned again, and only smoke and blackened ruins remained.

This mad excitement over, there returned, with tenfold force, the dreadful consciousness of his crime. He looked suspiciously about him, for the men were conversing in groups, and he feared to be the subject of their talk. The dog obeyed the significant beck of his finger, and they drew off, stealthily, together. He passed near an engine where some men were seated, and they called to him to share in their refreshment. He took some bread and meat; and as he drank a draught of beer, heard the firemen, who were from London, talking about the murder. “He has gone to Birmingham, they say,” said one: “but they’ll have him yet, for the scouts are out, and by tomorrow night there’ll be a cry all through the country.”

He hurried off, and walked till he almost dropped upon the ground; then lay down in a lane, and had a long, but broken and uneasy sleep. He wandered on again, irresolute and undecided, and oppressed with the fear of another solitary night.

Suddenly, he took the desperate resolution of going back to London.

“There’s somebody to speak to there, at all event,” he thought. “A good hiding-place, too. They’ll never expect to nab me there, after this country scent. Why can’t I lie by for a week or so, and, forcing blunt from Fagin, get abroad to France? Damme, I’ll risk it.”

He acted upon this impulse without delay, and choosing the least frequented roads began his journey back, resolved to lie concealed within a short distance of the metropolis, and, entering it at dusk by a circuitous route, to proceed straight to that part of it which he had fixed on for his destination.

The dog, though. If any description of him were out, it would not be forgotten that the dog was missing, and had probably gone with him. This might lead to his apprehension as he passed along the streets. He resolved to drown him, and walked on, looking about for a pond: picking up a heavy stone and tying it to his handkerchief as he went.

The animal looked up into his master’s face while these preparations were making; whether his instinct apprehended something of their purpose, or the robber’s sidelong look at him was sterner than ordinary, he skulked a little farther in the rear than usual, and cowered as he came more slowly along. When his master halted at the brink of a pool, and looked round to call him, he stopped outright.

“Do you hear me call? Come here!” cried Sikes.

The animal came up from the very force of habit; but as Sikes stooped to attach the handkerchief to his throat, he uttered a low growl and started back.

“Come back!” said the robber.

The dog wagged his tail, but moved not. Sikes made a running noose and called him again.

The dog advanced, retreated, paused an instant, and scoured away at his hardest speed.

The man whistled again and again, and sat down and waited in the expectation that he would return. But no dog appeared, and at length he resumed his journey.

Chapter 49

Monks and Mr. Brownlow at Length Meet. Their Conversation, and the Intelligence That Interrupts It

The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Brownlow alighted from a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked softly. The door being opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach and stationed himself on one side of the steps, while another man, who had been seated on the box, dismounted too, and stood upon the other side. At a sign from Mr. Brownlow, they helped out a third man, and taking him between them, hurried him into the house. This man was Monks.

They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking, and Mr. Brownlow, preceding them, led the way into a backroom. At the door of this apartment, Monks, who had ascended with evident reluctance, stopped. The two men looked at the old gentleman as if for instructions.

“He knows the alternative,” said Mr. Browlow. “If he hesitates or moves a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street, call for the aid of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my name.”

“How dare you say this of me?” asked Monks.

“How dare you urge me to it, young man?” replied Mr. Brownlow, confronting him with a steady look. “Are you mad enough to leave this house? Unhand him. There, sir. You are free to go, and we to follow. But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most sacred, that instant will have you apprehended on a charge of fraud and robbery. I am resolute and immoveable. If you are determined to be the same, your blood be upon your own head!”

“By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought here by these dogs?” asked Monks, looking from one to the other of the men who stood beside him.

“By mine,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “Those persons are indemnified by me. If you complain of being deprived of your liberty—you had power and opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but you deemed it advisable to remain quiet—I say again, throw yourself for protection on the law. I will appeal to the law too; but when you have gone too far to recede, do not sue to me for leniency, when the power will have passed into other hands; and do not say I plunged you down the gulf into which you rushed, yourself.”

Monks was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides. He hesitated.

“You will decide quickly,” said Mr. Brownlow, with perfect firmness and composure. “If you wish me to prefer my charges publicly, and consign you to a punishment the extent of which, although I can, with a shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once more, I say, for you know the way. If not, and you appeal to my forbearance, and the mercy of those you have deeply injured, seat yourself, without a word, in that chair. It has waited for you two whole days.”

Monks muttered some unintelligible words, but wavered still.

“You will be prompt,” said Mr. Brownlow. “A word from me, and the alternative has gone forever.”

Still the man hesitated.

“I have not the inclination to parley,” said Mr. Brownlow, “and, as I advocate the dearest interests of others, I have not the right.”

“Is there—” demanded Monks with a faltering tongue—“is there—no middle course?”

“None.”

Monks looked at the old gentleman, with an anxious eye; but, reading in his countenance nothing but severity and determination, walked into the room, and, shrugging his shoulders, sat down.

“Lock the door on the outside,” said Mr. Brownlow to the attendants, “and come when I ring.”

The men obeyed, and the two were left alone together.

“This is pretty treatment, sir,” said Monks, throwing down his hat and cloak, “from my father’s oldest friend.”

“It is because I was your father’s oldest friend, young man,” returned Mr. Brownlow; “it is because the hopes and wishes of young and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair creature of his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth, and left me here a solitary, lonely man: it is because he knelt with me beside his only sisters’s deathbed when he was yet a boy, on the morning that would—but Heaven willed otherwise—have made her my young wife; it is because my seared heart clung to him, from that time forth, through all his trials and errors, till he died; it is because old recollections and associations filled my heart, and even the sight of you brings with it old thoughts of him; it is because of all these things that I am moved to treat you gently now—yes, Edward Leeford, even now—and blush for your unworthiness who bear the name.”

“What has the name to do with it?” asked the other, after contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the agitation of his companion. “What is the name to me?”

“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “nothing to you. But it was hers, and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old man, the glow and thrill which I once felt, only to hear it repeated by a stranger. I am very glad you have changed it—very—very.”

“This is all mighty fine,” said Monks (to retain his assumed designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked himself in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Brownlow had sat, shading his face with his hand. “But what do you want with me?”

“You have a brother,” said Mr. Brownlow, rousing himself: “a brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear when I came behind you in the street, was, in itself, almost enough to make you accompany me hither, in wonder and alarm.”

“I have no brother,” replied Monks. “You know I was an only child. Why do you talk to me of brothers? You know that, as well as I.”

“Attend to what I do know, and you may not,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole and most unnatural issue.”

“I don’t care for hard names,” interrupted Monks with a jeering laugh. “You know the fact, and that’s enough for me.”

“But I also know,” pursued the old gentleman, “the misery, the slow torture, the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted union. I know how listlessly and wearily each of that wretched pair dragged on their heavy chain through a world that was poisoned to them both. I know how cold formalities were succeeded by open taunts; how indifference gave place to dislike, dislike to hate, and hate to loathing, until at last they wrenched the clanking bond asunder, and retiring a wide space apart, carried each a galling fragment, of which nothing but death could break the rivets, to hide it in new society beneath the gayest looks they could assume. Your mother succeeded; she forgot it soon. But it rusted and cankered at your father’s heart for years.”

“Well, they were separated,” said Monks, “and what of that?”

“When they had been separated for some time,” returned Mr. Brownlow, “and your mother, wholly given up to continental frivolities, had utterly forgotten the young husband ten good years her junior, who, with prospects blighted, lingered on at home, he fell among new friends. This circumstance, at least, you know already.”

“Not I,” said Monks, turning away his eyes and beating his foot upon the ground, as a man who is determined to deny everything. “Not I.”

“Your manner, no less than your actions, assures me that you have never forgotten it, or ceased to think of it with bitterness,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “I speak of fifteen years ago, when you were not more than eleven years old, and your father but one-and-thirty—for he was, I repeat, a boy, when his father ordered him to marry. Must I go back to events which cast a shade upon the memory of your parent, or will you spare it, and disclose to me the truth?”

“I have nothing to disclose,” rejoined Monks. “You must talk on if you will.”

“These new friends, then,” said Mr. Brownlow, “were a naval officer retired from active service, whose wife had died some half-a-year before, and left him with two children—there had been more, but, of all their family, happily but two survived. They were both daughters; one a beautiful creature of nineteen, and the other a mere child of two or three years old.”

“What’s this to me?” asked Monks.

“They resided,” said Mr. Brownlow, without seeming to hear the interruption, “in a part of the country to which your father in his wandering had repaired, and where he had taken up his abode. Acquaintance, intimacy, friendship, fast followed on each other. Your father was gifted as few men are. He had his sister’s soul and person. As the old officer knew him more and more, he grew to love him. I would that it had ended there. His daughter did the same.”

The old gentleman paused; Monks was biting his lips, with his eyes fixed upon the floor; seeing this, he immediately resumed:

“The end of a year found him contracted, solemnly contracted, to that daughter; the object of the first, true, ardent, only passion of a guileless girl.”

“Your tale is of the longest,” observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair.

“It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,” returned Mr. Brownlow, “and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief. At length one of those rich relations to strengthen whose interest and importance your father had been sacrificed, as others are often—it is no uncommon case—died, and to repair the misery he had been instrumental in occasioning, left him his panacea for all griefs—Money. It was necessary that he should immediately repair to Rome, whither this man had sped for health, and where he had died, leaving his affairs in great confusion. He went; was seized with mortal illness there; was followed, the moment the intelligence reached Paris, by your mother who carried you with her; he died the day after her arrival, leaving no will—no will—so that the whole property fell to her and you.”

At this part of the recital Monks held his breath, and listened with a face of intense eagerness, though his eyes were not directed towards the speaker. As Mr. Brownlow paused, he changed his position with the air of one who has experienced a sudden relief, and wiped his hot face and hands.

“Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his way,” said Mr. Brownlow, slowly, and fixing his eyes upon the other’s face, “he came to me.”

“I never heard of that,” interrupted Monks in a tone intended to appear incredulous, but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.

“He came to me, and left with me, among some other things, a picture—a portrait painted by himself—a likeness of this poor girl—which he did not wish to leave behind, and could not carry forward on his hasty journey. He was worn by anxiety and remorse almost to a shadow; talked in a wild, distracted way, of ruin and dishonour worked by himself; confided to me his intention to convert his whole property, at any loss, into money, and, having settled on his wife and you a portion of his recent acquisition, to fly the country—I guessed too well he would not fly alone—and never see it more. Even from me, his old and early friend, whose strong attachment had taken root in the earth that covered one most dear to both—even from me he withheld any more particular confession, promising to write and tell me all, and after that to see me once again, for the last time on earth. Alas! That was the last time. I had no letter, and I never saw him more.

“I went,” said Mr. Brownlow, after a short pause, “I went, when all was over, to the scene of his—I will use the term the world would freely use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him—of his guilty love, resolved that if my fears were realised that erring child should find one heart and home to shelter and compassionate her. The family had left that part a week before; they had called in such trifling debts as were outstanding, discharged them, and left the place by night. Why, or whither, none can tell.”

Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a smile of triumph.

“When your brother,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to the other’s chair, “When your brother: a feeble, ragged, neglected child: was cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and rescued by me from a life of vice and infamy—”

“What?” cried Monks.

“By me,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I told you I should interest you before long. I say by me—I see that your cunning associate suppressed my name, although for ought he knew, it would be quite strange to your ears. When he was rescued by me, then, and lay recovering from sickness in my house, his strong resemblance to this picture I have spoken of, struck me with astonishment. Even when I first saw him in all his dirt and misery, there was a lingering expression in his face that came upon me like a glimpse of some old friend flashing on one in a vivid dream. I need not tell you he was snared away before I knew his history—”

“Why not?” asked Monks hastily.

“Because you know it well.”

“I!”

“Denial to me is vain,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “I shall show you that I know more than that.”

“You—you—can’t prove anything against me,” stammered Monks. “I defy you to do it!”

“We shall see,” returned the old gentleman, with a searching glance. “I lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your mother being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if anybody could, and as when I had last heard of you you were on your own estate in the West Indies—whither, as you well know, you retired upon your mother’s death to escape the consequences of vicious courses here—I made the voyage. You had left it, months before, and were supposed to be in London, but no one could tell where. I returned. Your agents had no clue to your residence. You came and went, they said, as strangely as you had ever done: sometimes for days together and sometimes not for months: keeping to all appearance the same low haunts and mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your associates when a fierce ungovernable boy. I wearied them with new applications. I paced the streets by night and day, but until two hours ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw you for an instant.”

“And now you do see me,” said Monks, rising boldly, “what then? Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words—justified, you think, by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man’s brother! You don’t even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you don’t even know that.”

“I did not,” replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too; “but within the last fortnight I have learnt it all. You have a brother; you know it, and him. There was a will, which your mother destroyed, leaving the secret and the gain to you at her own death. It contained a reference to some child likely to be the result of this sad connection, which child was born, and accidentally encountered by you, when your suspicions were first awakened by his resemblance to your father. You repaired to the place of his birth. There existed proofs—proofs long suppressed—of his birth and parentage. Those proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in your own words to your accomplice the Jew, ‘the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.’ Unworthy son, coward, liar—you, who hold your councils with thieves and murderers in dark rooms at night—you, whose plots and wiles have brought a violent death upon the head of one worth millions such as you—you, who from your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart, and in whom all evil passions, vice, and profligacy, festered, till they found a vent in a hideous disease which had made your face an index even to your mind—you, Edward Leeford, do you still brave me?”

“No, no, no!” returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated charges.

“Every word!” cried the gentleman, “every word that has passed between you and this detested villain, is known to me. Shadows on the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear; the sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself, and given it the courage and almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been done, to which you were morally if not really a party.”

“No, no,” interposed Monks. “I—I knew nothing of that; I was going to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I didn’t know the cause. I thought it was a common quarrel.”

“It was the partial disclosure of your secrets,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “Will you disclose the whole?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it before witnesses?”

“That I promise too.”

“Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up, and proceed with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for the purpose of attesting it?”

“If you insist upon that, I’ll do that also,” replied Monks.

“You must do more than that,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Make restitution to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is, although the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love. You have not forgotten the provisions of the will. Carry them into execution so far as your brother is concerned, and then go where you please. In this world you need meet no more.”

While Monks was pacing up and down, meditating with dark and evil looks on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it: torn by his fears on the one hand and his hatred on the other: the door was hurriedly unlocked, and a gentleman (Mr. Losberne) entered the room in violent agitation.

“The man will be taken,” he cried. “He will be taken tonight!”

“The murderer?” asked Mr. Brownlow.

“Yes, yes,” replied the other. “His dog has been seen lurking about some old haunt, and there seems little doubt that his master either is, or will be, there, under cover of the darkness. Spies are hovering about in every direction. I have spoken to the men who are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape. A reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by Government tonight.”

“I will give fifty more,” said Mr. Brownlow, “and proclaim it with my own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it. Where is Mr. Maylie?”

“Harry? As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach with you, he hurried off to where he heard this,” replied the doctor, “and mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first party at some place in the outskirts agreed upon between them.”

“Fagin,” said Mr. Brownlow; “what of him?”

“When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is, by this time. They’re sure of him.”

“Have you made up your mind?” asked Mr. Brownlow, in a low voice, of Monks.

“Yes,” he replied. “You—you—will be secret with me?”

“I will. Remain here till I return. It is your only hope of safety.”

They left the room, and the door was again locked.

“What have you done?” asked the doctor in a whisper.

“All that I could hope to do, and even more. Coupling the poor girl’s intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of our good friend’s inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole of escape, and laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights became plain as day. Write and appoint the evening after tomorrow, at seven, for the meeting. We shall be down there, a few hours before, but shall require rest: especially the young lady, who may have greater need of firmness than either you or I can quite foresee just now. But my blood boils to avenge this poor murdered creature. Which way have they taken?”

“Drive straight to the office and you will be in time,” replied Mr. Losberne. “I will remain here.”

The two gentlemen hastily separated; each in a fever of excitement wholly uncontrollable.

Chapter 50

The Pursuit and Escape

Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.

To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman’s door, and stream from the house-parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous wagons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving, at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those through which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect.

In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took its old name. At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.

In Jacob’s Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling into the streets; the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island.

In an upper room of one of these houses—a detached house of fair size, ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window: of which house the back commanded the ditch in manner already described—there were assembled three men, who, regarding each other every now and then with looks expressive of perplexity and expectation, sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence. One of these was Toby Crackit, another Mr. Chitling, and the third a robber of fifty years, whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some old scuffle, and whose face bore a frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same occasion. This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.

“I wish,” said Toby, turning to Mr. Chitling, “that you had picked out some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come here, my fine feller.”

“Why didn’t you, blunder-head!” said Kags.

“Well, I thought you’d have been a little more glad to see me than this,” replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.

“Why, look’e, young gentleman,” said Toby, “when a man keeps himself so very exclusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it, it’s rather a startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.”

“Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping with him, that’s arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts, and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,” added Mr. Kags.

There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said,

“When was Fagin took then?”

“Just at dinnertime—two o’clock this afternoon. Charley and I made our lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt, head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too.”

“And Bet?”

“Poor Bet! She went to see the body, to speak to who it was,” replied Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she is.”

“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.

“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”

“This is a smash,” observed Toby, biting his lips. “There’s more than one will go with this.”

“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and Bolter turns King’s evidence: as of course he will, from what he’s said already: they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact, and get the trial on on Friday, and he’ll swing in six days from this, by G⸺!”

“You should have heard the people groan,” said Chitling; “the officers fought like devils, or they’d have torn him away. He was down once, but they made a ring round him, and fought their way along. You should have seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them as if they were his dearest friends. I can see ’em now, not able to stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and draggin him along amongst ’em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind another, and snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore they’d tear his heart out!”

The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro, like one distracted.

While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs, and Sikes’s dog bounded into the room. They ran to the window, downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at an open window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be seen.

“What’s the meaning of this?” said Toby, when they had returned. “He can’t be coming here. I—I—hope not.”

“If he was coming here, he’d have come with the dog,” said Kags, stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor. “Here! Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.”

“He’s drunk it all up, every drop,” said Chitling after watching the dog some time in silence. “Covered with mud—lame—half blind—he must have come a long way.”

“Where can he have come from!” exclaimed Toby. “He’s been to the other kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come on here, where he’s been many a time and often. But where can he have come from first, and how comes he here alone without the other!”

“He”—(none of them called the murderer by his old name)—“He can’t have made away with himself. What do you think?” said Chitling.

Toby shook his head.

“If he had,” said Kags, “the dog ’ud want to lead us away to where he did it. No. I think he’s got out of the country, and left the dog behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn’t be so easy.”

This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep, without more notice from anybody.

It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted and placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two days had made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and uncertainty of their own position. They drew their chairs closer together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in whispers, and were as silent and awestricken as if the remains of the murdered woman lay in the next room.

They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried knocking at the door below.

“Young Bates,” said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he felt himself.

The knocking came again. No, it wasn’t he. He never knocked like that.

Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head. There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough. The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the door.

“We must let him in,” he said, taking up the candle.

“Isn’t there any help for it?” asked the other man in a hoarse voice.

“None. He must come in.”

“Don’t leave us in the dark,” said Kags, taking down a candle from the chimneypiece, and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.

Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and another tied over his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath; it was the very ghost of Sikes.

He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room, but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall—as close as it would go—and ground it against it—and sat down.

Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.

“How came that dog here?” he asked.

“Alone. Three hours ago.”

“Tonight’s paper says that Fagin’s took. Is it true, or a lie?”

“True.”

They were silent again.

“Damn you all!” said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.

“You that keep this house,” said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit, “do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?”

“You may stop here, if you think it safe,” returned the person addressed, after some hesitation.

Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him: rather trying to turn his head than actually doing it: and said, “Is—it—the body—is it buried?”

They shook their heads.

“Why isn’t it!” he retorted with the same glance behind him. “Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for?—Who’s that knocking?”

Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that there was nothing to fear; and directly came back with Charley Bates behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy entered the room he encountered his figure.

“Toby,” said the boy, falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards him, “why didn’t you tell me this, downstairs?”

There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad. Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with him.

“Let me go into some other room,” said the boy, retreating still farther.

“Charley!” said Sikes, stepping forward. “Don’t you—don’t you know me?”

“Don’t come nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You monster!”

The man stopped halfway, and they looked at each other; but Sikes’s eyes sunk gradually to the ground.

“Witness you three,” cried the boy, shaking his clenched fist, and becoming more and more excited as he spoke. “Witness you three—I’m not afraid of him—if they come here after him, I’ll give him up; I will. I tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he dares, but if I am here I’ll give him up. I’d give him up if he was to be boiled alive. Murder! Help! If there’s the pluck of a man among you three, you’ll help me. Murder! Help! Down with him!”

Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.

The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together; the former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer’s breast, and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.

The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down, and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a look of alarm, and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the tramp of hurried footsteps—endless they seemed in number—crossing the nearest wooden bridge. One man on horseback seemed to be among the crowd; for there was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then, came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.

“Help!” shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. “He’s here! Break down the door!”

“In the King’s name,” cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry arose again, but louder.

“Break down the door!” screamed the boy. “I tell you they’ll never open it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!”

Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the crowd; giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of its immense extent.

“Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching Hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely; running to and fro, and dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. “That door. Quick!” He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. “Is the downstairs door fast?”

“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.

“The panels—are they strong?”

“Lined with sheet-iron.”

“And the windows too?”

“Yes, and the windows.”

“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd. “Do your worst! I’ll cheat you yet!”

Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the window, in a voice that rose above all others, “Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!”

The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some for sledgehammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the waterspout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.

“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and shut the faces out, “the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. They’re all in front. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself.”

The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the housetop.

All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But, from this aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the housetop by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.

He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside; and creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet.

The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.

The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration to which all their previous shouting had been whispers. Again and again it rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it echoed and reechoed; it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.

On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch to lighten them up, and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window; cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every housetop. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant see the wretch.

“They have him now,” cried a man on the nearest bridge. “Hurrah!”

The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again the shout uprose.

“I will give fifty pounds,” cried an old gentleman from the same quarter, “to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here, till he come to ask me for it.”

There was another roar. At this moment the word was passed among the crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had first called for the ladder had mounted into the room. The stream abruptly turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth to mouth; and the people at the windows, seeing those upon the bridges pouring back, quitted their stations, and running into the street, joined the concourse that now thronged pell-mell to the spot they had left: each man crushing and striving with his neighbor, and all panting with impatience to get near the door, and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out. The cries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to suffocation, or trampled down and trodden under foot in the confusion, were dreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked up; and at this time, between the rush of some to regain the space in front of the house, and the unavailing struggles of others to extricate themselves from the mass, the immediate attention was distracted from the murderer, although the universal eagerness for his capture was, if possible, increased.

The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of the crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this sudden change with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he sprang upon his feet, determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into the ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled, endeavouring to creep away in the darkness and confusion.

Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise within the house which announced that an entrance had really been effected, he set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened one end of the rope tightly and firmly round it, and with the other made a strong running noose by the aid of his hands and teeth almost in a second. He could let himself down by the cord to within a less distance of the ground than his own height, and had his knife ready in his hand to cut it then and drop.

At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head previous to slipping it beneath his armpits, and when the old gentleman before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain his position) earnestly warned those about him that the man was about to lower himself down—at that very instant the murderer, looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms above his head, and uttered a yell of terror.

“The eyes again!” he cried in an unearthly screech.

Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran up with his weight, tight as a bowstring, and swift as the arrow it speeds. He fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched in his stiffening hand.

The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely. The murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy, thrusting aside the dangling body which obscured his view, called to the people to come and take him out, for God’s sake.

A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and forwards on the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring, jumped for the dead man’s shoulders. Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning completely over as he went; and striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains.

Chapter 51

Affording an Explanation of More Mysteries Than One, and Comprehending a Proposal of Marriage with No Word of Settlement or Pin-Money

The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but two days old, when Oliver found himself, at three o’clock in the afternoon, in a travelling-carriage rolling fast towards his native town. Mrs. Maylie, and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and the good doctor were with him: and Mr. Brownlow followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one other person whose name had not been mentioned.

They had not talked much upon the way; for Oliver was in a flutter of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the power of collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, and appeared to have scarcely less effect on his companions, who shared it, in at least an equal degree. He and the two ladies had been very carefully made acquainted by Mr. Brownlow with the nature of the admissions which had been forced from Monks; and although they knew that the object of their present journey was to complete the work which had been so well begun, still the whole matter was enveloped in enough of doubt and mystery to leave them in endurance of the most intense suspense.

The same kind friend had, with Mr. Losberne’s assistance, cautiously stopped all channels of communication through which they could receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that had so recently taken place. “It was quite true,” he said, “that they must know them before long, but it might be at a better time than the present, and it could not be at a worse.” So, they travelled on in silence: each busied with reflections on the object which had brought them together: and no one disposed to give utterance to the thoughts which crowded upon all.

But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent while they journeyed towards his birthplace by a road he had never seen, how the whole current of his recollections ran back to old times, and what a crowd of emotions were wakened up in his breast, when they turned into that which he had traversed on foot: a poor houseless, wandering boy, without a friend to help him, or a roof to shelter his head.

“See there, there!” cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand of Rose, and pointing out at the carriage window; “that’s the stile I came over; there are the hedges I crept behind, for fear anyone should overtake me and force me back! Yonder is the path across the fields, leading to the old house where I was a little child! Oh Dick, Dick, my dear old friend, if I could only see you now!”

“You will see him soon,” replied Rose, gently taking his folded hands between her own. “You shall tell him how happy you are, and how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness you have none so great as the coming back to make him happy too.”

“Yes, yes,” said Oliver, “and we’ll—we’ll take him away from here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country place where he may grow strong and well—shall we?”

Rose nodded “yes,” for the boy was smiling through such happy tears that she could not speak.

“You will be kind and good to him, for you are to everyone,” said Oliver. “It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can tell; but never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you will smile again—I know that too—to think how changed he is; you did the same with me. He said ‘God bless you’ to me when I ran away,” cried the boy with a burst of affectionate emotion; “and I will say ‘God bless you’ now, and show him how I love him for it!”

As they approached the town, and at length drove through its narrow streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrain the boy within reasonable bounds. There was Sowerberry’s the undertaker’s just as it used to be, only smaller and less imposing in appearance than he remembered it—there were all the well-known shops and houses, with almost every one of which he had some slight incident connected—there was Gamfield’s cart, the very cart he used to have, standing at the old public-house door—there was the workhouse, the dreary prison of his youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning on the street—there was the same lean porter standing at the gate, at sight of whom Oliver involuntarily shrunk back, and then laughed at himself for being so foolish, then cried, then laughed again—there were scores of faces at the doors and windows that he knew quite well—there was nearly everything as if he had left it but yesterday, and all his recent life had been but a happy dream.

But it was pure, earnest, joyful reality. They drove straight to the door of the chief hotel (which Oliver used to stare up at, with awe, and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen off in grandeur and size); and here was Mr. Grimwig all ready to receive them, kissing the young lady, and the old one too, when they got out of the coach, as if he were the grandfather of the whole party, all smiles and kindness, and not offering to eat his head—no, not once; not even when he contradicted a very old postboy about the nearest road to London, and maintained he knew it best, though he had only come that way once, and that time fast asleep. There was dinner prepared, and there were bedrooms ready, and everything was arranged as if by magic.

Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hour was over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had marked their journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them at dinner, but remained in a separate room. The two other gentlemen hurried in and out with anxious faces, and, during the short intervals when they were present, conversed apart. Once, Mrs. Maylie was called away, and after being absent for nearly an hour, returned with eyes swollen with weeping. All these things made Rose and Oliver, who were not in any new secrets, nervous and uncomfortable. They sat wondering, in silence; or, if they exchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid to hear the sound of their own voices.

At length, when nine o’clock had come, and they began to think they were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr. Grimwig entered the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a man whom Oliver almost shrieked with surprise to see; for they told him it was his brother, and it was the same man he had met at the market-town, and seen looking in with Fagin at the window of his little room. Monks cast a look of hate, which, even then, he could not dissemble, at the astonished boy, and sat down near the door. Mr. Brownlow, who had papers in his hand, walked to a table near which Rose and Oliver were seated.

“This is a painful task,” said he, “but these declarations, which have been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be in substance repeated here. I would have spared you the degradation, but we must hear them from your own lips before we part, and you know why.”

“Go on,” said the person addressed, turning away his face. “Quick. I have almost done enough, I think. Don’t keep me here.”

“This child,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him, and laying his hand upon his head, “is your half-brother; the illegitimate son of your father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, by poor young Agnes Fleming, who died in giving him birth.”

“Yes,” said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy: the beating of whose heart he might have heard. “That is the bastard child.”

“The term you use,” said Mr. Brownlow, sternly, “is a reproach to those long since passed beyond the feeble censure of the world. It reflects disgrace on no one living, except you who use it. Let that pass. He was born in this town.”

“In the workhouse of this town,” was the sullen reply. “You have the story there.” He pointed impatiently to the papers as he spoke.

“I must have it here, too,” said Mr. Brownlow, looking round upon the listeners.

“Listen then! You!” returned Monks. “His father being taken ill at Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he had been long separated, who went from Paris and took me with her—to look after his property, for what I know, for she had no great affection for him, nor he for her. He knew nothing of us, for his senses were gone, and he slumbered on till next day, when he died. Among the papers in his desk, were two, dated on the night his illness first came on, directed to yourself”; he addressed himself to Mr. Brownlow; “and enclosed in a few short lines to you, with an intimation on the cover of the package that it was not to be forwarded till after he was dead. One of these papers was a letter to this girl Agnes; the other a will.”

“What of the letter?” asked Mr. Brownlow.

“The letter?—A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, with a penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her. He had palmed a tale on the girl that some secret mystery—to be explained one day—prevented his marrying her just then; and so she had gone on, trusting patiently to him, until she trusted too far, and lost what none could ever give her back. She was, at that time, within a few months of her confinement. He told her all he had meant to do, to hide her shame, if he had lived, and prayed her, if he died, not to curse his memory, or think the consequences of their sin would be visited on her or their young child; for all the guilt was his. He reminded her of the day he had given her the little locket and the ring with her christian name engraved upon it, and a blank left for that which he hoped one day to have bestowed upon her—prayed her yet to keep it, and wear it next her heart, as she had done before—and then ran on, wildly, in the same words, over and over again, as if he had gone distracted. I believe he had.”

“The will,” said Mr. Brownlow, as Oliver’s tears fell fast.

Monks was silent.

“The will,” said Mr. Brownlow, speaking for him, “was in the same spirit as the letter. He talked of miseries which his wife had brought upon him; of the rebellious disposition, vice, malice, and premature bad passions of you his only son, who had been trained to hate him; and left you, and your mother, each an annuity of eight hundred pounds. The bulk of his property he divided into two equal portions—one for Agnes Fleming, and the other for their child, if it should be born alive, and ever come of age. If it were a girl, it was to inherit the money unconditionally; but if a boy, only on the stipulation that in his minority he should never have stained his name with any public act of dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong. He did this, he said, to mark his confidence in the other, and his conviction—only strengthened by approaching death—that the child would share her gentle heart, and noble nature. If he were disappointed in this expectation, then the money was to come to you: for then, and not till then, when both children were equal, would he recognise your prior claim upon his purse, who had none upon his heart, but had, from an infant, repulsed him with coldness and aversion.”

“My mother,” said Monks, in a louder tone, “did what a woman should have done. She burnt this will. The letter never reached its destination; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case they ever tried to lie away the blot. The girl’s father had the truth from her with every aggravation that her violent hate—I love her for it now—could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour he fled with his children into a remote corner of Wales, changing his very name that his friends might never know of his retreat; and here, no great while afterwards, he was found dead in his bed. The girl had left her home, in secret, some weeks before; he had searched for her, on foot, in every town and village near; it was on the night when he returned home, assured that she had destroyed herself, to hide her shame and his, that his old heart broke.”

There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took up the thread of the narrative.

“Years after this,” he said, “this man’s—Edward Leeford’s—mother came to me. He had left her, when only eighteen; robbed her of jewels and money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to London: where for two years he had associated with the lowest outcasts. She was sinking under a painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before she died. Inquiries were set on foot, and strict searches made. They were unavailing for a long time, but ultimately successful; and he went back with her to France.”

“There she died,” said Monks, “after a lingering illness; and, on her deathbed, she bequeathed these secrets to me, together with her unquenchable and deadly hatred of all whom they involved—though she need not have left me that, for I had inherited it long before. She would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself, and the child too, but was filled with the impression that a male child had been born, and was alive. I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by dragging it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot. She was right. He came in my way at last. I began well; and, but for babbling drabs, I would have finished as I began!”

As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered curses on himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr. Brownlow turned to the terrified group beside him, and explained that the Jew, who had been his old accomplice and confidant, had a large reward for keeping Oliver ensnared: of which some part was to be given up, in the event of his being rescued: and that a dispute on this head had led to their visit to the country house for the purpose of identifying him.

“The locket and ring?” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Monks.

“I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stole them from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse,” answered Monks without raising his eyes. “You know what became of them.”

Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who disappearing with great alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs. Bumble, and dragging her unwilling consort after him.

“Do my hi’s deceive me!” cried Mr. Bumble, with ill-feigned enthusiasm, “or is that little Oliver? Oh O-li-ver, if you know’d how I’ve been a-grieving for you—”

“Hold your tongue, fool,” murmured Mrs. Bumble.

“Isn’t natur, natur, Mrs. Bumble?” remonstrated the workhouse master. “Can’t I be supposed to feel—I as brought him up porochially—when I see him a-setting here among ladies and gentlemen of the very affablest description! I always loved that boy as if he’d been my—my—my own grandfather,” said Mr. Bumble, halting for an appropriate comparison. “Master Oliver, my dear, you remember the blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat? Ah! he went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with plated handles, Oliver.”

“Come, sir,” said Mr. Grimwig, tartly; “suppress your feelings.”

“I will do my endeavours, sir,” replied Mr. Bumble. “How do you do, sir? I hope you are very well.”

This salutation was addressed to Mr. Brownlow, who had stepped up to within a short distance of the respectable couple. He inquired, as he pointed to Monks,

“Do you know that person?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble flatly.

“Perhaps you don’t?” said Mr. Brownlow, addressing her spouse.

“I never saw him in all my life,” said Mr. Bumble.

“Nor sold him anything, perhaps?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble.

“You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?” said Mr. Brownlow.

“Certainly not,” replied the matron. “Why are we brought here to answer to such nonsense as this?”

Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig; and again that gentleman limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not again did he return with a stout man and wife; for this time, he led in two palsied women, who shook and tottered as they walked.

“You shut the door the night old Sally died,” said the foremost one, raising her shrivelled hand, “but you couldn’t shut out the sound, nor stop the chinks.”

“No, no,” said the other, looking round her and wagging her toothless jaws. “No, no, no.”

“We heard her try to tell you what she’d done, and saw you take a paper from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the pawnbroker’s shop,” said the first.

“Yes,” added the second, “and it was a ‘locket and gold ring.’ We found out that, and saw it given you. We were by. Oh! we were by.”

“And we know more than that,” resumed the first, “for she told us often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling she should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that she was taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child.”

“Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?” asked Mr. Grimwig with a motion towards the door.

“No,” replied the woman; “if he”—she pointed to Monks—“has been coward enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have sounded all these hags till you have found the right ones, I have nothing more to say. I did sell them, and they’re where you’ll never get them. What then?”

“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “except that it remains for us to take care that neither of you is employed in a situation of trust again. You may leave the room.”

“I hope,” said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great ruefulness, as Mr. Grimwig disappeared with the two old women: “I hope that this unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive me of my porochial office?”

“Indeed it will,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You may make up your mind to that, and think yourself well off besides.”

“It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it,” urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.

“That is no excuse,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr. Bumble fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his pockets, followed his helpmate downstairs.

“Young lady,” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Rose, “give me your hand. Do not tremble. You need not fear to hear the few remaining words we have to say.”

“If they have—I do not know how they can, but if they have—any reference to me,” said Rose, “pray let me hear them at some other time. I have not strength or spirits now.”

“Nay,” returned the old gentleman, drawing her arm through his; “you have more fortitude than this, I am sure. Do you know this young lady, sir?”

“Yes,” replied Monks.

“I never saw you before,” said Rose faintly.

“I have seen you often,” returned Monks.

“The father of the unhappy Agnes had two daughters,” said Mr. Brownlow. “What was the fate of the other—the child?”

“The child,” replied Monks, “when her father died in a strange place, in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper that yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives could be traced—the child was taken by some wretched cottagers, who reared it as their own.”

“Go on,” said Mr. Brownlow, signing to Mrs. Maylie to approach. “Go on!”

“You couldn’t find the spot to which these people had repaired,” said Monks, “but where friendship fails, hatred will often force a way. My mother found it, after a year of cunning search—ay, and found the child.”

“She took it, did she?”

“No. The people were poor and began to sicken—at least the man did—of their fine humanity; so she left it with them, giving them a small present of money which would not last long, and promised more, which she never meant to send. She didn’t quite rely, however, on their discontent and poverty for the child’s unhappiness, but told the history of the sister’s shame, with such alterations as suited her; bade them take good heed of the child, for she came of bad blood; and told them she was illegitimate, and sure to go wrong at one time or other. The circumstances countenanced all this; the people believed it; and there the child dragged on an existence, miserable enough even to satisfy us, until a widow lady, residing, then, at Chester, saw the girl by chance, pitied her, and took her home. There was some cursed spell, I think, against us; for in spite of all our efforts she remained there and was happy. I lost sight of her, two or three years ago, and saw her no more until a few months back.”

“Do you see her now?”

“Yes. Leaning on your arm.”

“But not the less my niece,” cried Mrs. Maylie, folding the fainting girl in her arms; “not the less my dearest child. I would not lose her now, for all the treasures of the world. My sweet companion, my own dear girl!”

“The only friend I ever had,” cried Rose, clinging to her. “The kindest, best of friends. My heart will burst. I cannot bear all this.”

“You have borne more, and have been, through all, the best and gentlest creature that ever shed happiness on everyone she knew,” said Mrs. Maylie, embracing her tenderly. “Come, come, my love, remember who this is who waits to clasp you in his arms, poor child! See here—look, look, my dear!”

“Not aunt,” cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck; “I’ll never call her aunt—sister, my own dear sister, that something taught my heart to love so dearly from the first! Rose, dear, darling Rose!”

Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.

They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door, at length announced that someone was without. Oliver opened it, glided away, and gave place to Harry Maylie.

“I know it all,” he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl. “Dear Rose, I know it all.”

“I am not here by accident,” he added after a lengthened silence; “nor have I heard all this tonight, for I knew it yesterday—only yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?”

“Stay,” said Rose. “You do know all.”

“All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the subject of our last discourse.”

“I did.”

“Not to press you to alter your determination,” pursued the young man, “but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or act, to seek to change it.”

“The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me now,” said Rose firmly. “If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should tonight? It is a struggle,” said Rose, “but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.”

“The disclosure of tonight,”—Harry began.

“The disclosure of tonight,” replied Rose softly, “leaves me in the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.”

“You harden your heart against me, Rose,” urged her lover.

“Oh Harry, Harry,” said the young lady, bursting into tears; “I wish I could, and spare myself this pain.”

“Then why inflict it on yourself?” said Harry, taking her hand. “Think, dear Rose, think what you have heard tonight.”

“And what have I heard! What have I heard!” cried Rose. “That a sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned all—there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.”

“Not yet, not yet,” said the young man, detaining her as she rose. “My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling: every thought in life except my love for you: have undergone a change. I offer you, now, no distinction among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a world of malice and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught but real disgrace and shame; but a home—a heart and home—yes, dearest Rose, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.”

“What do you mean!” she faltered.

“I mean but this—that when I left you last, I left you with a firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would turn from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk from me because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right. Such power and patronage: such relatives of influence and rank: as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in England’s richest county; and by one village church—mine, Rose, my own!—there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is my rank and station now, and here I lay it down!”

“It’s a trying thing waiting supper for lovers,” said Mr. Grimwig, waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over his head.

Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time. Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in together), could offer a word in extenuation.

“I had serious thoughts of eating my head tonight,” said Mr. Grimwig, “for I began to think I should get nothing else. I’ll take the liberty, if you’ll allow me, of saluting the bride that is to be.”

Mr. Grimwig lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon the blushing girl; and the example, being contagious, was followed both by the doctor and Mr. Brownlow: some people affirm that Harry Maylie had been observed to set it, originally, in a dark room adjoining; but the best authorities consider this downright scandal: he being young and a clergyman.

“Oliver, my child,” said Mrs. Maylie, “where have you been, and why do you look so sad? There are tears stealing down your face at this moment. What is the matter?”

It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.

Poor Dick was dead!

Chapter 52

Fagin’s Last Night Alive

The court was paved, from floor to roof, with human faces. Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of space. From the rail before the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man—Fagin. Before him and behind: above, below, on the right and on the left: he seemed to stand surrounded by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes.

He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear, and his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who was delivering his charge to the jury. At times, he turned his eyes sharply upon them to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in his favour; and when the points against him were stated with terrible distinctness, looked towards his counsel, in mute appeal that he would, even then, urge something in his behalf. Beyond these manifestations of anxiety, he stirred not hand or foot. He had scarcely moved since the trial began; and now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained in the same strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent on him, as though he listened still.

A slight bustle in the court, recalled him to himself. Looking round, he saw that the jurymen had turned together, to consider their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see the people rising above each other to see his face: some hastily applying their glasses to their eyes: and others whispering their neighbours with looks expressive of abhorrence. A few there were, who seemed unmindful of him, and looked only to the jury, in impatient wonder how they could delay. But in no one face—not even among the women, of whom there were many there—could he read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.

As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the deathlike stillness came again, and looking back he saw that the jurymen had turned towards the judge. Hush!

They only sought permission to retire.

He looked, wistfully, into their faces, one by one when they passed out, as though to see which way the greater number leant; but that was fruitless. The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a chair. The man pointed it out, or he would not have seen it.

He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketching his face in a little notebook. He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.

In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it cost, and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman on the bench, too, who had gone out, some half an hour before, and now come back. He wondered within himself whether this man had been to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he had had it; and pursued this train of careless thought until some new object caught his eye and roused another.

Not that, all this time, his mind was, for an instant, free from one oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet; it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he could not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trembled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was. Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold—and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then went on to think again.

At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close. He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone. Perfect stillness ensued—not a rustle—not a breath—Guilty.

The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another, and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength as they swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.

The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the demand was made; but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he was an old man—an old man—and so, dropping into a whisper, was silent again.

The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery, uttered some exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked hastily up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet more attentively. The address was solemn and impressive; the sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure, without the motion of a nerve. His haggard face was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes staring out before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and obeyed.

They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to him; but, as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were clinging to the bars: and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors hurried him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison.

Here, he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there—alone.

He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat and bedstead; and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After awhile, he began to remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said: though it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more: so that in a little time he had the whole, almost as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck, till he was dead—that was the end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead.

As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his means. They rose up, in such quick succession, that he could hardly count them. He had seen some of them die—and had joked too, because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down; and how suddenly they changed, from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!

Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon that very spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies—the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil.—Light, light!

At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door and walls, two men appeared: one bearing a candle, which he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall: the other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night; for the prisoner was to be left alone no more.

Then came the night—dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad to hear this church-clock strike, for they tell of life and coming day. To him they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound—Death. What availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.

The day passed off. Day? There was no day; it was gone as soon as come—and night came on again; night so long, and yet so short; long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one time he raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them off.

Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as he thought of this, the day broke—Sunday.

It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either of the two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had sat there, awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up, every minute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they—used to such sights—recoiled from him with horror. He grew so terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear to sit there, eyeing him alone; and so the two kept watch together.

He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight—nine—ten. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on each other’s heels, where would he be, when they came round again! Eleven! Another struck, before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At eight, he would be the only mourner in his own funeral train; at eleven—

Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often, and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man was doing who was to be hanged tomorrow, would have slept but ill that night, if they could have seen him.

From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired, with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received. These being answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built, and, walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the scene. By degrees they fell off, one by one; and, for an hour, in the dead of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.

The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers, painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately admitted into the lodge.

“Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?” said the man whose duty it was to conduct them. “It’s not a sight for children, sir.”

“It is not indeed, my friend,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow; “but my business with this man is intimately connected with him; and as this child has seen him in the full career of his success and villainy, I think it as well—even at the cost of some pain and fear—that he should see him now.”

These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to Oliver. The man touched his hat; and glancing at Oliver with some curiosity, opened another gate, opposite to that by which they had entered, and led them on, through dark and winding ways, towards the cells.

“This,” said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple of workmen were making some preparations in profound silence—“this is the place he passes through. If you step this way, you can see the door he goes out at.”

He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for dressing the prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an open grating above it, through which came the sound of men’s voices, mingled with the noise of hammering, and the throwing down of boards. They were putting up the scaffold.

From this place, they passed through several strong gates, opened by other turnkeys from the inner side; and, having entered an open yard, ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came into a passage with a row of strong doors on the left hand. Motioning them to remain where they were, the turnkey knocked at one of these with his bunch of keys. The two attendants, after a little whispering, came out into the passage, stretching themselves as if glad of the temporary relief, and motioned the visitors to follow the jailer into the cell. They did so.

The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for he continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of their presence otherwise than as a part of his vision.

“Good boy, Charley—well done—” he mumbled. “Oliver, too, ha! ha! ha! Oliver too—quite the gentleman now—quite the—take that boy away to bed!”

The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver; and, whispering him not to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.

“Take him away to bed!” cried Fagin. “Do you hear me, some of you? He has been the—the—somehow the cause of all this. It’s worth the money to bring him up to it—Bolter’s throat, Bill; never mind the girl—Bolter’s throat as deep as you can cut. Saw his head off!”

“Fagin,” said the jailer.

“That’s me!” cried the Jew, falling, instantly, into the attitude of listening he had assumed upon his trial. “An old man, my Lord; a very old, old man!”

“Here,” said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep him down. “Here’s somebody wants to see you, to ask you some questions, I suppose. Fagin, Fagin! Are you a man?”

“I shan’t be one long,” he replied, looking up with a face retaining no human expression but rage and terror. “Strike them all dead! What right have they to butcher me?”

As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow. Shrinking to the furthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know what they wanted there.

“Steady,” said the turnkey, still holding him down. “Now, sir, tell him what you want. Quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the time gets on.”

“You have some papers,” said Mr. Brownlow advancing, “which were placed in your hands, for better security, by a man called Monks.”

“It’s all a lie together,” replied Fagin. “I haven’t one—not one.”

“For the love of God,” said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, “do not say that now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they are. You know that Sikes is dead; that Monks has confessed; that there is no hope of any further gain. Where are those papers?”

“Oliver,” cried Fagin, beckoning to him. “Here, here! Let me whisper to you.”

“I am not afraid,” said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished Mr. Brownlow’s hand.

“The papers,” said Fagin, drawing Oliver towards him, “are in a canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front-room. I want to talk to you, my dear. I want to talk to you.”

“Yes, yes,” returned Oliver. “Let me say a prayer. Do! Let me say one prayer. Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we will talk till morning.”

“Outside, outside,” replied Fagin, pushing the boy before him towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. “Say I’ve gone to sleep—they’ll believe you. You can get me out, if you take me so. Now then, now then!”

“Oh! God forgive this wretched man!” cried the boy with a burst of tears.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said Fagin. “That’ll help us on. This door first. If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows, don’t you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!”

“Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?” inquired the turnkey.

“No other question,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “If I hoped we could recall him to a sense of his position—”

“Nothing will do that, sir,” replied the man, shaking his head. “You had better leave him.”

The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.

“Press on, press on,” cried Fagin. “Softly, but not so slow. Faster, faster!”

The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp, held him back. He struggled with the power of desperation, for an instant; and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.

It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver nearly swooned after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more, he had not the strength to walk.

Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the centre of all—the black stage, the crossbeam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.

Chapter 53

And Last

The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed. The little that remains to their historian to relate, is told in few and simple words.

Before three months had passed, Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie were married in the village church which was henceforth to be the scene of the young clergyman’s labours; on the same day they entered into possession of their new and happy home.

Mrs. Maylie took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law, to enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest felicity that age and worth can know—the contemplation of the happiness of those on whom the warmest affections and tenderest cares of a well-spent life, have been unceasingly bestowed.

It appeared, on full and careful investigation, that if the wreck of property remaining in the custody of Monks (which had never prospered either in his hands or in those of his mother) were equally divided between himself and Oliver, it would yield, to each, little more than three thousand pounds. By the provisions of his father’s will, Oliver would have been entitled to the whole; but Mr. Brownlow, unwilling to deprive the elder son of the opportunity of retrieving his former vices and pursuing an honest career, proposed this mode of distribution, to which his young charge joyfully acceded.

Monks, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion to a distant part of the New World; where, having quickly squandered it, he once more fell into his old courses, and, after undergoing a long confinement for some fresh act of fraud and knavery, at length sunk under an attack of his old disorder, and died in prison. As far from home, died the chief remaining members of his friend Fagin’s gang.

Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver as his son. Removing with him and the old housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage-house, where his dear friends resided, he gratified the only remaining wish of Oliver’s warm and earnest heart, and thus linked together a little society, whose condition approached as nearly to one of perfect happiness as can ever be known in this changing world.

Soon after the marriage of the young people, the worthy doctor returned to Chertsey, where, bereft of the presence of his old friends, he would have been discontented if his temperament had admitted of such a feeling; and would have turned quite peevish if he had known how. For two or three months, he contented himself with hinting that he feared the air began to disagree with him; then, finding that the place really no longer was, to him, what it had been, he settled his business on his assistant, took a bachelor’s cottage outside the village of which his young friend was pastor, and instantaneously recovered. Here he took to gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering, and various other pursuits of a similar kind: all undertaken with his characteristic impetuosity. In each and all he has since become famous throughout the neighborhood, as a most profound authority.

Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong friendship for Mr. Grimwig, which that eccentric gentleman cordially reciprocated. He is accordingly visited by Mr. Grimwig a great many times in the course of the year. On all such occasions, Mr. Grimwig plants, fishes, and carpenters, with great ardour; doing everything in a very singular and unprecedented manner, but always maintaining with his favourite asseveration, that his mode is the right one. On Sundays, he never fails to criticise the sermon to the young clergyman’s face: always informing Mr. Losberne, in strict confidence afterwards, that he considers it an excellent performance, but deems it as well not to say so. It is a standing and very favourite joke, for Mr. Brownlow to rally him on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and to remind him of the night on which they sat with the watch between them, waiting his return; but Mr. Grimwig contends that he was right in the main, and, in proof thereof, remarks that Oliver did not come back after all; which always calls forth a laugh on his side, and increases his good humour.

Mr. Noah Claypole: receiving a free pardon from the Crown in consequence of being admitted approver against Fagin: and considering his profession not altogether as safe a one as he could wish: was, for some little time, at a loss for the means of a livelihood, not burdened with too much work. After some consideration, he went into business as an informer, in which calling he realises a genteel subsistence. His plan is, to walk out once a week during church time attended by Charlotte in respectable attire. The lady faints away at the doors of charitable publicans, and the gentleman being accommodated with threepenny worth of brandy to restore her, lays an information next day, and pockets half the penalty. Sometimes Mr. Claypole faints himself, but the result is the same.

Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others. Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation, he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated from his wife.

As to Mr. Giles and Brittles, they still remain in their old posts, although the former is bald, and the last-named boy quite grey. They sleep at the parsonage, but divide their attentions so equally among its inmates, and Oliver and Mr. Brownlow, and Mr. Losberne, that to this day the villagers have never been able to discover to which establishment they properly belong.

Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes’s crime, fell into a train of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best. Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of action. He struggled hard, and suffered much, for some time; but, having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the end; and, from being a farmer’s drudge, and a carrier’s lad, he is now the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire.

And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it approaches the conclusion of its task; and would weave, for a little longer space, the thread of these adventures.

I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it. I would show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early womanhood, shedding on her secluded path in life soft and gentle light, that fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their hearts. I would paint her the life and joy of the fireside circle and the lively summer group; I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and hear the low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would watch her in all her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling untiring discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her and her dead sister’s child happy in their love for one another, and passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in the soft blue eye. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns of thought and speech—I would fain recall them every one.

How Mr. Brownlow went on, from day to day, filling the mind of his adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to him, more and more, as his nature developed itself, and showed the thriving seeds of all he wished him to become—how he traced in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing—how the two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them—these are all matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can never be attained.

Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word: Agnes. There is no coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many years, before another name is placed above it! But, if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love—the love beyond the grave—of those whom they knew in life, I believe that the shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring.