downstairs door fast?”“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with theother two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.“The panels—are they strong?”“Lined with sheet-iron.”“And the windows too?”“Yes, and the windows.”“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sashand menacing the crowd. “Do your worst! I’ll cheat you yet!”Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none couldexceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to thosewho were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to theofficers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed suchfury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of thesaddle, and bursting through the crowd as if he were partingwater, cried, beneath the window, in a voice that rose above allothers, “Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!”The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it.Some called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran withtorches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back androared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses andexecrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen,and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among theboldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices inthe wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like afield of corn moved by an angry wind, and joined from time to timein one loud furious roar.“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into theroom, and shut the faces out—“the tide was in as I came up. GiveCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 546me a rope, a long rope. They’re all in front. I may drop into theFolly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall dothree more murders and kill myself.”The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles werekept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongestcord, hurried up to the house-top.All the windows in the rear of the house had been long agobricked up, except one small trap in the room where the boy waslocked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body.But, from this aperture, he had never ceased to call on thosewithout to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emergedat last on the house-top by the door in the roof, a loud shoutproclaimed the fact to those in front, who immediately began topour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for thepurpose, so firmly against the door, that it must be matter of greatdifficulty to open it from the inside; and creeping over the tiles,looked over the low parapet.The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.The crowd had been hushed during these few moments,watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instantthey perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry oftriumphant execration to which all their previous shouting hadbeen whispers. Again and again it rose. Those who were at toogreat a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it echoedand re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole city had poured itspopulation out to curse him.On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong,struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaringCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 547torch to light them up, and show them out in all their wrath andpassion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had beenentered by the mob; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out;there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window; cluster uponcluster of people clinging to every house-top. Each little bridge(and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of thecrowd upon it. Still the current poured on to find some nook orhole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant seethe wretch.“They have him now,” cried a man on the nearest bridge.“Hurrah!”The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again theshout uprose.“I will give fifty pounds,” cried an old gentleman from the samequarter, “to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here, till hecomes to ask for it.”There was another roar. At this moment the word was passedamong the crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he whohad first called for the ladder had mounted into the room. Thestream abruptly turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth tomouth; and the people at the windows, seeing those upon thebridges pouring back, quitted their stations, and, running into thestreet, joined the concourse that now thronged pell-mell to thespot they had left; each man crushing and striving with hisneighbour, and all panting with impatience to get near the door,and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out. Thecries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to suffocation,or trampled down and trodden under foot in the confusion, weredreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked up; and at thisCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 548time, between the rush of some to regain the space in front of thehouse, and the unavailing struggles of others to extricatethemselves from the mass, the immediate attention was distractedfrom the murder, although the universal eagerness for his capturewas, if possible, increased.The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocityof the crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing thissudden change with no less rapidity than it had occurred, hesprang upon his feet, determined to make (one last effort for hislife by dropping into the ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled,endeavouring to creep away in the darkness and confusion.Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by thenoise within the house which announced that an entrance hadreally been effected, he set his foot against the stack of chimneys,fastened one end of the rope tightly and firmly round it, and withthe other made a strong running-noose by the aid of his hands andteeth almost in a second. He could let himself down by the cord towithin a less distance of the ground than his own height, and hadhis knife ready in his hand to cut it then and drop.At the very instant when he brought the loop over his headprevious to slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the oldgentleman before mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railingof the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain hisposition) earnestly warned those about him that the man wasabout to lower himself down—at that very instant the murderer,looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms above his head,and uttered a yell of terror.“The eyes again!” he cried, in an unearthly screech.Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance andCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 549tumbled over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran upwith his weight, tight as a bowstring, and swift as the arrow itspeeds. He fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, aterrific convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung, with the openknife clenched in his stiffening hand.The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely.The murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy,thrusting aside the dangling body which obscured his view, calledto the people to come and take him out, for God’s sake.A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards andforwards on the parapet, with a dismal howl, and, collectinghimself for a spring, jumped for the dead man’s shoulders. Missinghis aim, he fell into the ditch, turning completely over as he went;and striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 550Chapter 51Affording an explanation of more mysteries thanone, and comprehending a proposal of marriagewith no word of settlement or pin-money.The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but twodays old, when Oliver found himself, at three o’clock in theafternoon, in a travelling carriage rolling fast towards hisnative town. Mrs. Maylie, and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and thegood doctor, were with him; and Mr. Brownlow followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one other person whose name had notbeen mentioned.They had not talked much upon the way; for Oliver was in aflutter of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of thepower of collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, andappeared to have scarcely less effect on his companions, whoshared it, in at least an equal degree. He and the two ladies hadbeen very carefully made acquainted by Mr. Brownlow with thenature of the admissions which had been forced from Monks; andalthough they knew that the object of their present journey was tocomplete the work which had been so well begun, still the wholematter was enveloped in enough of doubt and mystery to leavethem in endurance of the most intense suspense.The same kind friend had, with Mr. Losberne’s assistance,cautiously stopped all channels of communication through whichthey could receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences thathad so recently taken place. “It was quite true,” he said, “that theyCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 551must know them before long, but it might be at a better time thanthe present, and it could not be at a worse.” So they travelled on insilence; each busied with reflections on the object which hadbrought them together; and no one disposed to give utterance tothe thoughts which crowded upon all.But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent whilethey journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had neverseen, how the whole current of his recollections ran back to oldtimes, and what a crowd of emotions were awakened up in hisbreast, when they turned into that which he had traversed on foot,a poor, houseless, wandering boy, without a friend to help him, ora roof to shelter his head.“See there, there!” cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand ofRose, and pointing out of the carriage window; “that’s the stile Icame over; there are the hedges I crept behind for fear any oneshould overtake me and force me back! Yonder is the path acrossthe fields, leading to the old house where I was a little child! Oh,Dick, Dick, my dear old friend, if I could only see you now!”“You will see him soon,” replied Rose, gently taking his foldedhands between her own. “You shall tell him how happy you are,and how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness youhave none so great as the coming back to make him happy too.”“Yes, yes,” said Oliver, “and we’ll—we’ll take him away fromhere, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to somequiet country place where he may grow strong and well—shallwe?”Rose nodded yes, for the boy was smiling through such happytears that she could not speak.“You will be kind and good to him, for you are to every one,”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 552said Oliver. “It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can tell;but never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you will smileagain—I know that too—to think how changed he is; you did thesame with me. He said ‘God bless you’ to me when I ran away,”cried the boy, with a burst of affectionate emotion; “and I will say‘God bless you’ now, and show him how I love him for it!”As they approached the town, and at length drove through itsnarrow streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrainthe boy within reasonable bounds. There was Sowerberry’s theundertaker’s just as it used to be, only smaller and less imposingin appearance than he remembered it—there were all the well-known shops and houses, with almost every one of which he hadsome slight incident connected—there was Gamfield’s cart, thevery cart he used to have, standing at the old public-house door—there was the workhouse, the dreary prison of his youthful days,with its dismal windows frowning on the street—there was thesame lean porter standing at the gate, at sight of whom Oliverinvoluntarily shrank back, and then laughed at himself for beingso foolish, then cried, then laughed again—there were scores offaces at the doors and windows that he knew quite well—therewas nearly everything as if he had left it but yesterday, and all hisrecent life had been a happy dream.But it was pure, earnest joyful reality. They drove straight tothe door of the chief hotel (which Oliver used to stare up at, withawe, and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen offin grandeur and size); and here was Mr. Grimwig all ready toreceive them, kissing the young lady, and the old one too, whenthey got out of the coach, as if he were the grandfather of thewhole party, all smiles and kindness, and not offering to eat hisCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 553head—no, not once; not even when he contradicted a very oldpostboy about the nearest road to London, and maintained heknew it best, though he had only come that way once, and thattime fast asleep. There was dinner prepared, and there werebedrooms ready, and everything was arranged as if by magic.Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hourwas over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that hadmarred their journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them atdinner, but remained in a separate room. The two othergentlemen hurried in and out with anxious faces, and, during theshort intervals when they were present, conversed apart. Once,Mrs. Maylie was called away, and after being absent for nearly anhour, returned with eyes swollen with weeping. All these thingsmade Rose and Oliver, who were not in any new secrets, nervousand uncomfortable. They sat wondering, in silence; or, if theyexchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as if they were afraidto hear the sound of their own voices.At length when nine o’clock had come, and they began to thinkthey were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr.Grimwig entered the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a manwhom Oliver almost shrieked with surprise to see; for they toldhim it was his brother, and it was the same man he had met at themarket-town, and seen looking in with Fagin at the window of hislittle room. Monks cast a look of hate, which, even then, he couldnot dissemble, at the astonished boy, and sat down near the door.Mr. Brownlow, who had papers in his hand, walked to a table nearwhich Rose and Oliver were seated.“This is a painful task,” said he, “but these declarations, whichhave been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be inCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 554substance repeated here. I would have spared you thedegradation, but we must hear them from your own lips before wepart, and you know why.”“Go on,” said the person addressed, turning away his face.“Quick. I have almost done enough, I think. Don’t keep me here.”“This child,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him, andlaying his hand upon his head, “is your half-brother; theillegitimate son of your father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, bypoor young Agnes Fleming, who died in giving him birth.”“Yes,” said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy, the beating ofwhose heart he might have heard. “That is their bastard child.”“The term you use,” said Mr. Brownlow sternly, “is a reproachto those who have long since passed beyond the feeble censure ofthe world. It reflects disgrace on no one living, except you who useit. Let that pass. He was born in this town.”“In the workhouse of this town,” was the sullen reply. “Youhave the story there.” He pointed impatiently to the papers as hespoke.“I must have it here, too,” said Mr. Brownlow, looking roundupon the listeners.“Listen then! You!” returned Monks. “His father being taken illat Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he hadbeen long separated, who went from Paris, and took me with her—to look after his property, for what I know, for she had no greataffection for him, nor he for her. He knew nothing of us, for hissenses were gone, and he slumbered on till next day, when hedied. Among the papers in his desk, were two, dated on the nighthis illness first came on, directed to yourself;” he addressedhimself to Mr. Brownlow; “and inclosed in a few short lines to you,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsOliver Twist 555with an intimation on the cover of the package that it was not to beforwarded till after he was dead. One of these papers was a letterto this girl Agnes; the other a will.”“What of the letter?” asked Mr. Brownlow.“The letter?—A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, witha penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her. He hadpalmed a tale on the girl that some secret mystery—to beexplained one day—prevented his marrying her just then; and soshe had gone on, trusting patiently in him, until she trusted toofar, and lost what none could ever give her back. She was, at thattime, within a few months of her confinement. He told her all hehad meant to do, to hide her shame, if he had lived, and prayedher, if he died, not to curse his memory, or think the consequencesof their sin would be visited on her or their young child; for all theguilt was his. He reminded her of the day he had given her thelittle locket and the ring with her Christian name engraved uponit, and a blank left for that which he hoped one day to havebestowed upon her—prayed her yet to keep it, and wear it next