OLIVER TWIST:

OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.

BY BOZ.

ILLUSTRATED RY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

THE TIME ARRIVES FOR NANCY TO REDEEM HER PLEDGE TO ROSE MAYLIE. SHE FAILS. NOAH CLAYPOLE IS EMPLOYED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION,

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, worked 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; and vile as those schemes were, desperate as were their originators, and bitter as were her feelings towards the Jew, 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 pow. erful inducements to recoil while there was yet time; but she had stipulated that her secret should be rigidly kept-she had dropped no clue which could lead to his discovery-she had refused, even for his sake, a refuge from all the guilt and wretchedness that encompassed her-and what more could she do? She was resolved.

Though every mental struggle 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 others she laughed without merriment, and was noisy without cause or meaning. At others-often within a moment afterwards—she sat silent and dejected, brooding with her head upon her hand, 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 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, intently. 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 the Jew.

none quite ready to be done."

"What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there's

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

The Jew 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 the Jew, 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 the Jew, as if he were relieved by even this concession. "You're like yourself to-night, Bill-quite like your.

self."

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

"It makes you nervous, Bill,-reminds you of being nabbed, does it?" said the Jew, determined not to be offended.

"Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil," returned Sikes, “not by a trap. 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. time of night?"

"Not far."

Where's the gal going at this

"Where are you going!"

"What answer's that !" returned Sikes.

"I say, not far."

"And I say where ?" retorted Sikes in a loud voice. hear me?"

"I don't know where," replied the girl.

"Do you

"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, and take it there," replied Sikes.

"There's not enough there," said the girl. "I want it in the street."

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

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

"Know what I'm-Oh!" cried Sikes, turning to Fagin, “she's out of her senses, you know, or she daren't talk to me in that way." "You'll drive me on to something desperate," muttered the girl, placing both her hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some violent outbreak. "Let me go, will you this minute

this instant."

"No!" roared 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. "Ay, 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're 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 girl'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 the Jew.

"Phew!" said the housebreaker, wiping the perspiration from his face. "Wot a precious strange gal that is ?"

"You may say that, Bill," replied the Jew thoughtfully. "You may say that."

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"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," replied the Jew, shrugging his shoulders.

"Well, I suppose it is," growled Sikes. "I thought I had tamed her, but she's as bad as ever."

"Worse," said the Jew thoughfully. "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," replied the Jew.

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

The Jew 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 black-hearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof," said Sikes. "We was very poor too all the time, and I think one way or other it's worried and fretted her, and that be. ing 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 her. self to and fro, tossed her head, and after a little time burst out laugh. ing.

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'Why, now she's on the other tack?" exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of excessive surprise upon his companion.

The Jew 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 hat and bade him good-night. He paused when he reached the door, and looking round, asked if somebody would light him dowu the dark stairs.

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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. There; show him a light."

Nancy followed the old man down stairs with the 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 dont 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," said the Jew; "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, Nanceof old."

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

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

Fagin walked towards his own home, intent upon the thoughts that were working within his brain. He had conceived the idea-not from what had just passed, though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by degrees-that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker's brutality, had conceived an attachment for some new friend. Her altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference to the interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous, and, added to these, her desperate impatience to leave home that night at a particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him at least, almost a matter of certainty. The object of this new liking was not among his myrmidoms. 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 the Jew 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 vil. lain-the man I hate-gone; another secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with the 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.