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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Hah!' cried Sikes starting up.  'Give that back.'

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

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

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

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

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

'Anything new up in town, Ben?' asked the game-keeper, drawing back to
the window-shutters, the better to admire the horses.

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

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

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

'A woman,' replied the gentleman.  'It is supposed--'

'Now, Ben,' replied the coachman impatiently.

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

'Coming!' cried the office keeper, running out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a shed in a field he passed, that offered shelter for the
night.  Before the door, were three tall poplar trees, which made it
very dark within; and the wind moaned through them with a dismal wail.
He _could not_ walk on, till daylight came again; and here he stretched
himself close to the wall--to undergo new torture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Come back!' said the robber.

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

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

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

 He threw himself upon the road--on his back upon the road. At his head it stood, silent, erect, and still--a living grave-stone, with its epitaph in blood. In the morning, Sikes flees London, seeing suspicious looks everywhere. He stops at a country inn to eat. Seeing a bloodstain on Sikes's hat, a salesman grabs it to demonstrate the quality of his stain remover. Sikes flees the inn. He overhears some men talking about the murder at the post office. He wanders the road, haunted by the image of Nancy's dead eyes. A local barn catches fire, and Sikes helps put out the fire. Sikes decides to return to London and hide. Afraid that his dog, Bull's-eye, will give him away, he tries to drown the animal, but it escapes

