need not have left me that, for I had inherited it long before. She
would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself and the child
too, but was filled with the impression that a male child had been
born, and was alive. I swore to her if ever it crossed my path to hunt
it down, never to let it rest, to pursue it with the bitterest and most
unrelenting animosity, to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt,
and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by dragging it,
if I could, to the very gallows-foot. She was right. He came in my way
at last; I began well, and but for babbling drabs I would have finished
as I began; I would, I would!”

As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered curses on
himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr. Brownlow turned to the
terrified group beside him, and explained that the Jew, who had been
his old accomplice and confident, had a large reward for keeping Oliver
ensnared, of which some part was to be given up in the event of his
being rescued, and that a dispute on this head had led to their visit
to the country house for the purpose of identifying him.

“The locket and ring?” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Monks.

“I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stole them
from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse,” answered Monks without
raising his eyes. “You know what became of them.”

Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who, disappearing with great
alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs. Bumble, and dragging her
unwilling consort after him.

“Do my hi’s deceive me!” cried Mr. Bumble with ill-feigned enthusiasm,
“or is that little Oliver? Oh O-li-ver, if you know’d how I’ve been
a-grieving for you—!”

“Hold your tongue, fool,” murmured Mrs. Bumble.

“Isn’t natur, natur, Mrs. Bumble!” remonstrated the workhouse master.
“Can’t I be supposed to feel—I as brought him up porochially—when
I see him a-setting here among ladies and gentlemen of the very
affablest description! I always loved that boy as if he’d been
my—my—my own grandfather,” said Mr. Bumble, halting for an
appropriate comparison. “Master Oliver, my dear, you remember the
blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat? Ah! he went to heaven last
week in a oak coffin with plated handles, Oliver.”

“Come, sir,” said Mr. Grimwig tartly, “suppress your feelings.”

“I will do my endeavours, sir,” replied Mr. Bumble. “How do you do,
sir? I hope you are very well.”

This salutation was addressed to Mr. Brownlow, who had stepped up to
within a short distance of the respectable couple, and who inquired, as
he pointed to Monks,—

“Do you know that person?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble flatly.

“Perhaps _you_ don’t?” said Mr. Brownlow, addressing her spouse.

“I never saw him in all my life,” said Mr. Bumble.

“Nor sold him anything, perhaps?”

“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble.

“You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?” said Mr.
Brownlow.

“Certainly not,” replied the matron. “What are we brought here to
answer to such nonsense as this for?”

Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig, and again that gentleman
limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not again did he return
with a stout man and wife, for this time he led in two palsied women,
who shook and tottered as they walked.

“You shut the door the night old Sally died,” said the foremost one,
raising her shrivelled hand, “but you couldn’t shut out the sound nor
stop the chinks.”

“No, no,” said the other, looking round her, and wagging her toothless
jaws. “No, no, no.”

“We heard her try to tell you what she’d done, and saw you take a paper
from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the pawnbroker’s
shop,” said the first.

“Yes,” added the second, “and it was a ‘locket and gold ring.’ We
found out that, and saw it given you. We were bye. Oh! we were bye.”

“And we know more than that,” resumed the first, “for she told us
often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling she
should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that she was
taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child.”

“Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?” asked Mr. Grimwig with
a motion towards the door.

“No,” replied the woman; “if he”—she pointed to Monks—“has been
coward enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have sounded all
these hags till you found the right ones, I have nothing more to say. I
_did_ sell them, and they’re where you’ll never get them. What then?”

“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “except that it remains for us to
take care that you are neither of you employed in a situation of trust
again. You may leave the room.”

“I hope,” said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great ruefulness
as Mr. Grimwig disappeared with the two old women, “I hope that this
unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive me of my porochial
office?”

“Indeed it will,” replied Mr. Brownlow; “you must make up your mind to
that, and think yourself well off besides.”

“It was all Mrs. Bumble—she _would_ do it—” urged Mr. Bumble; first
looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.

“That is no excuse,” returned Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the
occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the
more guilty of the two in the eye of the law, for the law supposes that
your wife acts under your direction.”

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat
emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that is the
eye of the law, the law’s a bachelor, and the worst I wish the law is,
that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr. Bumble
fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his pockets
followed his helpmate down stairs.

“Young lady,” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Rose, “give me your hand.
Do not tremble; you need not fear to hear the few remaining words we
have to say.”

“If they have—I do not know how they can, but if they have—any
reference to me,” said Rose, “pray let me hear them at some other time.
I have not strength or spirits now.”

“Nay,” returned the old gentleman, drawing her arm through his; “you
have more fortitude than this, I am sure. Do you know this young lady,
sir?”

“Yes,” replied Monks.

“I never saw you before,” said Rose faintly.

“I have seen you often,” returned Monks.

“The father of the unhappy Agnes had two daughters,” said Mr. Brownlow.
“What was the fate of the other—the child?”

“The child,” replied Monks, “when her father died in a strange place,
in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper that
yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives could be
traced—the child was taken by some wretched cottagers, who reared it
as their own.”

“Go on,” said Mr. Brownlow, signing to Mrs. Maylie to approach. “Go on!”

“You couldn’t find the spot to which these people had repaired,” said
Monks, “but where friendship fails, hatred will often force a way.
My mother found it after a year of cunning search—ay, and found the
child.”

“She took it, did she?”

“No. The people were poor, and began to sicken—at least the man
did—of their fine humanity; so she left it with them, giving them a
small present of money which would not last long, and promising more,
which she never meant to send. She didn’t quite rely, however, on
their discontent and poverty for the child’s unhappiness, but told the
history of the sister’s shame with such alterations as suited her, bade
them take good heed of the child, for she came of bad blood, and told
them she was illegitimate, and sure to go wrong one time or other. The
circumstances countenanced all this; the people believed it; and there
the child dragged on an existence miserable enough even to satisfy us,
until a widow lady, residing then at Chester, saw the girl by chance,
pitied her, and took her home. There was some cursed spell against us,
for in spite of all our efforts she remained there and was happy: I
lost sight of her two or three years ago, and saw her no more until a
few months back.”

“Do you see her now?”

“Yes—leaning on your arm.”

“But not the less my niece,” cried Mrs. Maylie, folding the fainting
girl in her arms,—“not the less my dearest child. I would not lose her
now for all the treasures of the world. My sweet companion, my own dear
girl—”

“The only friend I ever had,” cried Rose, clinging to her,—“the
kindest, best of friends. My heart will burst. I cannot—cannot—bear
all this.”

“You have borne more, and been through all the best and gentlest
creature that ever shed happiness on every one she knew,” said Mrs.
Maylie, embracing her tenderly. “Come, come, my love, remember
who this is who waits to clasp you in his arms, poor child,—see
here—look, look, my dear.”

“Not aunt,” cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck: “I’ll never
call her aunt—sister, my own dear sister, that something taught my
heart to love so dearly from the first—Rose, dear, darling Rose.”

Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged
in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father,
sister, and mother, were gained and lost in that one moment. Joy and
grief were mingled in the cup, but there were no bitter tears, for even
grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender
recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character
of pain.

They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door at length
announced that some one was without. Oliver opened it, glided away, and
gave place to Harry Maylie.

“I know it all,” he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl. “Dear
Rose, I know it all.”

“I am not here by accident,” he added after a lengthened silence;
“nor have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday—only
yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?”

“Stay,” said Rose,—“you _do_ know all?”

“All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the
subject of our last discourse.”

“I did.”

“Not to press you to alter your determination,” pursued the young
man, “but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever
of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still
adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself by no word or
act to seek to change it.”

“The same reasons which influenced me then will influence me now,” said
Rose firmly. “If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose
goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should
I ever feel it as I should to-night? It is a struggle,” said Rose, “but
one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.”

“The disclosure of to-night—” Harry began.

“The disclosure of to-night,” replied Rose softly, “leaves me in the
same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.”

“You harden your heart against me, Rose,” urged her lover.

“Oh, Harry, Harry,” said the young lady, bursting into tears, “I wish I
could, and spare myself this pain.”

“Then why inflict it on yourself?” said Harry, taking her hand. “Think,
dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night.”

“And what have I heard! what have I heard!” cried Rose. “That a sense
of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned
all—there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.”

“Not yet, not yet,” said the young man, detaining her as she rose.
“My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling—every thought in life
except my love for you—have undergone a change. I offer you, now, no
distinction among a bustling crowd, no mingling with a world of malice
and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught
but real disgrace and shame; but a home—a heart and home—yes, dearest
Rose, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.”

“What does this mean!” faltered the young lady.

“It means but this—that when I left you last, I left you with the
firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and
me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours
mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would
turn from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk from me because
of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right. Such power
and patronage—such relatives of influence and rank—as smiled upon me
then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in
England’s richest county, and by one village church—mine, Rose, my
own—there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of
than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is
_my_ rank and station now, and here I lay it down.”

“It’s a trying thing waiting supper for lovers,” said Mr. Grimwig,
waking up, and pulling his pocket handkerchief from over his head.

Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time.
Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in together),
could offer a word in extenuation.

“I had serious thoughts of eating my head to-night,” said Mr. Grimwig,
“for I began to think I should get nothing else. I’ll take the liberty,
if you’ll allow me, of saluting the bride that is to be.”

Mr. Grimwig lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon the
blushing girl; and the example being contagious, was followed both by
the doctor and Mr. Brownlow. Some people affirm that Harry Maylie had
been observed to set it originally in a dark room adjoining; but the
best authorities consider this downright scandal, he being young and a
clergyman.

“Oliver, my child,” said Mrs. Maylie, “where have you been, and why
do you look so sad? There are tears stealing down your face at this
moment. What is the matter?”

It is a world of disappointment—often to the hopes we most cherish,
and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.

Poor Dick was dead!

CHAPTER L.

THE JEW’S LAST NIGHT ALIVE.

THE court was paved from floor to roof with human faces. Inquisitive
and eager eyes peered from every inch of space; from the rail before
the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the
galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man—the Jew. Before him and
behind, above, below, on the right and on the left—he seemed to stand
surrounded by a firmament all bright with beaming eyes.

He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand
resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear,
and his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater
distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who was
delivering his charge to the jury. At times he turned his eyes sharply
upon them to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in
his favour; and when the points against him were stated with terrible
distinctness, looked towards his counsel in mute appeal that he would
even then urge something in his behalf. Beyond these manifestations of
anxiety, he stirred not hand or foot. He had scarcely moved since the
trial began; and now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained
in the same strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent on
him as though he listened still.

A slight bustle in the court recalled him to himself, and looking
round, he saw that the jurymen had turned together to consider of their
verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see the people
rising above each other to see his face: some hastily applying their
glasses to their eyes, and others whispering their neighbours with
looks expressive of abhorrence. A few there were who seemed unmindful
of him, and looked only to the jury in impatient wonder how they could
delay, but in no one face—not even among the women, of whom there
were many there—could he read the faintest sympathy with him, or any
feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.

As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the death-like stillness
came again, and looking back, he saw that the jurymen had turned
towards the judge. Hush!

They only sought permission to retire.

He looked wistfully into their faces, one by one, when they passed
out, as though to see which way the greater number leant; but that
was fruitless. The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed
mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a chair. The man
pointed it out, or he should not have seen it.

He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were eating,
and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs, for the crowded place
was very hot. There was one young man sketching his face in a little
note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the
artist broke his pencil-point and made another with his knife, as any
idle spectator might have done.

In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his mind
began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it cost,
and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman on the bench,
too, who had gone out some half an hour before, and now came back. He
wondered within himself whether this man had been to get his dinner,
what he had had, and where he had had it, and pursued this train of
careless thought until some new object caught his eye and roused
another.

Not that all this time his mind was for an instant free from one
oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet; it
was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he could
not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trembled and turned,
burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron
spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken
off, and whether they would mend it or leave it as it was. Then he
thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold, and stopped
to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then went on to
think again.

At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all
towards the door. The jury returned and passed him close. He could
glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone.
Perfect stillness ensued—not a rustle—not a breath—Guilty.

The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another,
and then it echoed deep loud groans that gathered strength as they
swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace
outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.

The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say why
sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his
listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the
demand was made, but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it,
and then he only muttered that he was an old man—an old man—an old
man—and so dropping into a whisper, was silent again.

The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the
same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery uttered some exclamation,
called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked hastily up as if angry
at the interruption, and bent forward yet more attentively. The address
was solemn and impressive, the sentence fearful to hear, but he stood
like a marble figure, without the motion of a nerve. His haggard face
was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes
staring out before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and
beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and
obeyed.

[Illustration: _Fagin in the condemned Cell._]

They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners
were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their
friends who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard.
There was nobody there to speak to _him_, but as he passed, the
prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were
clinging to the bars, and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and
screeched and hissed. He shook his fist and would have spat upon them,
but his conductors hurried him on through a gloomy passage lighted
by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison.

Here he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of
anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of
the condemned cells, and left him there—alone.

He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat
and bedstead, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground tried
to collect his thoughts. After a while he began to remember a few
disjointed fragments of what the judge had said, though it had seemed
to him at the time that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell
into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more, so that in a
little time he had the whole almost as it was delivered. To be hanged
by the neck till he was dead—that was the end. To be hanged by the
neck till he was dead.

As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known
who had died upon the scaffold—some of them through his means. They
rose up in such quick succession that he could hardly count them. He
had seen some of them die,—and joked too, because they died with
prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down;
and how suddenly they changed from strong and vigorous men to dangling
heaps of clothes!

Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon that very
spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The cell had
been built for many years—scores of men must have passed their
last hours there—it was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead
bodies—the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms—the faces that he knew
even beneath that hideous veil—Light, light!

At length when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door
and walls, two men appeared, one bearing a candle which he thrust into
an iron candlestick fixed against the wall, and the other dragging in
a mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner was to be left
alone no more.

Then came night—dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad
to hear the church-clocks strike, for they tell of life and coming
day. To the Jew they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came
laden with the one deep hollow sound—Death. What availed the noise and
bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him? It was
another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.

The day passed off—day, there was no day; it was gone as soon as
come—and night came on again; night so long and yet so short; long
in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. One time
he raved and blasphemed, and at another howled and tore his hair.
Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but
he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable
efforts, and he beat them off.

Saturday night; he had only one night more to live. And as he thought
of this, the day broke—Sunday.

It was not until the night of this last awful day that a withering
sense of his helpless desperate state came in its full intensity upon
his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive
hopes of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than
the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either of
the two men who relieved each other in their attendance upon him, and
they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had
sat there awake, but dreaming. Now he started up every minute, and with
gasping mouth and burning skin hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm
of fear and wrath that even they—used to such sights—recoiled from
him with horror. He grew so terrible at last in all the tortures of his
evil conscience, that one man could not bear to sit there, eyeing him
alone, and so the two kept watch together.

He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had
been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his
capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair
hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn and twisted
into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh
crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight—nine—ten. If it was
not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours treading
on each other’s heels, where would he be when they came round again!
Eleven. Another struck ere the voice of the hour before had ceased
to vibrate. At eight he would be the only mourner in his own funeral
train; at eleven——

Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and
such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but too often and too
long from the thoughts of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that.
The few who lingered as they passed and wondered what the man was doing
who was to be hung to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night, if
they could have seen him then.

From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two
and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired with
anxious faces whether any reprieve had been received. These being
answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to
clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from
which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built,
and, walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the
scene. By degrees they fell off one by one, and for an hour in the dead
of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.

The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers,
painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the
pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared
at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the prisoner,
signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately admitted into the
lodge.

“Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?” said the man whose duty it
was to conduct them. “It’s not a sight for children, sir.”

“It is not indeed, my friend,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow, “but my business
with this man is intimately connected with him, and as this child has
seen him in the full career of his success and villany, I think it
better—even at the cost of some pain and fear—that he should see him
now.”

These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to Oliver.
The man touched his hat, and glancing at him with some curiosity,
opened another gate opposite to that at which they had entered, and led
them on through dark and winding ways, towards the cells.

“This,” said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple of
workmen were making some preparations in profound silence,—“this is
the place he passes through. If you step this way, you can see the door
he goes out at.”

He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for dressing the
prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an open grating above it,
through which came the sound of men’s voices, mingled with the noise
of hammering and the throwing down of boards. They were putting up the
scaffold.

From this place they passed through several strong gates, opened by
other turnkeys from the inner side, and having entered an open yard,
ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came into a passage with a row
of strong doors on the left hand. Motioning them to remain where they
were, the turnkey knocked at one of these with his bunch of keys. The
two attendants after a little whispering came out into the passage,
stretching themselves as if glad of the temporary relief, and motioned
the visitors to follow the jailer into the cell. They did so.

The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side
to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the
face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for
he continued to mutter, without seeming conscious of their presence
otherwise than as a part of his vision.

“Good boy, Charley—well done—” he mumbled. “Oliver too, ha! ha! ha!
Oliver too—quite the gentleman now—quite the—take that boy away to
bed.”

The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver, and whispering him not
to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.

“Take him away to bed—” cried the Jew. “Do you hear me, some of you?
He has been the—the—somehow the cause of all this. It’s worth the
money to bring him up to it—Bolter’s throat, Bill; never mind the
girl—Bolter’s throat as deep as you can cut. Saw his head off.”

“Fagin,” said the jailer.

“That’s me!” cried the Jew, falling instantly into precisely the same
attitude of listening that he had assumed upon his trial. “An old man,
my Lord; a very old, old man.”

“Here,” said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep him
down. “Here’s somebody wants to see you, to ask you some questions, I
suppose. Fagin, Fagin. Are you a man?”

“I shan’t be one long,” replied the Jew, looking up with a face
retaining no human expression but rage and terror. “Strike them all
dead! what right have they to butcher me?”

As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow, and shrinking
to the furthest corner of the seat, demanded to know what they wanted
there.

“Steady,” said the turnkey, still holding him down. “Now, sir, tell
him what you want—quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the time
gets on.”

“You have some papers,” said Mr. Brownlow advancing, “which were placed
in your hands for better security, by a man called Monks.”

“It’s all a lie together,” replied the Jew. “I haven’t one—not one.”

“For the love of God,” said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, “do not say that
now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they are. You know
that Sikes is dead; that Monks has confessed; that there is no hope of
any further gain. Where are these papers?”

“Oliver,” cried the Jew, beckoning to him. “Here, here. Let me whisper
to you.”

“I am not afraid,” said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished Mr.
Brownlow’s hand.

“The papers,” said the Jew, drawing him towards him, “are in a canvass
bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front-room. I
want to talk to you, my dear—I want to talk to you.”

“Yes, yes,” returned Oliver. “Let me say a prayer. Do. Let me say one
prayer; say only one upon your knees with me, and we will talk till
morning.”

“Outside, outside,” replied the Jew, pushing the boy before him towards
the door, and looking vacantly over his head. “Say I’ve gone to
sleep—they’ll believe _you_. You can get me out if you take me so. Now
then, now then.”

“Oh! God forgive this wretched man!” cried the boy with a burst of
tears.

“That’s right, that’s right,” said the Jew. “That’ll help us on. This
door first; if I shake and tremble as we pass the gallows, don’t you
mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now.”

“Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?” inquired the turnkey.

“No other question,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “If I hoped we could recall
him to a sense of his position—”

“Nothing will do that, sir,” replied the man, shaking his head. “You
had better leave him.”

The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.

“Press on, press on,” cried the Jew. “Softly, but not so slow. Faster,
faster!”

The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp,
held him back. He writhed and struggled with the power of desperation,
and sent up shriek upon shriek that penetrated even those massive
walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.

It was some time before they left the prison, for Oliver nearly swooned
after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more he
had not the strength to walk.

Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had already
assembled; the windows were filled with people smoking and playing
cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and
joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of
objects in the very centre of all—the black stage, the cross-beam, the
rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.

CHAPTER LI.

AND LAST.

THE fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed,
and what little remains to their historian to relate is told in few and
simple words.

Before three months had passed, Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie were
married in the village church, which was henceforth to be the scene
of the young clergyman’s labours; on the same day they entered into
possession of their new and happy home.

Mrs. Maylie took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law, to
enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest felicity
that age and worth can know—the contemplation of the happiness
of those on whom the warmest affections and tenderest cares of a
well-spent life have been unceasingly bestowed.

It appeared, on a full and careful investigation, that if the wreck of
property remaining in the custody of Monks (which had never prospered
either in his hands or in those of his mother) were equally divided
between himself and Oliver, it would yield to each little more than
three thousand pounds. By the provisions of his father’s will, Oliver
would have been entitled to the whole; but Mr. Brownlow, unwilling to
deprive the elder son of the opportunity of retrieving his former vices
and pursuing an honest career, proposed this mode of distribution, to
which his young charge most joyfully acceded.

Monks, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion to a
distant part of the New World, where, having quickly squandered it,
he once more fell into his old courses, and, after undergoing a long
confinement for some fresh act of fraud and knavery, at length sunk
under an attack of his old disorder, and died in prison. As far from
home, died the chief remaining members of his friend Fagin’s gang.

Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver as his own son, and removing with him and
the old housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage house, where his
dear friends resided, gratified the only remaining wish of Oliver’s
warm and earnest heart, and thus linked together a little society,
whose condition approached as nearly to one of perfect happiness as can
ever be known in this changing world.

Soon after the marriage of the young people, the worthy doctor returned
to Chertsey, where, bereft of the presence of his old friends, he
would have been discontented if his temperament had admitted of such
a feeling, and would have turned quite peevish if he had known how.
For two or three months he contented himself with hinting that he
feared the air began to disagree with him, and then finding that the
place really was to him no longer what it had been before, settled
his business on his assistant, took a bachelor’s cottage just outside
the village of which his young friend was pastor, and instantaneously
recovered. Here he took to gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering,
and various other pursuits of a similar kind, all undertaken with his
characteristic impetuosity; and in each and all, he has since become
famous throughout the neighbourhood as a most profound authority.

Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong friendship for
Mr. Grimwig, which that eccentric gentleman cordially reciprocated.
He is accordingly visited by him a great many times in the course of
the year, and on all such occasions Mr. Grimwig plants, fishes, and
carpenters with great ardour, doing everything in a very singular
and unprecedented manner; but always maintaining, with his favourite
asseveration, that his mode is the right one. On Sundays, he never
fails to criticise the sermon to the young clergyman’s face, always
informing Mr. Losberne, in strict confidence afterwards, that he
considers it an excellent performance, but thinks it as well not to
say so. It is a standing and very favourite joke for Mr. Brownlow to
rally him on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and to remind him of
the night on which they sat with the watch between them waiting his
return; but Mr. Grimwig contends that he was right in the main, and in
proof thereof remarks that Oliver _did not come back_, after all, which
always calls forth a laugh on his side, and increases his good humour.

Mr. Noah Claypole, receiving a free pardon from the crown in
consequence of being admitted approver against the Jew, and considering
his profession not altogether as safe a one as he could wish, was for
some little time at a loss for the means of a livelihood, not burdened
with too much work. After some consideration he went into business
as an informer, in which calling he realizes a genteel subsistence.
His plan is to walk out once a week during church time, attended by
Charlotte in respectable attire. The lady faints away at the doors
of charitable publicans, and the gentleman being accommodated with
threepennyworth of brandy to restore her, lays an information next day,
and pockets half the penalty. Sometimes Mr. Claypole faints himself,
but the result is the same.

Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually
reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in
that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others.
Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation
he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated from his
wife.

As to Mr. Giles and Brittles, they still remain in their old posts,
although the former is bald, and the last-named boy quite grey. They
sleep at the parsonage, but divide their attentions so equally between
its inmates, and Oliver, and Mr. Brownlow, and Mr. Losberne, that
to this day the villagers have never been able to discover to which
establishment they properly belong.

Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes’s crime, fell into a train
of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best.
Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back
upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of
action. He struggled hard and suffered much for some time; but having a
contented disposition and a good purpose, succeeded in the end; and,
from being a farmer’s drudge and a carrier’s lad, is now the merriest
young grazier in all Northamptonshire.

And now the hand that traces these words falters as it approaches the
conclusion of its task, and would weave for a little longer space the
thread of these adventures.

I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long
moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it. I
would show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early womanhood,
shedding upon her secluded path in life such soft and gentle light,
as fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their hearts,—I
would paint her the life and joy of the fireside circle and the lively
summer group; I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and
hear the low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I
would watch her in all her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling
untiring discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her and
her dead sister’s child happy in their mutual love, and passing whole
hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so sadly lost;
I would summon before me once again those joyous little faces that
clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would
recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising
tear that glistened in that soft blue eye. These, and a thousand looks
and smiles and turns of thought and speech—I would fain recall them
every one.

[Illustration: _Rose Maylie and Oliver._]

How Mr. Brownlow went on from day to day, filling the mind of his
adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to
him more and more as his nature developed itself, and showed the
thriving seeds of all he could wish him to become—how he traced in
him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom
old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing—how the two
orphans tried by adversity remembered its lessons in mercy to others,
and mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and
preserved them—these are all matters which need not to be told; for I
have said that they were truly happy, and without strong affection,
and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy,
and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe,
true happiness can never be attained.

Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble
tablet, which bears as yet but one word,—“Agnes!” There is no coffin
in that tomb; and may it be many, many years before another name is
placed above it. But if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to earth
to visit spots hallowed by the love—the love beyond the grave—of
those whom they knew in life, I do believe that the shade of that poor
girl often hovers about that solemn nook—ay, though it _is_ a church,
and she was weak and erring.

THE END.

    LONDON:
    PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
    Dorset Street, Fleet Street.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation errors repaired. Text across three volumes sometimes spells
“visitor” as “visiter.” This was retained.

Page 105, “perspiratian” changed to “perspiration” (perspiration
streamed down)

Page 124, paragraph break introduced before the line: (“Ay, that he
shall,” replied the Jew)

Page 128, “artful” changed to “Artful” (recognise the Artful Dodger)

End of Project Gutenberg's Oliver Twist, Vol. III (of 3), by Charles Dickens