Andre Theuriet - "A Woodland Queen, v2"

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, V11"

Hector Malot - "Conscience, v1"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "Lady Hester or, Ursula's Narrative"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Oliver Twist

C >> Charles Dickens >> Oliver Twist




'Well, it is a honour that is!' said Charley, a little consoled.

'He shall have all he wants,' continued the Jew. 'He shall be
kept in the Stone Jug, Charley, like a gentleman. Like a
gentleman! With his beer every day, and money in his pocket to
pitch and toss with, if he can't spend it.'

'No, shall he though?' cried Charley Bates.

'Ay, that he shall,' replied Fagin, 'and we'll have a big-wig,
Charley: one that's got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry
on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he
likes; and we'll read it all in the papers--"Artful
Dodger--shrieks of laughter--here the court was convulsed"--eh,
Charley, eh?'

'Ha! ha!' laughed Master Bates, 'what a lark that would be,
wouldn't it, Fagin? I say, how the Artful would bother 'em
wouldn't he?'

'Would!' cried Fagin. 'He shall--he will!'

'Ah, to be sure, so he will,' repeated Charley, rubbing his
hands.

'I think I see him now,' cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his
pupil.

'So do I,' cried Charley Bates. 'Ha! ha! ha! so do I. I see it
all afore me, upon my soul I do, Fagin. What a game! What a
regular game! All the big-wigs trying to look solemn, and Jack
Dawkins addressing of 'em as intimate and comfortable as if he
was the judge's own son making a speech arter dinner--ha! ha!
ha!'

In fact, Mr. Fagin had so well humoured his young friend's
eccentric disposition, that Master Bates, who had at first been
disposed to consider the imprisoned Dodger rather in the light of
a victim, now looked upon him as the chief actor in a scene of
most uncommon and exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for
the arrival of the time when his old companion should have so
favourable an opportunity of displaying his abilities.

'We must know how he gets on to-day, by some handy means or
other,' said Fagin. 'Let me think.'

'Shall I go?' asked Charley.

'Not for the world,' replied Fagin. 'Are you mad, my dear, stark
mad, that you'd walk into the very place where--No, Charley, no.
One is enough to lose at a time.'

'You don't mean to go yourself, I suppose?' said Charley with a
humorous leer.

'That wouldn't quite fit,' replied Fagin shaking his head.

'Then why don't you send this new cove?' asked Master Bates,
laying his hand on Noah's arm. 'Nobody knows him.'

'Why, if he didn't mind--' observed Fagin.

'Mind!' interposed Charley. 'What should he have to mind?'

'Really nothing, my dear,' said Fagin, turning to Mr. Bolter,
'really nothing.'

'Oh, I dare say about that, yer know,' observed Noah, backing
towards the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober
alarm. 'No, no--none of that. It's not in my department, that
ain't.'

'Wot department has he got, Fagin?' inquired Master Bates,
surveying Noah's lank form with much disgust. 'The cutting away
when there's anything wrong, and the eating all the wittles when
there's everything right; is that his branch?'

'Never mind,' retorted Mr. Bolter; 'and don't yer take liberties
with yer superiors, little boy, or yer'll find yerself in the
wrong shop.'

Master Bates laughed so vehemently at this magnificent threat,
that it was some time before Fagin could interpose, and represent
to Mr. Bolter that he incurred no possible danger in visiting the
police-office; that, inasmuch as no account of the little affair
in which he had engaged, nor any description of his person, had
yet been forwarded to the metropolis, it was very probable that
he was not even suspected of having resorted to it for shelter;
and that, if he were properly disguised, it would be as safe a
spot for him to visit as any in London, inasmuch as it would be,
of all places, the very last, to which he could be supposed
likely to resort of his own free will.

Persuaded, in part, by these representations, but overborne in a
much greater degree by his fear of Fagin, Mr. Bolter at length
consented, with a very bad grace, to undertake the expedition.
By Fagin's directions, he immediately substituted for his own
attire, a waggoner's frock, velveteen breeches, and leather
leggings: all of which articles the Jew had at hand. He was
likewise furnished with a felt hat well garnished with turnpike
tickets; and a carter's whip. Thus equipped, he was to saunter
into the office, as some country fellow from Covent Garden market
might be supposed to do for the gratification of his curiousity;
and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned a fellow as
need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that he would look the part to
perfection.

These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary
signs and tokens by which to recognise the Artful Dodger, and was
conveyed by Master Bates through dark and winding ways to within
a very short distance of Bow Street. Having described the precise
situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious
directions how he was to walk straight up the passage, and when
he got into the side, and pull off his hat as he went into the
room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on alone, and promised to bide
his return on the spot of their parting.

Noah Claypole, or Morris Bolter as the reader pleases, punctually
followed the directions he had received, which--Master Bates
being pretty well acquainted with the locality--were so exact
that he was enabled to gain the magisterial presence without
asking any question, or meeting with any interruption by the way.

He found himself jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women,
who were huddled together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper
end of which was a raised platform railed off from the rest, with
a dock for the prisoners on the left hand against the wall, a box
for the witnesses in the middle, and a desk for the magistrates
on the right; the awful locality last named, being screened off
by a partition which concealed the bench from the common gaze,
and left the vulgar to imagine (if they could) the full majesty
of justice.

There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding
to their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions
to a couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant
over the table. A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail,
tapping his nose listlessly with a large key, except when he
repressed an undue tendency to conversation among the idlers, by
proclaiming silence; or looked sternly up to bid some woman 'Take
that baby out,' when the gravity of justice was disturbed by
feeble cries, half-smothered in the mother's shawl, from some
meagre infant. The room smelt close and unwholesome; the walls
were dirt-discoloured; and the ceiling blackened. There was an
old smoky bust over the mantel-shelf, and a dusty clock above the
dock--the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought;
for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both,
had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less
unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inamimate object
that frowned upon it.

Noah looked eagerly about him for the Dodger; but although there
were several women who would have done very well for that
distinguished character's mother or sister, and more than one man
who might be supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father,
nobody at all answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins
was to be seen. He waited in a state of much suspense and
uncertainty until the women, being committed for trial, went
flaunting out; and then was quickly relieved by the appearance of
another prisoner who he felt at once could be no other than the
object of his visit.

It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with
the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his
pocket, and his hat in his right hand, preceded the jailer, with
a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in
the dock, requested in an audible voice to know what he was
placed in that 'ere disgraceful sitivation for.

'Hold your tongue, will you?' said the jailer.

'I'm an Englishman, ain't I?' rejoined the Dodger. 'Where are my
priwileges?'

'You'll get your privileges soon enough,' retorted the jailer,
'and pepper with 'em.'

'We'll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has
got to say to the beaks, if I don't,' replied Mr. Dawkins. 'Now
then! Wot is this here business? I shall thank the madg'strates
to dispose of this here little affair, and not to keep me while
they read the paper, for I've got an appointment with a genelman
in the City, and as I am a man of my word and wery punctual in
business matters, he'll go away if I ain't there to my time, and
then pr'aps ther won't be an action for damage against them as
kep me away. Oh no, certainly not!'

At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being very particular
with a view to proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the
jailer to communicate 'the names of them two files as was on the
bench.' Which so tickled the spectators, that they laughed
almost as heartily as Master Bates could have done if he had
heard the request.

'Silence there!' cried the jailer.

'What is this?' inquired one of the magistrates.

'A pick-pocketing case, your worship.'

'Has the boy ever been here before?'

'He ought to have been, a many times,' replied the jailer. 'He
has been pretty well everywhere else. _I_ know him well, your
worship.'

'Oh! you know me, do you?' cried the Artful, making a note of the
statement. 'Wery good. That's a case of deformation of
character, any way.'

Here there was another laugh, and another cry of silence.

'Now then, where are the witnesses?' said the clerk.

'Ah! that's right,' added the Dodger. 'Where are they? I should
like to see 'em.'

This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped
forward who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an
unknown gentleman in a crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief
therefrom, which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back
again, after trying it on his own countenance. For this reason,
he took the Dodger into custody as soon as he could get near him,
and the said Dodger, being searched, had upon his person a silver
snuff-box, with the owner's name engraved upon the lid. This
gentleman had been discovered on reference to the Court Guide,
and being then and there present, swore that the snuff-box was
his, and that he had missed it on the previous day, the moment he
had disengaged himself from the crowd before referred to. He had
also remarked a young gentleman in the throng, particularly
active in making his way about, and that young gentleman was the
prisoner before him.

'Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?' said the
magistrate.

'I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold no conversation
with him,' replied the Dodger.

'Have you anything to say at all?'

'Do you hear his worship ask if you've anything to say?' inquired
the jailer, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.

'I beg your pardon,' said the Dodger, looking up with an air of
abstraction. 'Did you redress yourself to me, my man?'

'I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, your worship,'
observed the officer with a grin. 'Do you mean to say anything,
you young shaver?'

'No,' replied the Dodger, 'not here, for this ain't the shop for
justice: besides which, my attorney is a-breakfasting this
morning with the Wice President of the House of Commons; but I
shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so
will a wery numerous and 'spectable circle of acquaintance as'll
make them beaks wish they'd never been born, or that they'd got
their footmen to hang 'em up to their own hat-pegs, afore they
let 'em come out this morning to try it on upon me. I'll--'

'There! He's fully committed!' interposed the clerk. 'Take him
away.'

'Come on,' said the jailer.

'Oh ah! I'll come on,' replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with
the palm of his hand. 'Ah! (to the Bench) it's no use your
looking frightened; I won't show you no mercy, not a ha'porth of
it. _You'll_ pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn't be you for
something! I wouldn't go free, now, if you was to fall down on
your knees and ask me. Here, carry me off to prison! Take me
away!'

With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off
by the collar; threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a
parliamentary business of it; and then grinning in the officer's
face, with great glee and self-approval.

Having seen him locked up by himself in a little cell, Noah made
the best of his way back to where he had left Master Bates.
After waiting here some time, he was joined by that young
gentleman, who had prudently abstained from showing himself until
he had looked carefully abroad from a snug retreat, and
ascertained that his new friend had not been followed by any
impertinent person.

The two hastened back together, to bear to Mr. Fagin the
animating news that the Dodger was doing full justice to his
bringing-up, and establishing for himself a glorious reputation.




CHAPTER XLIV

THE TIME ARRIVES FOR NANCY TO REDEEM HER PLEDGE TO ROSE MAYLIE.
SHE FAILS.

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, wrought 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. Vile as those schemes were, desperate
as were their originators, and bitter as were her feelings
towards Fagin, 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 powerful 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 encompasses her--and what more could she do!
She was resolved.

Though all her mental struggles 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 other times, she laughed without merriment, and was
noisy without a moment afterwards--she sat silent and dejected,
brooding with her head upon her hands, 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
the 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. 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 Fagin. 'What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there's
none quite ready to be done.'

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

Fagin 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 Fagin, 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 Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this
concession. 'You're like yourself to-night, Bill. Quite like
yourself.'

'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 make you nervous, Bill,--reminds you of being nabbed, does
it?' said Fagin, determined not to be offended.

'Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,' returned Sikes. '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. Where's the gal going to at this
time of night?'

'Not far.'

'What answer's that?' retorted Sikes. 'Do you hear me?'

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

'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,' 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 the something desperate,' muttered the girl
placing both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by
force some violent outbreak. 'Let me go, will you,--this
minute--this instant.'

'No!' said 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. 'Aye! 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 are 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 gal'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
Fagin.

'Whew!' said the housebreaker wiping the perspiration from his
face. 'Wot a precious strange gal that is!'

'You may say that, Bill,' replied Fagin thoughtfully. 'You may
say that.'

'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.'

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

'Worse,' said Fagin thoughtfully. '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.'

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

Fagin 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 blackhearted wolf as you
are, kept yourself aloof,' said Sikes. 'We was poor too, all the
time, and I think, one way or other, it's worried and fretted
her; and that being 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
herself to and fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time,
burst out laughing.

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

Fagin 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 his hat and bade him good-night. He paused when he
reached the room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody would
light him down the dark stairs.

'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. Show him a light.'

Nancy followed the old man downstairs, with a 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 don't 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. 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, Nance.'

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

She shrank 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 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 matter of certainty. The object of this new liking was
not among his myrmidons. 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 Fagin 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 villain: the man I hate: gone; another
secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with a
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. There was no expression of surprise, no
assumption of an inability to understand his meaning. The girl
clearly comprehended it. Her glance at parting showed _that_.