Chapter XXXVII

In which a reader may perceive a contrast, not uncommon in
matrimonial cases


Mr. Bumble sat in the workhouse parlour, with his eyes moodily
fixed on the cheerless grate, whence, as it was summer time, no
brighter gleam proceeded, than the reflection of certain sickly
rays of the sun, which were sent back from its cold and shining
surface.  A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he
occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought; and, as the
heedless insects hovered round the gaudy net-work, Mr. Bumble
would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy shadow overspread
his countenance.  Mr. Bumble was meditating; it might be that the
insects brought to mind, some painful passage in his own past
life.

Nor was Mr. Bumble's gloom the only thing calculated to awaken a
pleasing melancholy in the bosom of a spectator. There were not
wanting other appearances, and those closely connected with his
own person, which announced that a great change had taken place
in the position of his affairs.  The laced coat, and the cocked
hat; where were they?  He still wore knee-breeches, and dark
cotton stockings on his nether limbs; but they were not _the_
breeches.  The coat was wide-skirted; and in that respect like
_the_ coat, but, oh how different!  The mighty cocked hat was
replaced by a modest round one.  Mr. Bumble was no longer a
beadle.

There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more
substantial rewards they offer, require peculiar value and
dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them.  A
field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a
counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat.  Strip the
bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are
they?  Men.  Mere men.  Dignity, and even holiness too,
sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some
people imagine.

Mr. Bumble had married Mrs. Corney, and was master of the
workhouse.  Another beadle had come into power.  On him the
cocked hat, gold-laced coat, and staff, had all three descended.

'And to-morrow two months it was done!' said Mr. Bumble, with a
sigh.  'It seems a age.'

Mr. Bumble might have meant that he had concentrated a whole
existence of happiness into the short space of eight weeks; but
the sigh--there was a vast deal of meaning in the sigh.

'I sold myself,' said Mr. Bumble, pursuing the same train of
relection, 'for six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a
milk-pot; with a small quantity of second-hand furniture, and
twenty pound in money.  I went very reasonable.  Cheap, dirt
cheap!'

'Cheap!' cried a shrill voice in Mr. Bumble's ear: 'you would
have been dear at any price; and dear enough I paid for you, Lord
above knows that!'

Mr. Bumble turned, and encountered the face of his interesting
consort, who, imperfectly comprehending the few words she had
overheard of his complaint, had hazarded the foregoing remark at
a venture.

'Mrs. Bumble, ma'am!' said Mr. Bumble, with a sentimental
sternness.

'Well!' cried the lady.

'Have the goodness to look at me,' said Mr. Bumble, fixing his
eyes upon her.  (If she stands such a eye as that,' said Mr.
Bumble to himself, 'she can stand anything.  It is a eye I never
knew to fail with paupers.  If it fails with her, my power is
gone.')

Whether an exceedingly small expansion of eye be sufficient to
quell paupers, who, being lightly fed, are in no very high
condition; or whether the late Mrs. Corney was particularly proof
against eagle glances; are matters of opinion.  The matter of
fact, is, that the matron was in no way overpowered by Mr.
Bumble's scowl, but, on the contrary, treated it with great
disdain, and even raised a laugh thereat, which sounded as
though it were genuine.

On hearing this most unexpected sound, Mr. Bumble looked, first
incredulous, and afterwards amazed.  He then relapsed into his
former state; nor did he rouse himself until his attention was
again awakened by the voice of his partner.

'Are you going to sit snoring there, all day?' inquired Mrs.
Bumble.

'I am going to sit here, as long as I think proper, ma'am,'
rejoined Mr. Bumble; 'and although I was _not_ snoring, I shall
snore, gape, sneeze, laugh, or cry, as the humour strikes me;
such being my prerogative.'

'_Your_ prerogative!' sneered Mrs. Bumble, with ineffable contempt.

'I said the word, ma'am,' said Mr. Bumble.  'The prerogative of a
man is to command.'

'And what's the prerogative of a woman, in the name of Goodness?'
cried the relict of Mr. Corney deceased.

'To obey, ma'am,' thundered Mr. Bumble.  'Your late unfortunate
husband should have taught it you; and then, perhaps, he might
have been alive now.  I wish he was, poor man!'

Mrs. Bumble, seeing at a glance, that the decisive moment had now
arrived, and that a blow struck for the mastership on one side or
other, must necessarily be final and conclusive, no sooner heard
this allusion to the dead and gone, than she dropped into a
chair, and with a loud scream that Mr. Bumble was a hard-hearted
brute, fell into a paroxysm of tears.

But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's
soul; his heart was waterproof.  Like washable beaver hats that
improve with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more
vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness,
and so far tacit admissions of his own power, pleased and exalted
him.  He eyed his good lady with looks of great satisfaction, and
begged, in an encouraging manner, that she should cry her
hardest:  the exercise being looked upon, by the faculty, as
strongly conducive to health.

'It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes,
and softens down the temper,' said Mr. Bumble.  'So cry away.'

As he discharged himself of this pleasantry, Mr. Bumble took his
hat from a peg, and putting it on, rather rakishly, on one side,
as a man might, who felt he had asserted his superiority in a
becoming manner, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered
towards the door, with much ease and waggishness depicted in his
whole appearance.

Now, Mrs. Corney that was, had tried the tears, because they were
less troublesome than a manual assault; but, she was quite
prepared to make trial of the latter mode of proceeding, as Mr.
Bumble was not long in discovering.

The first proof he experienced of the fact, was conveyed in a
hollow sound, immediately succeeded by the sudden flying off of
his hat to the opposite end of the room.  This preliminary
proceeding laying bare his head, the expert lady, clasping him
tightly round the throat with one hand, inflicted a shower of
blows (dealt with singular vigour and dexterity) upon it with the
other.  This done, she created a little variety by scratching his
face, and tearing his hair; and, having, by this time, inflicted
as much punishment as she deemed necessary for the offence, she
pushed him over a chair, which was luckily well situated for the
purpose:  and defied him to talk about his prerogative again, if
he dared.

'Get up!' said Mrs. Bumble, in a voice of command.  'And take
yourself away from here, unless you want me to do something
desperate.'

Mr. Bumble rose with a very rueful countenance:  wondering much
what something desperate might be.  Picking up his hat, he looked
towards the door.

'Are you going?' demanded Mrs. Bumble.

'Certainly, my dear, certainly,' rejoined Mr. Bumble, making a
quicker motion towards the door.  'I didn't intend to--I'm going,
my dear!  You are so very violent, that really I--'

At this instant, Mrs. Bumble stepped hastily forward to replace
the carpet, which had been kicked up in the scuffle.  Mr. Bumble
immediately darted out of the room, without bestowing another
thought on his unfinished sentence:  leaving the late Mrs. Corney
in full possession of the field.

Mr. Bumble was fairly taken by surprise, and fairly beaten.  He
had a decided propensity for bullying:  derived no inconsiderable
pleasure from the exercise of petty cruelty; and, consequently,
was (it is needless to say) a coward.  This is by no means a
disparagement to his character; for many official personages, who
are held in high respect and admiration, are the victims of
similar infirmities.  The remark is made, indeed, rather in his
favour than otherwise, and with a view of impressing the reader
with a just sense of his qualifications for office.

But, the measure of his degradation was not yet full.  After
making a tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time,
that the poor-laws really were too hard on people; and that men
who ran away from their wives, leaving them chargeable to the
parish, ought, in justice to be visited with no punishment at
all, but rather rewarded as meritorious individuals who had
suffered much; Mr. Bumble came to a room where some of the female
paupers were usually employed in washing the parish linen:  when
the sound of voices in conversation, now proceeded.

'Hem!' said Mr. Bumble, summoning up all his native dignity.
'These women at least shall continue to respect the prerogative.
Hallo! hallo there!  What do you mean by this noise, you
hussies?'

With these words, Mr. Bumble opened the door, and walked in with
a very fierce and angry manner:  which was at once exchanged for
a most humiliated and cowering air, as his eyes unexpectedly
rested on the form of his lady wife.

'My dear,' said Mr. Bumble, 'I didn't know you were here.'

'Didn't know I was here!' repeated Mrs. Bumble.  'What do _you_ do
here?'

'I thought they were talking rather too much to be doing their
work properly, my dear,' replied Mr. Bumble:  glancing
distractedly at a couple of old women at the wash-tub, who were
comparing notes of admiration at the workhouse-master's humility.

'_You_ thought they were talking too much?' said Mrs. Bumble. 'What
business is it of yours?'

'Why, my dear--' urged Mr. Bumble submissively.

'What business is it of yours?' demanded Mrs. Bumble, again.

'It's very true, you're matron here, my dear,' submitted Mr.
Bumble; 'but I thought you mightn't be in the way just then.'

'I'll tell you what, Mr. Bumble,' returned his lady.  'We don't
want any of your interference.  You're a great deal too fond of
poking your nose into things that don't concern you, making
everybody in the house laugh, the moment your back is turned, and
making yourself look like a fool every hour in the day.  Be off;
come!'

Mr. Bumble, seeing with excruciating feelings, the delight of the
two old paupers, who were tittering together most rapturously,
hesitated for an instant.  Mrs. Bumble, whose patience brooked no
delay, caught up a bowl of soap-suds, and motioning him towards
the door, ordered him instantly to depart, on pain of receiving
the contents upon his portly person.

What could Mr. Bumble do?  He looked dejectedly round, and slunk
away; and, as he reached the door, the titterings of the paupers
broke into a shrill chuckle of irrepressible delight.  It wanted
but this.  He was degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and
station before the very paupers; he had fallen from all the
height and pomp of beadleship, to the lowest depth of the most
snubbed hen-peckery.

'All in two months!' said Mr. Bumble, filled with dismal
thoughts.  'Two months!  No more than two months ago, I was not
only my own master, but everybody else's, so far as the porochial
workhouse was concerned, and now!--'

It was too much.  Mr. Bumble boxed the ears of the boy who opened
the gate for him (for he had reached the portal in his reverie);
and walked, distractedly, into the street.

He walked up one street, and down another, until exercise had
abated the first passion of his grief; and then the revulsion of
feeling made him thirsty.  He passed a great many public-houses;
but, at length paused before one in a by-way, whose parlour, as
he gathered from a hasty peep over the blinds, was deserted, save
by one solitary customer.  It began to rain, heavily, at the
moment.  This determined him.  Mr. Bumble stepped in; and
ordering something to drink, as he passed the bar, entered the
apartment into which he had looked from the street.

The man who was seated there, was tall and dark, and wore a large
cloak.  He had the air of a stranger; and seemed, by a certain
haggardness in his look, as well as by the dusty soils on his
dress, to have travelled some distance.  He eyed Bumble askance,
as he entered, but scarcely deigned to nod his head in
acknowledgment of his salutation.

Mr. Bumble had quite dignity enough for two; supposing even that
the stranger had been more familiar:  so he drank his
gin-and-water in silence, and read the paper with great show of
pomp and circumstance.

It so happened, however: as it will happen very often, when men
fall into company under such circumstances:  that Mr. Bumble
felt, every now and then, a powerful inducement, which he could
not resist, to steal a look at the stranger:  and that whenever
he did so, he withdrew his eyes, in some confusion, to find that
the stranger was at that moment stealing a look at him.  Mr.
Bumble's awkwardness was enhanced by the very remarkable
expression of the stranger's eye, which was keen and bright, but
shadowed by a scowl of distrust and suspicion, unlike anything he
had ever observed before, and repulsive to behold.

When they had encountered each other's glance several times in
this way, the stranger, in a harsh, deep voice, broke silence.

'Were you looking for me,' he said, 'when you peered in at the
window?'

'Not that I am aware of, unless you're Mr. --'  Here Mr. Bumble
stopped short; for he was curious to know the stranger's name,
and thought in his impatience, he might supply the blank.

'I see you were not,' said the stranger; an expression of quiet
sarcasm playing about his mouth; 'or you have known my name.  You
don't know it.  I would recommend you not to ask for it.'

'I meant no harm, young man,' observed Mr. Bumble, majestically.

'And have done none,' said the stranger.

Another silence succeeded this short dialogue:  which was again
broken by the stranger.

'I have seen you before, I think?' said he.  'You were
differently dressed at that time, and I only passed you in the
street, but I should know you again.  You were beadle here, once;
were you not?'

'I was,' said Mr. Bumble, in some surprise; 'porochial beadle.'

'Just so,' rejoined the other, nodding his head.  'It was in that
character I saw you.  What are you now?'

'Master of the workhouse,' rejoined Mr. Bumble, slowly and
impressively, to check any undue familiarity the stranger might
otherwise assume.  'Master of the workhouse, young man!'

'You have the same eye to your own interest, that you always had,
I doubt not?' resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr.
Bumble's eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question.

'Don't scruple to answer freely, man.  I know you pretty well,
you see.'

'I suppose, a married man,' replied Mr. Bumble, shading his eyes
with his hand, and surveying the stranger, from head to foot, in
evident perplexity, 'is not more averse to turning an honest
penny when he can, than a single one.  Porochial officers are not
so well paid that they can afford to refuse any little extra fee,
when it comes to them in a civil and proper manner.'

The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again: as much to say,
he had not mistaken his man; then rang the bell.

'Fill this glass again,' he said, handing Mr. Bumble's empty
tumbler to the landlord.  'Let it be strong and hot.  You like it
so, I suppose?'

'Not too strong,' replied Mr. Bumble, with a delicate cough.

'You understand what that means, landlord!' said the stranger,
drily.

The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned
with a steaming jorum: of which, the first gulp brought the water
into Mr. Bumble's eyes.

'Now listen to me,' said the stranger, after closing the door and
window.  'I came down to this place, to-day, to find you out;
and, by one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of
his friends sometimes, you walked into the very room I was
sitting in, while you were uppermost in my mind.  I want some
information from you.  I don't ask you to give it for nothing,
slight as it is.  Put up that, to begin with.'

As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table to
his companion, carefully, as though unwilling that the chinking
of money should be heard without.  When Mr. Bumble had
scrupulously examined the coins, to see that they were genuine,
and had put them up, with much satisfaction, in his
waistcoat-pocket, he went on:

'Carry your memory back--let me see--twelve years, last winter.'

'It's a long time,' said Mr. Bumble.  'Very good.  I've done it.'

'The scene, the workhouse.'

'Good!'

'And the time, night.'

'Yes.'

'And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which
miserable drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied
to themselves--gave birth to puling children for the parish to
rear; and hid their shame, rot 'em in the grave!'

'The lying-in room, I suppose?' said Mr. Bumble, not quite
following the stranger's excited description.

'Yes,' said the stranger.  'A boy was born there.'

'A many boys,' observed Mr. Bumble, shaking his head,
despondingly.

'A murrain on the young devils!' cried the stranger; 'I speak of
one; a meek-looking, pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down
here, to a coffin-maker--I wish he had made his coffin, and
screwed his body in it--and who afterwards ran away to London, as
it was supposed.

'Why, you mean Oliver!  Young Twist!' said Mr. Bumble; 'I
remember him, of course.  There wasn't a obstinater young
rascal--'

'It's not of him I want to hear; I've heard enough of him,' said
the stranger, stopping Mr. Bumble in the outset of a tirade on
the subject of poor Oliver's vices.  'It's of a woman; the hag
that nursed his mother.  Where is she?'

'Where is she?' said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had
rendered facetious.  'It would be hard to tell.  There's no
midwifery there, whichever place she's gone to; so I suppose
she's out of employment, anyway.'

'What do you mean?' demanded the stranger, sternly.

'That she died last winter,' rejoined Mr. Bumble.

The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this information,
and although he did not withdraw his eyes for some time
afterwards, his gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted, and
he seemed lost in thought.  For some time, he appeared doubtful
whether he ought to be relieved or disappointed by the
intelligence; but at length he breathed more freely; and
withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was no great matter.
With that he rose, as if to depart.

But Mr. Bumble was cunning enough; and he at once saw that an
opportunity was opened, for the lucrative disposal of some secret
in the possession of his better half.  He well remembered the
night of old Sally's death, which the occurrences of that day had
given him good reason to recollect, as the occasion on which he
had proposed to Mrs. Corney; and although that lady had never
confided to him the disclosure of which she had been the solitary
witness, he had heard enough to know that it related to something
that had occurred in the old woman's attendance, as workhouse
nurse, upon the young mother of Oliver Twist.  Hastily calling
this circumstance to mind, he informed the stranger, with an air
of mystery, that one woman had been closeted with the old
harridan shortly before she died; and that she could, as he had
reason to believe, throw some light on the subject of his
inquiry.

'How can I find her?' said the stranger, thrown off his guard;
and plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were
aroused afresh by the intelligence.

'Only through me,' rejoined Mr. Bumble.

'When?' cried the stranger, hastily.

'To-morrow,' rejoined Bumble.

'At nine in the evening,' said the stranger, producing a scrap of
paper, and writing down upon it, an obscure address by the
water-side, in characters that betrayed his agitation; 'at nine
in the evening, bring her to me there.  I needn't tell you to be
secret.  It's your interest.'

With these words, he led the way to the door, after stopping to
pay for the liquor that had been drunk.  Shortly remarking that
their roads were different, he departed, without more ceremony
than an emphatic repetition of the hour of appointment for the
following night.

On glancing at the address, the parochial functionary observed
that it contained no name.  The stranger had not gone far, so he
made after him to ask it.

'What do you want?' cried the man, turning quickly round, as
Bumble touched him on the arm.  'Following me?'

'Only to ask a question,' said the other, pointing to the scrap
of paper.  'What name am I to ask for?'

'Monks!' rejoined the man; and strode hastily, away.

Chapter XXXVIII

Containing an account of what passed between Mr. and Mrs. Bumble,
and Mr. Monks, at their nocturnal interview


It was a dull, close, overcast summer evening.  The clouds, which
had been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and sluggish
mass of vapour, already yielded large drops of rain, and seemed
to presage a violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and Mrs. Bumble,
turning out of the main street of the town, directed their course
towards a scattered little colony of ruinous houses, distant from
it some mile and a-half, or thereabouts, and erected on a low
unwholesome swamp, bordering upon the river.

They were both wrapped in old and shabby outer garments, which
might, perhaps, serve the double purpose of protecting their
persons from the rain, and sheltering them from observation.  The
husband carried a lantern, from which, however, no light yet
shone; and trudged on, a few paces in front, as though--the way
being dirty--to give his wife the benefit of treading in his
heavy footprints.  They went on, in profound silence; every now
and then, Mr. Bumble relaxed his pace, and turned his head as if
to make sure that his helpmate was following; then, discovering
that she was close at his heels, he mended his rate of walking,
and proceeded, at a considerable increase of speed, towards their
place of destination.

This was far from being a place of doubtful character; for it had
long been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who,
under various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted
chiefly on plunder and crime.  It was a collection of mere
hovels:  some, hastily built with loose bricks: others, of old
worm-eaten ship-timber: jumbled together without any attempt at
order or arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a
few feet of the river's bank.  A few leaky boats drawn up on the
mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it:  and here
and there an oar or coil of rope:  appeared, at first, to
indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued
some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and
useless condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led
a passer-by, without much difficulty, to the conjecture that they
were disposed there, rather for the preservation of appearances,
than with any view to their being actually employed.

In the heart of this cluster of huts; and skirting the river,
which its upper stories overhung; stood a large building,
formerly used as a manufactory of some kind.  It had, in its day,
probably furnished employment to the inhabitants of the
surrounding tenements.  But it had long since gone to ruin.  The
rat, the worm, and the action of the damp, had weakened and
rotted the piles on which it stood; and a considerable portion of
the building had already sunk down into the water; while the
remainder, tottering and bending over the dark stream, seemed to
wait a favourable opportunity of following its old companion, and
involving itself in the same fate.

It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple
paused, as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the
air, and the rain commenced pouring violently down.

'The place should be somewhere here,' said Bumble, consulting a
scrap of paper he held in his hand.

'Halloa there!' cried a voice from above.

Following the sound, Mr. Bumble raised his head and descried a
man looking out of a door, breast-high, on the second story.

'Stand still, a minute,' cried the voice; 'I'll be with you
directly.'  With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.

'Is that the man?' asked Mr. Bumble's good lady.

Mr. Bumble nodded in the affirmative.

'Then, mind what I told you,' said the matron: 'and be careful to
say as little as you can, or you'll betray us at once.'

Mr. Bumble, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks, was
apparently about to express some doubts relative to the
advisability of proceeding any further with the enterprise just
then, when he was prevented by the appearance of Monks: who
opened a small door, near which they stood, and beckoned them
inwards.

'Come in!' he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the
ground.  'Don't keep me here!'

The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in, without
any other invitation.  Mr. Bumble, who was ashamed or afraid to
lag behind, followed:  obviously very ill at ease and with
scarcely any of that remarkable dignity which was usually his
chief characteristic.

'What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?' said
Monks, turning round, and addressing Bumble, after he had bolted
the door behind them.

'We--we were only cooling ourselves,' stammered Bumble, looking
apprehensively about him.

'Cooling yourselves!' retorted Monks.  'Not all the rain that
ever fell, or ever will fall, will put as much of hell's fire
out, as a man can carry about with him.  You won't cool yourself
so easily; don't think it!'

With this agreeable speech, Monks turned short upon the matron,
and bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily
cowed, was fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them towards
the ground.

'This is the woman, is it?' demanded Monks.

'Hem!  That is the woman,' replied Mr. Bumble, mindful of his
wife's caution.

'You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?' said the
matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching
look of Monks.

'I know they will always keep _one_ till it's found out,' said
Monks.

'And what may that be?' asked the matron.

'The loss of their own good name,' replied Monks.  'So, by the
same rule, if a woman's a party to a secret that might hang or
transport her, I'm not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not
I!  Do you understand, mistress?'

'No,' rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.

'Of course you don't!' said Monks.  'How should you?'

Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown upon his
two companions, and again beckoning them to follow him, the man
hastened across the apartment, which was of considerable extent,
but low in the roof.  He was preparing to ascend a steep
staircase, or rather ladder, leading to another floor of
warehouses above:  when a bright flash of lightning streamed down
the aperture, and a peal of thunder followed, which shook the
crazy building to its centre.

'Hear it!' he cried, shrinking back.  'Hear it!  Rolling and
crashing on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the
devils were hiding from it.  I hate the sound!'

He remained silent for a few moments; and then, removing his
hands suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable
discomposure of Mr. Bumble, that it was much distorted and
discoloured.

'These fits come over me, now and then,' said Monks, observing
his alarm; 'and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don't mind me
now; it's all over for this once.'

Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing
the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a
lantern which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through
one of the heavy beams in the ceiling:  and which cast a dim
light upon an old table and three chairs that were placed beneath
it.

'Now,' said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves,
'the sooner we come to our business, the better for all.  The
woman know what it is, does she?'

The question was addressed to Bumble; but his wife anticipated
the reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with
it.

'He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she
died; and that she told you something--'

'About the mother of the boy you named,' replied the matron
interrupting him.  'Yes.'

'The first question is, of what nature was her communication?'
said Monks.

'That's the second,' observed the woman with much deliberation.
'The first is, what may the communication be worth?'

'Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it
is?' asked Monks.

'Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,' answered Mrs. Bumble:
who did not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could abundantly
testify.

'Humph!' said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager
inquiry; 'there may be money's worth to get, eh?'

'Perhaps there may,' was the composed reply.

'Something that was taken from her,' said Monks.  'Something that
she wore.  Something that--'

'You had better bid,' interrupted Mrs. Bumble.  'I have heard
enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to
talk to.'

Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into
any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed,
listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended
eyes:  which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in
undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter
sternly demanded, what sum was required for the disclosure.

'What's it worth to you?' asked the woman, as collectedly as
before.

'It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,' replied Monks.
'Speak out, and let me know which.'

'Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me
five-and-twenty pounds in gold,' said the woman; 'and I'll tell
you all I know.  Not before.'

'Five-and-twenty pounds!' exclaimed Monks, drawing back.

'I spoke as plainly as I could,' replied Mrs. Bumble.  'It's not
a large sum, either.'

'Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when
it's told!' cried Monks impatiently; 'and which has been lying
dead for twelve years past or more!'

'Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their
value in course of time,' answered the matron, still preserving
the resolute indifference she had assumed.  'As to lying dead,
there are those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to
come, or twelve million, for anything you or I know, who will
tell strange tales at last!'

'What if I pay it for nothing?' asked Monks, hesitating.

'You can easily take it away again,' replied the matron. 'I am
but a woman; alone here; and unprotected.'

'Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected, neither,' submitted Mr.
Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear: '_I_ am here, my dear.
And besides,' said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke,
'Mr. Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on
porochial persons.  Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man,
my dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say;
bu he has heerd:  I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my
dear:  that I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon
strength, if I'm once roused.  I only want a little rousing;
that's all.'

As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his
lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the
alarmed expression of every feature, that he _did_ want a little
rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike
demonstration: unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person
or persons trained down for the purpose.

'You are a fool,' said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; 'and had better
hold your tongue.'

'He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can't speak
in a lower tone,' said Monks, grimly.  'So!  He's your husband,
eh?'

'He my husband!' tittered the matron, parrying the question.

'I thought as much, when you came in,' rejoined Monks, marking
the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she
spoke.  'So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing
with two people, when I find that there's only one will between
them.  I'm in earnest.  See here!'

He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas
bag, told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed
them over to the woman.

'Now,' he said, 'gather them up; and when this cursed peal of
thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top,
is gone, let's hear your story.'

The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and
break almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising
his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman
should say.  The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two
men leant over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and
the woman also leant forward to render her whisper audible.  The
sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon them,
aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which,
encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in
the extreme.

'When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,' the matron
began, 'she and I were alone.'

'Was there no one by?' asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper;
'No sick wretch or idiot in some other bed?  No one who could
hear, and might, by possibility, understand?'

'Not a soul,' replied the woman; 'we were alone.  _I_ stood alone
beside the body when death came over it.'

'Good,' said Monks, regarding her attentively.  'Go on.'

'She spoke of a young creature,' resumed the matron, 'who had
brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in
the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.'

'Ay?' said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his
shoulder, 'Blood!  How things come about!'

'The child was the one you named to him last night,' said the
matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; 'the mother this
nurse had robbed.'

'In life?' asked Monks.

'In death,' replied the woman, with something like a shudder.
'She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one,
that which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath,
to keep for the infant's sake.'

'She sold it,' cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; 'did she
sell it?  Where?  When?  To whom?  How long before?'

'As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,'
said the matron, 'she fell back and died.'

'Without saying more?' cried Monks, in a voice which, from its
very suppression, seemed only the more furious.  'It's a lie!
I'll not be played with.  She said more.  I'll tear the life out
of you both, but I'll know what it was.'

'She didn't utter another word,' said the woman, to all
appearance unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by the
strange man's violence; 'but she clutched my gown, violently,
with one hand, which was partly closed; and when I saw that she
was dead, and so removed the hand by force, I found it clasped a
scrap of dirty paper.'

'Which contained--' interposed Monks, stretching forward.

'Nothing,' replied the woman; 'it was a pawnbroker's duplicate.'

'For what?' demanded Monks.

'In good time I'll tell you.' said the woman.  'I judge that she
had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to
better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped
together money to pay the pawnbroker's interest year by year, and
prevent its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could
still be redeemed.  Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you,
she died with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her
hand.  The time was out in two days; I thought something might
one day come of it too; and so redeemed the pledge.'

'Where is it now?' asked Monks quickly.

'_There_,' replied the woman.  And, as if glad to be relieved of
it, she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely
large enough for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore
open with trembling hands.  It contained a little gold locket:
in which were two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.

'It has the word "Agnes" engraved on the inside,' said the woman.

'There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows the
date; which is within a year before the child was born.  I found
out that.'

'And this is all?' said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny
of the contents of the little packet.

'All,' replied the woman.

Mr. Bumble drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that
the story was over, and no mention made of taking the
five-and-twenty pounds back again; and now he took courage to
wipe the perspiration which had been trickling over his nose,
unchecked, during the whole of the previous dialogue.

'I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at,' said
his wife addressing Monks, after a short silence; 'and I want to
know nothing; for it's safer not.  But I may ask you two
questions, may I?'

'You may ask,' said Monks, with some show of surprise; 'but
whether I answer or not is another question.'

'--Which makes three,' observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke of
facetiousness.

'Is that what you expected to get from me?' demanded the matron.

'It is,' replied Monks.  'The other question?'

'What do you propose to do with it?  Can it be used against me?'

'Never,' rejoined Monks; 'nor against me either.  See here!  But
don't move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush.'

With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and
pulling an iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large
trap-door which opened close at Mr. Bumble's feet, and caused
that gentleman to retire several paces backward, with great
precipitation.

'Look down,' said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf.
'Don't fear me.  I could have let you down, quietly enough, when
you were seated over it, if that had been my game.'

Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even Mr.
Bumble himself, impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same.
The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly
on below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its
plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles.  There
had once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing
round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet
remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed
from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted to stem its
headlong course.

'If you flung a man's body down there, where would it be
to-morrow morning?' said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro
in the dark well.

'Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides,' replied
Bumble, recoiling at the thought.

Monks drew the little packet from his breast, where he had
hurriedly thrust it; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had
formed a part of some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped
it into the stream.  It fell straight, and true as a die; clove
the water with a scarcely audible splash; and was gone.

The three looking into each other's faces, seemed to breathe more
freely.

'There!' said Monks, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily
back into its former position.  'If the sea ever gives up its
dead, as books say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to
itself, and that trash among it.  We have nothing more to say,
and may break up our pleasant party.'

'By all means,' observed Mr. Bumble, with great alacrity.

'You'll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you?' said Monks,
with a threatening look.  'I am not afraid of your wife.'

'You may depend upon me, young man,' answered Mr. Bumble, bowing
himself gradually towards the ladder, with excessive politeness.
'On everybody's account, young man; on my own, you know, Mr.
Monks.'

'I am glad, for your sake, to hear it,' remarked Monks. 'Light
your lantern!  And get away from here as fast as you can.'

It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point,
or Mr. Bumble, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the
ladder, would infallibly have pitched headlong into the room
below.  He lighted his lantern from that which Monks had detached
from the rope, and now carried in his hand; and making no effort
to prolong the discourse, descended in silence, followed by his
wife.  Monks brought up the rear, after pausing on the steps to
satisfy himself that there were no other sounds to be heard than
the beating of the rain without, and the rushing of the water.

They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for
Monks started at every shadow; and Mr. Bumble, holding his
lantern a foot above the ground, walked not only with remarkable
care, but with a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his
figure:  looking nervously about him for hidden trap-doors.  The
gate at which they had entered, was softly unfastened and opened
by Monks; merely exchanging a nod with their mysterious
acquaintance, the married couple emerged into the wet and
darkness outside.

They were no sooner gone, than Monks, who appeared to entertain
an invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a boy who
had been hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first, and bear
the light, he returned to the chamber he had just quitted.

Chapter XXXIX

Introduces some respectable characters with whom the reader is
already acquainted, and shows how monks and the Jew laid their
worthy heads together


On the evening following that upon which the three worthies
mentioned in the last chapter, disposed of their little matter of
business as therein narrated, Mr. William Sikes, awakening from a
nap, drowsily growled forth an inquiry what time of night it was.

The room in which Mr. Sikes propounded this question, was not one
of those he had tenanted, previous to the Chertsey expedition,
although it was in the same quarter of the town, and was situated
at no great distance from his former lodgings.  It was not, in
appearance, so desirable a habitation as his old quarters:  being
a mean and badly-furnished apartment, of very limited size;
lighted only by one small window in the shelving roof, and
abutting on a close and dirty lane.  Nor were there wanting other
indications of the good gentleman's having gone down in the world
of late:  for a great scarcity of furniture, and total absence of
comfort, together with the disappearance of all such small
moveables as spare clothes and linen, bespoke a state of extreme
poverty; while the meagre and attenuated condition of Mr. Sikes
himself would have fully confirmed these symptoms, if they had
stood in any need of corroboration.

The housebreaker was lying on the bed, wrapped in his white
great-coat, by way of dressing-gown, and displaying a set of
features in no degree improved by the cadaverous hue of illness,
and the addition of a soiled nightcap, and a stiff, black beard
of a week's growth.  The dog sat at the bedside:  now eyeing his
master with a wistful look, and now pricking his ears, and
uttering a low growl as some noise in the street, or in the lower
part of the house, attracted his attention.  Seated by the
window, busily engaged in patching an old waistcoat which formed
a portion of the robber's ordinary dress, was a female:  so pale
and reduced with watching and privation, that there would have
been considerable difficulty in recognising her as the same Nancy
who has already figured in this tale, but for the voice in which
she replied to Mr. Sikes's question.

'Not long gone seven,' said the girl.  'How do you feel to-night,
Bill?'

'As weak as water,' replied Mr. Sikes, with an imprecation on his
eyes and limbs.  'Here; lend us a hand, and let me get off this
thundering bed anyhow.'

Illness had not improved Mr. Sikes's temper; for, as the girl
raised him up and led him to a chair, he muttered various curses
on her awkwardness, and struck her.

'Whining are you?' said Sikes.  'Come!  Don't stand snivelling
there.  If you can't do anything better than that, cut off
altogether.  D'ye hear me?'

'I hear you,' replied the girl, turning her face aside, and
forcing a laugh.  'What fancy have you got in your head now?'

'Oh! you've thought better of it, have you?' growled Sikes,
marking the tear which trembled in her eye.  'All the better for
you, you have.'

'Why, you don't mean to say, you'd be hard upon me to-night,
Bill,' said the girl, laying her hand upon his shoulder.

'No!' cried Mr. Sikes.  'Why not?'

'Such a number of nights,' said the girl, with a touch of woman's
tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone,
even to her voice: 'such a number of nights as I've been patient
with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child:
and this the first that I've seen you like yourself; you wouldn't
have served me as you did just now, if you'd thought of that,
would you?  Come, come; say you wouldn't.'

'Well, then,' rejoined Mr. Sikes, 'I wouldn't.  Why, damme, now,
the girls's whining again!'

'It's nothing,' said the girl, throwing herself into a chair.
'Don't you seem to mind me.  It'll soon be over.'

'What'll be over?' demanded Mr. Sikes in a savage voice. 'What
foolery are you up to, now, again?  Get up and bustle about, and
don't come over me with your woman's nonsense.'

At any other time, this remonstrance, and the tone in which it
was delivered, would have had the desired effect; but the girl
being really weak and exhausted, dropped her head over the back
of the chair, and fainted, before Mr. Sikes could get out a few
of the appropriate oaths with which, on similar occasions, he was
accustomed to garnish his threats.  Not knowing, very well, what
to do, in this uncommon emergency; for Miss Nancy's hysterics
were usually of that violent kind which the patient fights and
struggles out of, without much assistance; Mr. Sikes tried a
little blasphemy: and finding that mode of treatment wholly
ineffectual, called for assistance.

'What's the matter here, my dear?' said Fagin, looking in.

'Lend a hand to the girl, can't you?' replied Sikes impatiently.
'Don't stand chattering and grinning at me!'

With an exclamation of surprise, Fagin hastened to the girl's
assistance, while Mr. John Dawkins (otherwise the Artful Dodger),
who had followed his venerable friend into the room, hastily
deposited on the floor a bundle with which he was laden; and
snatching a bottle from the grasp of Master Charles Bates who
came close at his heels, uncorked it in a twinkling with his
teeth, and poured a portion of its contents down the patient's
throat:  previously taking a taste, himself, to prevent mistakes.

'Give her a whiff of fresh air with the bellows, Charley,' said
Mr. Dawkins; 'and you slap her hands, Fagin, while Bill undoes
the petticuts.'

These united restoratives, administered with great energy:
especially that department consigned to Master Bates, who
appeared to consider his share in the proceedings, a piece of
unexampled pleasantry:  were not long in producing the desired
effect.  The girl gradually recovered her senses; and, staggering
to a chair by the bedside, hid her face upon the pillow:  leaving
Mr. Sikes to confront the new comers, in some astonishment at
their unlooked-for appearance.

'Why, what evil wind has blowed you here?' he asked Fagin.

'No evil wind at all, my dear, for evil winds blow nobody any
good; and I've brought something good with me, that you'll be
glad to see.  Dodger, my dear, open the bundle; and give Bill the
little trifles that we spent all our money on, this morning.'

In compliance with Mr. Fagin's request, the Artful untied this
bundle, which was of large size, and formed of an old
table-cloth; and handed the articles it contained, one by one, to
Charley Bates: who placed them on the table, with various
encomiums on their rarity and excellence.

'Sitch a rabbit pie, Bill,' exclaimed that young gentleman,
disclosing to view a huge pasty; 'sitch delicate creeturs, with
sitch tender limbs, Bill, that the wery bones melt in your mouth,
and there's no occasion to pick 'em; half a pound of seven and
six-penny green, so precious strong that if you mix it with
biling water, it'll go nigh to blow the lid of the tea-pot off; a
pound and a half of moist sugar that the niggers didn't work at
all at, afore they got it up to sitch a pitch of goodness,--oh
no!  Two half-quartern brans; pound of best fresh; piece of
double Glo'ster; and, to wind up all, some of the richest sort
you ever lushed!'

Uttering this last panegyric, Master Bates produced, from one of
his extensive pockets, a full-sized wine-bottle, carefully
corked; while Mr. Dawkins, at the same instant, poured out a
wine-glassful of raw spirits from the bottle he carried:  which
the invalid tossed down his throat without a moment's hesitation.

'Ah!' said Fagin, rubbing his hands with great satisfaction.
'You'll do, Bill; you'll do now.'

'Do!' exclaimed Mr. Sikes; 'I might have been done for, twenty
times over, afore you'd have done anything to help me.  What do
you mean by leaving a man in this state, three weeks and more,
you false-hearted wagabond?'

'Only hear him, boys!' said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders. 'And
us come to bring him all these beau-ti-ful things.'

'The things is well enough in their way,' observed Mr. Sikes:  a
little soothed as he glanced over the table; 'but what have you
got to say for yourself, why you should leave me here, down in
the mouth, health, blunt, and everything else; and take no more
notice of me, all this mortal time, than if I was that 'ere
dog.--Drive him down, Charley!'

'I never see such a jolly dog as that,' cried Master Bates, doing
as he was desired.  'Smelling the grub like a old lady a going to
market!  He'd make his fortun' on the stage that dog would, and
rewive the drayma besides.'

'Hold your din,' cried Sikes, as the dog retreated under the bed:
still growling angrily.  'What have you got to say for yourself,
you withered old fence, eh?'

'I was away from London, a week and more, my dear, on a plant,'
replied the Jew.

'And what about the other fortnight?' demanded Sikes.  'What
about the other fortnight that you've left me lying here, like a
sick rat in his hole?'

'I couldn't help it, Bill.  I can't go into a long explanation
before company; but I couldn't help it, upon my honour.'

'Upon your what?' growled Sikes, with excessive disgust. 'Here!
Cut me off a piece of that pie, one of you boys, to take the
taste of that out of my mouth, or it'll choke me dead.'

'Don't be out of temper, my dear,' urged Fagin, submissively. 'I
have never forgot you, Bill; never once.'

'No!  I'll pound it that you han't,' replied Sikes, with a bitter
grin.  'You've been scheming and plotting away, every hour that I
have laid shivering and burning here; and Bill was to do this;
and Bill was to do that; and Bill was to do it all, dirt cheap,
as soon as he got well: and was quite poor enough for your work.
If it hadn't been for the girl, I might have died.'

'There now, Bill,' remonstrated Fagin, eagerly catching at the
word.  'If it hadn't been for the girl!  Who but poor ould Fagin
was the means of your having such a handy girl about you?'

'He says true enough there!' said Nancy, coming hastily forward.
'Let him be; let him be.'

Nancy's appearance gave a new turn to the conversation; for the
boys, receiving a sly wink from the wary old Jew, began to ply
her with liquor: of which, however, she took very sparingly;
while Fagin, assuming an unusual flow of spirits, gradually
brought Mr. Sikes into a better temper, by affecting to regard
his threats as a little pleasant banter; and, moreover, by
laughing very heartily at one or two rough jokes, which, after
repeated applications to the spirit-bottle, he condescended to
make.

'It's all very well,' said Mr. Sikes; 'but I must have some blunt
from you to-night.'

'I haven't a piece of coin about me,' replied the Jew.

'Then you've got lots at home,' retorted Sikes; 'and I must have
some from there.'

'Lots!' cried Fagin, holding up is hands.  'I haven't so much as
would--'

'I don't know how much you've got, and I dare say you hardly know
yourself, as it would take a pretty long time to count it,' said
Sikes; 'but I must have some to-night; and that's flat.'

'Well, well,' said Fagin, with a sigh, 'I'll send the Artful
round presently.'

'You won't do nothing of the kind,' rejoined Mr. Sikes. 'The
Artful's a deal too artful, and would forget to come, or lose his
way, or get dodged by traps and so be perwented, or anything for
an excuse, if you put him up to it.  Nancy shall go to the ken
and fetch it, to make all sure; and I'll lie down and have a
snooze while she's gone.'

After a great deal of haggling and squabbling, Fagin beat down
the amount of the required advance from five pounds to three
pounds four and sixpence: protesting with many solemn
asseverations that that would only leave him eighteen-pence to
keep house with; Mr. Sikes sullenly remarking that if he couldn't
get any more he must accompany him home; with the Dodger and
Master Bates put the eatables in the cupboard.  The Jew then,
taking leave of his affectionate friend, returned homeward,
attended by Nancy and the boys:  Mr. Sikes, meanwhile, flinging
himself on the bed, and composing himself to sleep away the time
until the young lady's return.

In due course, they arrived at Fagin's abode, where they found
Toby Crackit and Mr. Chitling intent upon their fifteenth game at
cribbage, which it is scarcely necessary to say the latter
gentleman lost, and with it, his fifteenth and last sixpence:
much to the amusement of his young friends.  Mr. Crackit,
apparently somewhat ashamed at being found relaxing himself with
a gentleman so much his inferior in station and mental
endowments, yawned, and inquiring after Sikes, took up his hat to
go.

'Has nobody been, Toby?' asked Fagin.

'Not a living leg,' answered Mr. Crackit, pulling up his collar;
'it's been as dull as swipes.  You ought to stand something
handsome, Fagin, to recompense me for keeping house so long.
Damme, I'm as flat as a juryman; and should have gone to sleep,
as fast as Newgate, if I hadn't had the good natur' to amuse this
youngster.  Horrid dull, I'm blessed if I an't!'

With these and other ejaculations of the same kind, Mr. Toby
Crackit swept up his winnings, and crammed them into his
waistcoat pocket with a haughty air, as though such small pieces
of silver were wholly beneath the consideration of a man of his
figure; this done, he swaggered out of the room, with so much
elegance and gentility, that Mr. Chitling, bestowing numerous
admiring glances on his legs and boots till they were out of
sight, assured the company that he considered his acquaintance
cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and that he didn't value
his losses the snap of his little finger.

'Wot a rum chap you are, Tom!' said Master Bates, highly amused
by this declaration.

'Not a bit of it,' replied Mr. Chitling.  'Am I, Fagin?'

'A very clever fellow, my dear,' said Fagin, patting him on the
shoulder, and winking to his other pupils.

'And Mr. Crackit is a heavy swell; an't he, Fagin?' asked Tom.

'No doubt at all of that, my dear.'

'And it is a creditable thing to have his acquaintance; an't it,
Fagin?' pursued Tom.

'Very much so, indeed, my dear.  They're only jealous, Tom,
because he won't give it to them.'

'Ah!' cried Tom, triumphantly, 'that's where it is!  He has
cleaned me out.  But I can go and earn some more, when I like;
can't I, Fagin?'

'To be sure you can, and the sooner you go the better, Tom; so
make up your loss at once, and don't lose any more time.  Dodger!
Charley!  It's time you were on the lay.  Come!  It's near ten,
and nothing done yet.'

In obedience to this hint, the boys, nodding to Nancy, took up
their hats, and left the room; the Dodger and his vivacious
friend indulging, as they went, in many witticisms at the expense
of Mr. Chitling; in whose conduct, it is but justice to say,
there was nothing very conspicuous or peculiar:  inasmuch as
there are a great number of spirited young bloods upon town, who
pay a much higher price than Mr. Chitling for being seen in good
society:  and a great number of fine gentlemen (composing the
good society aforesaid) who established their reputation upon
very much the same footing as flash Toby Crackit.

'Now,' said Fagin, when they had left the room, 'I'll go and get
you that cash, Nancy.  This is only the key of a little cupboard
where I keep a few odd things the boys get, my dear.  I never
lock up my money, for I've got none to lock up, my dear--ha! ha!
ha!--none to lock up.  It's a poor trade, Nancy, and no thanks;
but I'm fond of seeing the young people about me; and I bear it
all, I bear it all.  Hush!' he said, hastily concealing the key
in his breast; 'who's that?  Listen!'

The girl, who was sitting at the table with her arms folded,
appeared in no way interested in the arrival: or to care whether
the person, whoever he was, came or went:  until the murmur of a
man's voice reached her ears.  The instant she caught the sound,
she tore off her bonnet and shawl, with the rapidity of
lightning, and thrust them under the table. The Jew, turning
round immediately afterwards, she muttered a complaint of the
heat:  in a tone of languor that contrasted, very remarkably,
with the extreme haste and violence of this action:  which,
however, had been unobserved by Fagin, who had his back towards
her at the time.

'Bah!' he whispered, as though nettled by the interruption; 'it's
the man I expected before; he's coming downstairs.  Not a word
about the money while he's here, Nance.  He won't stop long.  Not
ten minutes, my dear.'

Laying his skinny forefinger upon his lip, the Jew carried a
candle to the door, as a man's step was heard upon the stairs
without.  He reached it, at the same moment as the visitor, who,
coming hastily into the room, was close upon the girl before he
observed her.

It was Monks.

'Only one of my young people,' said Fagin, observing that Monks
drew back, on beholding a stranger.  'Don't move, Nancy.'

The girl drew closer to the table, and glancing at Monks with an
air of careless levity, withdrew her eyes; but as he turned
towards Fagin, she stole another look; so keen and searching, and
full of purpose, that if there had been any bystander to observe
the change, he could hardly have believed the two looks to have
proceeded from the same person.

'Any news?' inquired Fagin.

'Great.'

'And--and--good?' asked Fagin, hesitating as though he feared to
vex the other man by being too sanguine.

'Not bad, any way,' replied Monks with a smile.  'I have been
prompt enough this time.  Let me have a word with you.'

The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the
room, although she could see that Monks was pointing to her.  The
Jew:  perhaps fearing she might say something aloud about the
money, if he endeavoured to get rid of her:  pointed upward, and
took Monks out of the room.

'Not that infernal hole we were in before,' she could hear the
man say as they went upstairs.  Fagin laughed; and making some
reply which did not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the
boards, to lead his companion to the second story.

Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through
the house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her
gown loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at
the door, listening with breathless interest.  The moment the
noise ceased, she glided from the room; ascended the stairs with
incredible softness and silence; and was lost in the gloom above.

The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more; the
girl glided back with the same unearthly tread; and, immediately
afterwards, the two men were heard descending.  Monks went at
once into the street; and the Jew crawled upstairs again for the
money.  When he returned, the girl was adjusting her shawl and
bonnet, as if preparing to be gone.

'Why, Nance!' exclaimed the Jew, starting back as he put down
the candle, 'how pale you are!'

'Pale!' echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if
to look steadily at him.

'Quite horrible.  What have you been doing to yourself?'

'Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I
don't know how long and all,' replied the girl carelessly.
'Come!  Let me get back; that's a dear.'

With a sigh for every piece of money, Fagin told the amount into
her hand.  They parted without more conversation, merely
interchanging a 'good-night.'

When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a
doorstep; and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and
unable to pursue her way.  Suddenly she arose; and hurrying on,
in a direction quite opposite to that in which Sikes was awaiting
her returned, quickened her pace, until it gradually resolved
into a violent run.  After completely exhausting herself, she
stopped to take breath:  and, as if suddenly recollecting
herself, and deploring her inability to do something she was bent
upon, wrung her hands, and burst into tears.

It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the
full hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and
hurrying with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction;
partly to recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the
violent current of her own thoughts:  soon reached the dwelling
where she had left the housebreaker.

If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr.
Sikes, he did not observe it; for merely inquiring if she had
brought the money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he
uttered a growl of satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the
pillow, resumed the slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.

It was fortunate for her that the possession of money occasioned
him so much employment next day in the way of eating and
drinking; and withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing
down the asperities of his temper; that he had neither time nor
inclination to be very critical upon her behaviour and
deportment.  That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner
of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which
it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would have
been obvious to the lynx-eyed Fagin, who would most probably have
taken the alarm at once; but Mr. Sikes lacking the niceties of
discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings
than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of
behaviour towards everybody; and being, furthermore, in an
unusually amiable condition, as has been already observed; saw
nothing unusual in her demeanor, and indeed, troubled himself so
little about her, that, had her agitation been far more
perceptible than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have
awakened his suspicions.

As that day closed in, the girl's excitement increased; and, when
night came on, and she sat by, watching until the housebreaker
should drink himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her
cheek, and a fire in her eye, that even Sikes observed with
astonishment.

Mr. Sikes being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot
water with his gin to render it less inflammatory; and had pushed
his glass towards Nancy to be replenished for the third or fourth
time, when these symptoms first struck him.

'Why, burn my body!' said the man, raising himself on his hands
as he stared the girl in the face.  'You look like a corpse come
to life again.  What's the matter?'

'Matter!' replied the girl.  'Nothing.  What do you look at me so
hard for?'

'What foolery is this?' demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm,
and shaking her roughly.  'What is it?  What do you mean?  What
are you thinking of?'

'Of many things, Bill,' replied the girl, shivering, and as she
did so, pressing her hands upon her eyes.  'But, Lord!  What odds
in that?'

The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken,
seemed to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild and
rigid look which had preceded them.

'I tell you wot it is,' said Sikes; 'if you haven't caught the
fever, and got it comin' on, now, there's something more than
usual in the wind, and something dangerous too.  You're not
a-going to--.  No, damme! you wouldn't do that!'

'Do what?' asked the girl.

'There ain't,' said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and
muttering the words to himself; 'there ain't a stauncher-hearted
gal going, or I'd have cut her throat three months ago.  She's
got the fever coming on; that's it.'

Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass
to the bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for
his physic.  The girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it
quickly out, but with her back towards him; and held the vessel
to his lips, while he drank off the contents.

'Now,' said the robber, 'come and sit aside of me, and put on
your own face; or I'll alter it so, that you won't know it agin
when you do want it.'

The girl obeyed.  Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon
the pillow: turning his eyes upon her face.  They closed; opened
again; closed once more; again opened.  He shifted his position
restlessly; and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three
minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and
gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were,
while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy
sleep.  The grasp of his hand relaxed; the upraised arm fell
languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a profound trance.

'The laudanum has taken effect at last,' murmured the girl, as
she rose from the bedside.  'I may be too late, even now.'

She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl:  looking
fearfully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping
draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of
Sikes's heavy hand upon her shoulder; then, stooping softly over
the bed, she kissed the robber's lips; and then opening and
closing the room-door with noiseless touch, hurried from the
house.

A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage through
which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.

'Has it long gone the half-hour?' asked the girl.

'It'll strike the hour in another quarter,' said the man:
raising his lantern to her face.

'And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more,' muttered
Nancy:  brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the
street.

Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and
avenues through which she tracked her way, in making from
Spitalfields towards the West-End of London.  The clock struck
ten, increasing her impatience.  She tore along the narrow
pavement:  elbowing the passengers from side to side; and darting
almost under the horses' heads, crossed crowded streets, where
clusters of persons were eagerly watching their opportunity to do
the like.

'The woman is mad!' said the people, turning to look after her as
she rushed away.

When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the
streets were comparatively deserted; and here her headlong
progress excited a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom
she hurried past.  Some quickened their pace behind, as though to
see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few
made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her
undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she
neared her place of destination, she was alone.

It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde
Park.  As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its
door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven.  She had
loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her
mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped
into the hall.  The porter's seat was vacant.  She looked round
with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.

'Now, young woman!' said a smartly-dressed female, looking out
from a door behind her, 'who do you want here?'

'A lady who is stopping in this house,' answered the girl.

'A lady!' was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. 'What
lady?'

'Miss Maylie,' said Nancy.

The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance,
replied only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to
answer her.  To him, Nancy repeated her request.

'What name am I to say?' asked the waiter.

'It's of no use saying any,' replied Nancy.

'Nor business?' said the man.

'No, nor that neither,' rejoined the girl.  'I must see the
lady.'

'Come!' said the man, pushing her towards the door.  'None of
this.  Take yourself off.'

'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I
can make that a job that two of you won't like to do.  Isn't
there anybody here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a
simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?'

This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook,
who with some of the other servants was looking on, and who
stepped forward to interfere.

'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person.

'What's the good?' replied the man.  'You don't suppose the young
lady will see such as her; do you?'

This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast
quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who
remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to
her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly,
into the kennel.

'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men
again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this
message for God Almighty's sake.'

The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was
that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.

'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs.

'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie
alone,' said Nancy; 'and that if the lady will only hear the
first word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her
business, or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.'

'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!'

'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear
the answer.'

The man ran upstairs.  Nancy remained, pale and almost
breathless, listening with quivering lip to the very audible
expressions of scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very
prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the man
returned, and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.

'It's no good being proper in this world,' said the first
housemaid.

'Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,' said
the second.

The third contented herself with wondering 'what ladies was made
of'; and the fourth took the first in a quartette of 'Shameful!'
with which the Dianas concluded.

Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart:
Nancy followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small
ante-chamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left
her, and retired.

Chapter XL

A strange interview, which is a sequel to the last chamber


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 any one 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 accidently 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, to-night, 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 XLI

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 body-guard, 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 despatch, 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 bye,'
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 party 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 fulness 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

Chapter XLII

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 numbers 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 to-night.'

'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 back-room, 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 back-room 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 back-room 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.

'To-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 XLIII

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 for ever.'

'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 snuff-box on him,--his
own, my dear, his own, for he took snuff himself, and was very
fond of it.  They remanded him till to-day, 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 the 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 rec-ord, 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 big-wig,
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 big-wigs 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 to-day, 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 waggoner'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 curiousity;
and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned 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 mantel-shelf, 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 inamimate 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 ther 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
snuff-box, 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 snuff-box 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 XLIV

The time arrives for Nancy to redeem her pledge 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 encompasses 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 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 to-night, 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 make 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 the 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 to-night 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
sight-seers.  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 fore-finger 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 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 XLV

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 any more o' yer police-offices. That don't suit me,
that don't; and so I tell yer.'

'That'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 to-night,' 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 XLVI

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 any
one 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 to-night
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 to-night, 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
to-night.'

'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 to-night, 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 to-night, 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 mis-spent,
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
day-light, 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.