Chapter: About noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out to
pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity of
reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude; of
which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty, to no ordinary
extent, in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious
friends; and, still more, in endeavouring to escape from them after so
much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr. Fagin
laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in, and
cherished him, when, without his timely aid, he might have perished
with hunger; and he related the dismal and affecting history of a young
lad whom, in his philanthropy, he had succoured under parallel
circumstances, but who, proving unworthy of his confidence and evincing
a desire to communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be
hanged at the Old Bailey one morning.  Mr. Fagin did not seek to
conceal his share in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his
eyes that the wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young
person in question, had rendered it necessary that he should become the
victim of certain evidence for the crown: which, if it were not
precisely true, was indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr.
Fagin) and a few select friends.  Mr. Fagin concluded by drawing a
rather disagreeable picture of the discomforts of hanging; and, with
great friendliness and politeness of manner, expressed his anxious
hopes that he might never be obliged to submit Oliver Twist to that
unpleasant operation.

Little Oliver's blood ran cold, as he listened to the Jew's words, and
imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them.  That it
was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the
guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and
that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently knowing or
over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried out by
the Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means unlikely,
when he recollected the general nature of the altercations between that
gentleman and Mr. Sikes: which seemed to bear reference to some
foregone conspiracy of the kind.  As he glanced timidly up, and met the
Jew's searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling limbs
were neither unnoticed nor unrelished by that wary old gentleman.

The Jew, smiling hideously, patted Oliver on the head, and said, that
if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they
would be very good friends yet.  Then, taking his hat, and covering
himself with an old patched great-coat, he went out, and locked the
room-door behind him.

And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of many
subsequent days, seeing nobody, between early morning and midnight, and
left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts.  Which,
never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must
long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed.

After the lapse of a week or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked;
and he was at liberty to wander about the house.

It was a very dirty place.  The rooms upstairs had great high wooden
chimney-pieces and large doors, with panelled walls and cornices to the
ceiling; which, although they were black with neglect and dust, were
ornamented in various ways.  From all of these tokens Oliver concluded
that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had belonged to
better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome:  dismal and
dreary as it looked now.

Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings;
and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would
scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes.  With
these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living
thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering from
room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the
street-door, to be as near living people as he could; and would remain
there, listening and counting the hours, until the Jew or the boys
returned.

In all the rooms, the mouldering shutters were fast closed:  the bars
which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light which
was admitted, stealing its way through round holes at the top: which
made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows.
There was a back-garret window with rusty bars outside, which had no
shutter; and out of this, Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for
hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused
and crowded mass of housetops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends.
Sometimes, indeed, a grizzly head might be seen, peering over the
parapet-wall of a distant house; but it was quickly withdrawn again;
and as the window of Oliver's observatory was nailed down, and dimmed
with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to make
out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any
attempt to be seen or heard,--which he had as much chance of being, as
if he had lived inside the ball of St. Paul's Cathedral.

One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out that
evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to
evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (to do him
justice, this was by no means an habitual weakness with him); and, with
this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to assist him in
his toilet, straightway.

Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful; too happy to have some
faces, however bad, to look upon; too desirous to conciliate those
about him when he could honestly do so; to throw any objection in the
way of this proposal.  So he at once expressed his readiness; and,
kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table so that he
could take his foot in his laps, he applied himself to a process which
Mr. Dawkins designated as 'japanning his trotter-cases.'  The phrase,
rendered into plain English, signifieth, cleaning his boots.

Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational
animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy
attitude smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and
having his boots cleaned all the time, without even the past trouble of
having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to
disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco
that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the beer
that mollified his thoughts; he was evidently tinctured, for the nonce,
with a spice of romance and enthusiasm, foreign to his general nature.
He looked down on Oliver, with a thoughtful countenance, for a brief
space; and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sign, said,
half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates:

'What a pity it is he isn't a prig!'

'Ah!' said Master Charles Bates; 'he don't know what's good for him.'

The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe: as did Charley Bates.
They both smoked, for some seconds, in silence.

'I suppose you don't even know what a prig is?' said the Dodger
mournfully.

'I think I know that,' replied Oliver, looking up.  'It's a the--;
you're one, are you not?' inquired Oliver, checking himself.

'I am,' replied the Dodger.  'I'd scorn to be anything else.'  Mr.
Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock, after delivering this sentiment,
and looked at Master Bates, as if to denote that he would feel obliged
by his saying anything to the contrary.

'I am,' repeated the Dodger.  'So's Charley.  So's Fagin. So's Sikes.
So's Nancy.  So's Bet.  So we all are, down to the dog. And he's the
downiest one of the lot!'

'And the least given to peaching,' added Charley Bates.

'He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of committing
himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without
wittles for a fortnight,' said the Dodger.

'Not a bit of it,' observed Charley.

'He's a rum dog.  Don't he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs
or sings when he's in company!' pursued the Dodger. 'Won't he growl at
all, when he hears a fiddle playing!  And don't he hate other dogs as
ain't of his breed!  Oh, no!'

'He's an out-and-out Christian,' said Charley.

This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal's abilities, but it
was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had only
known it; for there are a good many ladies and gentlemen, claiming to
be out-and-out Christians, between whom, and Mr. Sikes' dog, there
exist strong and singular points of resemblance.

'Well, well,' said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which they
had strayed: with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced
all his proceedings.  'This hasn't go anything to do with young Green
here.'

'No more it has,' said Charley.  'Why don't you put yourself under
Fagin, Oliver?'

'And make your fortun' out of hand?' added the Dodger, with a grin.

'And so be able to retire on your property, and do the gen-teel: as I
mean to, in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the
forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week,' said Charley Bates.

'I don't like it,' rejoined Oliver, timidly; 'I wish they would let me
go.  I--I--would rather go.'

'And Fagin would RATHER not!' rejoined Charley.

Oliver knew this too well; but thinking it might be dangerous to
express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his
boot-cleaning.

'Go!' exclaimed the Dodger.  'Why, where's your spirit?' Don't you take
any pride out of yourself?  Would you go and be dependent on your
friends?'

'Oh, blow that!' said Master Bates: drawing two or three silk
handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard,
'that's too mean; that is.'

'_I_ couldn't do it,' said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.

'You can leave your friends, though,' said Oliver with a half smile;
'and let them be punished for what you did.'

'That,' rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe, 'That was all out
of consideration for Fagin, 'cause the traps know that we work
together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn't made our
lucky; that was the move, wasn't it, Charley?'

Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but the recollection
of Oliver's flight came so suddenly upon him, that the smoke he was
inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his head, and
down into his throat: and brought on a fit of coughing and stamping,
about five minutes long.

'Look here!' said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings and
halfpence. 'Here's a jolly life!  What's the odds where it comes from?
Here, catch hold; there's plenty more where they were took from.  You
won't, won't you?  Oh, you precious flat!'

'It's naughty, ain't it, Oliver?' inquired Charley Bates. 'He'll come
to be scragged, won't he?'

'I don't know what that means,' replied Oliver.

'Something in this way, old feller,' said Charly.  As he said it,
Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief; and, holding it erect
in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious
sound through his teeth; thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic
representation, that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.

'That's what it means,' said Charley.  'Look how he stares, Jack!

I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy; he'll be the death
of me, I know he will.'  Master Charley Bates, having laughed heartily
again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.

'You've been brought up bad,' said the Dodger, surveying his boots with
much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. 'Fagin will make
something of you, though, or you'll be the first he ever had that
turned out unprofitable.  You'd better begin at once; for you'll come
to the trade long before you think of it; and you're only losing time,
Oliver.'

Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his
own:  which, being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched
into a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the
life they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the
best thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin's favour without more
delay, by the means which they themselves had employed to gain it.

'And always put this in your pipe, Nolly,' said the Dodger, as the Jew
was heard unlocking the door above, 'if you don't take fogels and
tickers--'

'What's the good of talking in that way?' interposed Master Bates; 'he
don't know what you mean.'

'If you don't take pocket-handkechers and watches,' said the Dodger,
reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity, 'some
other cove will; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the worse,
and you'll be all the worse, too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the
better, except the chaps wot gets them--and you've just as good a right
to them as they have.'

'To be sure, to be sure!' said the Jew, who had entered unseen by
Oliver.  'It all lies in a nutshell my dear; in a nutshell, take the
Dodger's word for it.  Ha! ha! ha!  He understands the catechism of his
trade.'

The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together, as he corroborated the
Dodger's reasoning in these terms; and chuckled with delight at his
pupil's proficiency.

The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had
returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom Oliver
had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as Tom
Chitling; and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few
gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.

Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger: having perhaps
numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in his
deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate that
he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of genius
and professional aquirements.  He had small twinkling eyes, and a
pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy
fustian trousers, and an apron.  His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out
of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his
'time' was only out an hour before; and that, in consequence of having
worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow
any attention on his private clothes.  Mr. Chitling added, with strong
marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder
was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there
was no remedy against the County.  The same remark he considered to
apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair: which he held to be
decidedly unlawful.  Mr. Chitling wound up his observations by stating
that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two moral long
hard-working days; and that he 'wished he might be busted if he warn't
as dry as a lime-basket.'

'Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Oliver?' inquired the
Jew, with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits on the
table.

'I--I--don't know, sir,' replied Oliver.

'Who's that?' inquired Tom Chitling, casting a contemptuous look at
Oliver.

'A young friend of mine, my dear,' replied the Jew.

'He's in luck, then,' said the young man, with a meaning look at Fagin.
'Never mind where I came from, young 'un; you'll find your way there,
soon enough, I'll bet a crown!'

At this sally, the boys laughed.  After some more jokes on the same
subject, they exchanged a few short whispers with Fagin; and withdrew.

After some words apart between the last comer and Fagin, they drew
their chairs towards the fire; and the Jew, telling Oliver to come and
sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to
interest his hearers.  These were, the great advantages of the trade,
the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and the
liberality of the Jew himself.  At length these subjects displayed
signs of being thoroughly exhausted; and Mr. Chitling did the same:
for the house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two.
Miss Betsy accordingly withdrew; and left the party to their repose.

From this day, Oliver was seldom left alone; but was placed in almost
constant communication with the two boys, who played the old game with
the Jew every day: whether for their own improvement or Oliver's, Mr.
Fagin best knew.  At other times the old man would tell them stories of
robberies he had committed in his younger days:  mixed up with so much
that was droll and curious, that Oliver could not help laughing
heartily, and showing that he was amused in spite of all his better
feelings.

In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils.  Having prepared
his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the
companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was
now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would
blacken it, and change its hue for ever.



It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew: buttoning his
great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up
over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face:
emerged from his den.  He paused on the step as the door was locked and
chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure,
and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down
the street as quickly as he could.

The house to which Oliver had been conveyed, was in the neighborhood of
Whitechapel.  The Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the
street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck
off in the direction of the Spitalfields.

The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the
streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and
clammy to the touch.  It seemed just the night when it befitted such a
being as the Jew to be abroad.  As he glided stealthily along, creeping
beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man
seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and
darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of
some rich offal for a meal.

He kept on his course, through many winding and narrow ways, until he
reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon
became involved in a maze of the mean and dirty streets which abound in
that close and densely-populated quarter.

The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed to be
at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the
intricacies of the way.  He hurried through several alleys and streets,
and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the
farther end.  At the door of a house in this street, he knocked; having
exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he walked
upstairs.

A dog growled as he touched the handle of a room-door; and a man's
voice demanded who was there.

'Only me, Bill; only me, my dear,' said the Jew looking in.

'Bring in your body then,' said Sikes.  'Lie down, you stupid brute!
Don't you know the devil when he's got a great-coat on?'

Apparently, the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin's outer
garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a
chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen:  wagging his
tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his
nature to be.

'Well!' said Sikes.

'Well, my dear,' replied the Jew.--'Ah! Nancy.'

The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment to
imply a doubt of its reception; for Mr. Fagin and his young friend had
not met, since she had interfered in behalf of Oliver.  All doubts upon
the subject, if he had any, were speedily removed by the young lady's
behaviour.  She took her feet off the fender, pushed back her chair,
and bade Fagin draw up his, without saying more about it:  for it was a
cold night, and no mistake.

'It is cold, Nancy dear,' said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands
over the fire.  'It seems to go right through one,' added the old man,
touching his side.

'It must be a piercer, if it finds its way through your heart,' said
Mr. Sikes.  'Give him something to drink, Nancy.  Burn my body, make
haste!  It's enough to turn a man ill, to see his lean old carcase
shivering in that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave.'

Nancy quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard, in which there were
many:  which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance, were
filled with several kinds of liquids.  Sikes pouring out a glass of
brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.

'Quite enough, quite, thankye, Bill,' replied the Jew, putting down the
glass after just setting his lips to it.

'What!  You're afraid of our getting the better of you, are you?'
inquired Sikes, fixing his eyes on the Jew.  'Ugh!'

With a hoarse grunt of contempt, Mr. Sikes seized the glass, and threw
the remainder of its contents into the ashes: as a preparatory ceremony
to filling it again for himself:  which he did at once.

The Jew glanced round the room, as his companion tossed down the second
glassful; not in curiousity, for he had seen it often before; but in a
restless and suspicious manner habitual to him. It was a meanly
furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet to
induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man; and
with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or three
heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a 'life-preserver' that
hung over the chimney-piece.

'There,' said Sikes, smacking his lips. 'Now I'm ready.'

'For business?' inquired the Jew.

'For business,' replied Sikes; 'so say what you've got to say.'

'About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?' said the Jew, drawing his chair
forward, and speaking in a very low voice.

'Yes.  Wot about it?' inquired Sikes.

'Ah! you know what I mean, my dear,' said the Jew.  'He knows what I
mean, Nancy; don't he?'

'No, he don't,' sneered Mr. Sikes.  'Or he won't, and that's the same
thing.  Speak out, and call things by their right names; don't sit
there, winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you
warn't the very first that thought about the robbery.  Wot d'ye mean?'

'Hush, Bill, hush!' said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop
this burst of indignation; 'somebody will hear us, my dear. Somebody
will hear us.'

'Let 'em hear!' said Sikes; 'I don't care.'  But as Mr. Sikes DID care,
on reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and grew
calmer.

'There, there,' said the Jew, coaxingly.  'It was only my caution,
nothing more.  Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when is it to
be done, Bill, eh?  When is it to be done?  Such plate, my dear, such
plate!' said the Jew:  rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows in
a rapture of anticipation.

'Not at all,' replied Sikes coldly.

'Not to be done at all!' echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.

'No, not at all,' rejoined Sikes.  'At least it can't be a put-up job,
as we expected.'

'Then it hasn't been properly gone about,' said the Jew, turning pale
with anger.  'Don't tell me!'

'But I will tell you,' retorted Sikes.  'Who are you that's not to be
told?  I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place
for a fortnight, and he can't get one of the servants in line.'

'Do you mean to tell me, Bill,' said the Jew: softening as the other
grew heated:  'that neither of the two men in the house can be got
over?'

'Yes, I do mean to tell you so,' replied Sikes.  'The old lady has had
'em these twenty years; and if you were to give 'em five hundred pound,
they wouldn't be in it.'

'But do you mean to say, my dear,' remonstrated the Jew, 'that the
women can't be got over?'

'Not a bit of it,' replied Sikes.

'Not by flash Toby Crackit?' said the Jew incredulously. 'Think what
women are, Bill,'

'No; not even by flash Toby Crackit,' replied Sikes.  'He says he's
worn sham whiskers, and a canary waistcoat, the whole blessed time he's
been loitering down there, and it's all of no use.'

'He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my
dear,' said the Jew.

'So he did,' rejoined Sikes, 'and they warn't of no more use than the
other plant.'

The Jew looked blank at this information.  After ruminating for some
minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head and said,
with a deep sigh, that if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he feared
the game was up.

'And yet,' said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, 'it's a
sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon it.'

'So it is,' said Mr. Sikes.  'Worse luck!'

A long silence ensued; during which the Jew was plunged in deep
thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy
perfectly demoniacal.  Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time.
Nancy, apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her
eyes fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.

'Fagin,' said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed;
'is it worth fifty shiners extra, if it's safely done from the outside?'

'Yes,' said the Jew, as suddenly rousing himself.

'Is it a bargain?' inquired Sikes.

'Yes, my dear, yes,' rejoined the Jew; his eyes glistening, and every
muscle in his face working, with the excitement that the inquiry had
awakened.

'Then,' said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew's hand, with some disdain,
'let it come off as soon as you like.  Toby and me were over the
garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and
shutters.  The crib's barred up at night like a jail; but there's one
part we can crack, safe and softly.'

'Which is that, Bill?' asked the Jew eagerly.

'Why,' whispered Sikes, 'as you cross the lawn--'

'Yes?' said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes almost
starting out of it.

'Umph!' cried Sikes, stopping short, as the girl, scarcely moving her
head, looked suddenly round, and pointed for an instant to the Jew's
face.  'Never mind which part it is. You can't do it without me, I
know; but it's best to be on the safe side when one deals with you.'

'As you like, my dear, as you like' replied the Jew.  'Is there no help
wanted, but yours and Toby's?'

'None,' said Sikes.  'Cept a centre-bit and a boy.  The first we've
both got; the second you must find us.'

'A boy!' exclaimed the Jew.  'Oh! then it's a panel, eh?'

'Never mind wot it is!' replied Sikes.  'I want a boy, and he musn't be
a big 'un.  Lord!' said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, 'if I'd only got that
young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper's!  He kept him small on
purpose, and let him out by the job.  But the father gets lagged; and
then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from
a trade where he was earning money, teaches him to read and write, and
in time makes a 'prentice of him.  And so they go on,' said Mr. Sikes,
his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, 'so they go on;
and, if they'd got money enough (which it's a Providence they haven't,)
we shouldn't have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade, in a year
or two.'

'No more we should,' acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering
during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. 'Bill!'

'What now?' inquired Sikes.

The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at the
fire; and intimated, by a sign, that he would have her told to leave
the room.  Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought
the precaution unnecessary; but complied, nevertheless, by requesting
Miss Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.

'You don't want any beer,' said Nancy, folding her arms, and retaining
her seat very composedly.

'I tell you I do!' replied Sikes.

'Nonsense,' rejoined the girl coolly, 'Go on, Fagin.  I know what he's
going to say, Bill; he needn't mind me.'

The Jew still hesitated.  Sikes looked from one to the other in some
surprise.

'Why, you don't mind the old girl, do you, Fagin?' he asked at length.
'You've known her long enough to trust her, or the Devil's in it.  She
ain't one to blab.  Are you Nancy?'

'_I_ should think not!' replied the young lady:  drawing her chair up
to the table, and putting her elbows upon it.

'No, no, my dear, I know you're not,' said the Jew; 'but--' and again
the old man paused.

'But wot?' inquired Sikes.

'I didn't know whether she mightn't p'r'aps be out of sorts, you know,
my dear, as she was the other night,' replied the Jew.

At this confession, Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh; and, swallowing
a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst
into sundry exclamations of 'Keep the game a-going!'  'Never say die!'
and the like.  These seemed to have the effect of re-assuring both
gentlemen; for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and
resumed his seat: as did Mr. Sikes likewise.

'Now, Fagin,' said Nancy with a laugh.  'Tell Bill at once, about
Oliver!'

'Ha! you're a clever one, my dear: the sharpest girl I ever saw!' said
the Jew, patting her on the neck.  'It WAS about Oliver I was going to
speak, sure enough.  Ha! ha! ha!'

'What about him?' demanded Sikes.

'He's the boy for you, my dear,' replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper;
laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.

'He!' exclaimed Sikes.

'Have him, Bill!' said Nancy.  'I would, if I was in your place. He
mayn't be so much up, as any of the others; but that's not what you
want, if he's only to open a door for you.  Depend upon it he's a safe
one, Bill.'

'I know he is,' rejoined Fagin.  'He's been in good training these last
few weeks, and it's time he began to work for his bread.  Besides, the
others are all too big.'

'Well, he is just the size I want,' said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.

'And will do everything you want, Bill, my dear,' interposed the Jew;
'he can't help himself.  That is, if you frighten him enough.'

'Frighten him!' echoed Sikes.  'It'll be no sham frightening, mind you.
If there's anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in
for a penny, in for a pound.  You won't see him alive again, Fagin.
Think of that, before you send him.  Mark my words!' said the robber,
poising a crowbar, which he had drawn from under the bedstead.

'I've thought of it all,' said the Jew with energy. 'I've--I've had my
eye upon him, my dears, close--close. Once let him feel that he is one
of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief; and
he's ours!  Ours for his life.  Oho!  It couldn't have come about
better!  The old man crossed his arms upon his breast; and, drawing his
head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.

'Ours!' said Sikes.  'Yours, you mean.'

'Perhaps I do, my dear,' said the Jew, with a shrill chuckle. 'Mine, if
you like, Bill.'

'And wot,' said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend, 'wot
makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know
there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you
might pick and choose from?'

'Because they're of no use to me, my dear,' replied the Jew, with some
confusion, 'not worth the taking.  Their looks convict 'em when they
get into trouble, and I lose 'em all.  With this boy, properly managed,
my dears, I could do what I couldn't with twenty of them.  Besides,'
said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, 'he has us now if he
could only give us leg-bail again; and he must be in the same boat with
us.  Never mind how he came there; it's quite enough for my power over
him that he was in a robbery; that's all I want.  Now, how much better
this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of the
way--which would be dangerous, and we should lose by it besides.'

'When is it to be done?' asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent
exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with
which he received Fagin's affectation of humanity.

'Ah, to be sure,' said the Jew; 'when is it to be done, Bill?'

'I planned with Toby, the night arter to-morrow,' rejoined Sikes in a
surly voice, 'if he heerd nothing from me to the contrairy.'

'Good,' said the Jew; 'there's no moon.'

'No,' rejoined Sikes.

'It's all arranged about bringing off the swag, is it?' asked the Jew.

Sikes nodded.

'And about--'

'Oh, ah, it's all planned,' rejoined Sikes, interrupting him. 'Never
mind particulars.  You'd better bring the boy here to-morrow night.  I
shall get off the stone an hour arter daybreak.  Then you hold your
tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that's all you'll have to
do.'

After some discussion, in which all three took an active part, it was
decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew's next evening when the
night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her; Fagin craftily
observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would
be more willing to accompany the girl who had so recently interfered in
his behalf, than anybody else.  It was also solemnly arranged that poor
Oliver should, for the purposes of the contemplated expedition, be
unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William Sikes;
and further, that the said Sikes should deal with him as he thought
fit; and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any mischance or
evil that might be necessary to visit him: it being understood that, to
render the compact in this respect binding, any representations made by
Mr. Sikes on his return should be required to be confirmed and
corroborated, in all important particulars, by the testimony of flash
Toby Crackit.

These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy at a
furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner;
yelling forth, at the same time, most unmusical snatches of song,
mingled with wild execrations.  At length, in a fit of professional
enthusiasm, he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools:
which he had no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of
explaining the nature and properties of the various implements it
contained, and the peculiar beauties of their construction, than he
fell over the box upon the floor, and went to sleep where he fell.

'Good-night, Nancy,' said the Jew, muffling himself up as before.

'Good-night.'

Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her, narrowly.  There was no
flinching about the girl.  She was as true and earnest in the matter as
Toby Crackit himself could be.

The Jew again bade her good-night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon the
prostrate form of Mr. Sikes while her back was turned, groped
downstairs.

'Always the way!' muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homeward.
'The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call
up some long-forgotten feeling; and, the best of them is, that it never
lasts.  Ha! ha!  The man against the child, for a bag of gold!'

Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Fagin wended
his way, through mud and mire, to his gloomy abode:  where the Dodger
was sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.

'Is Oliver a-bed?  I want to speak to him,' was his first remark as
they descended the stairs.

'Hours ago,' replied the Dodger, throwing open a door.  'Here he is!'

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale
with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he
looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in
the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle
spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross air of the
world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.

'Not now,' said the Jew, turning softly away.  'To-morrow. To-morrow.'

 The day after Oliver's return to the thieves' den, Fagin scolds the boy for his ingratitude to those who had helped him. Fagin makes it plain that such conduct may oblige him to betray the offender into the hands of the hangman. Oliver is given time to ponder the theme of Fagin's sermon when he is locked up by himself from early morning until late at night. After about a week, Oliver is allowed the run of the house while the other occupants are away. He wanders through the gloomy rooms that display signs of past elegance, but everything is now deteriorated from neglect and decay. All of the shutters are securely fastened except on one garret window that is barred. From this vantage point, Oliver can catch a glimpse of the ugly surroundings. One afternoon, Bates and the Dodger remain in the house, and Dawkins grants Oliver the privilege of polishing his boots. While this operation is going on, the Dodger chides Oliver for not joining in their "trade," but Oliver declines. "I don't like it. . . . I -- I -- would rather go." He realizes, however, that it is unsafe to speak too freely, and Bates points out that Fagin does not agree with Oliver's sentiments. Yet Oliver can't refrain from reminding his companions of their readiness to abandon another to suffer for a crime they committed. The others coolly explain that it was provident to take advantage of the situation to save themselves. The two predict that Oliver will eventually have to yield, and they advise him to curry Fagin's favor by learning from him. Fagin, coming in just at this moment, overhears the last remarks and heartily endorses them. He is accompanied by Betsy and a shabby youth named Tom Chitling, who has just completed a six-week jail sentence, during which time he has developed a colossal thirst. For Oliver's benefit, the conversation reverts to the earlier topics. These are "the greater advantages of the trade, the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and the liberality of the Jew himself." Oliver's solitary detention is ended. From this point, someone is usually with him. Fagin tells stories of his criminal exploits, coloring them with diverting humor. Weakened by isolation, Oliver is open to any human influence; the boy is being outwitted by the old scoundrel. On a foul, wet night, Fagin leaves his hideout and unhesitatingly threads his way through a labyrinth of mean streets. The grimy surroundings are consonant with Fagin's presence. His destination is Sikes's quarters, where he also finds Nancy. When Fagin hesitates to drink the brandy offered to him, Sikes gulps down a glassful to demonstrate that the liquor is not poisoned. The old man has come to discuss a proposed burglary in Chertsey. Sikes asserts that it cannot be accomplished. For weeks the resourceful Toby Crackit has been trying to lay the groundwork by corrupting the servants. But the loyalty of both the men and the women is firm. This unexpected obstacle discourages the partners. Sikes has a plan but refuses to unfold it, wary of Fagin's potential for betrayal and double dealing. Essential to the enterprise are the services of a small boy. Fagin tries to send Nancy from the room, but she spurns his ruse, having already anticipated that Fagin will propose Oliver. Sikes is doubtful at first, but Nancy recommends that Oliver be employed. Fagin is enthusiastic over the advantages. If Oliver becomes implicated in one crime, he will be resigned to a lawless existence, which in turn will remove the danger of his again escaping, with likely fatal consequences for the gang. This method of silencing the boy is much preferable to eliminating him. The burglary is to be staged two nights later. It is arranged for Nancy to bring Oliver to Sikes the following night, and the boy is to be wholly under his control. The housebreaker then adjourns the conference by drinking himself into a stupor. Fagin goes out, satisfied that Nancy can be trusted, in spite of her obvious favoritism for Oliver. When Fagin arrives at his quarters, he intends to speak to Oliver at once, but he refrains when he finds the careworn child asleep.

