I worked pretty well last night," he
writes, referring to it in May, "very well indeed; but, although I did
eleven close slips before half-past twelve, I have four to write to
complete the chapter; and, as I foolishly left them till this morning,
have the steam to get up afresh." A month later he writes, "I got to
the sixteenth slip last night, and shall try hard to get to the
thirtieth before I go to bed."[17] Then, on a "Tuesday night," at the
opening of August, he wrote, "Hard at work still. Nancy is no more. I
showed what I have done to Kate last night, who was in an unspeakable
'_state_:' from which and my own impression I augur well. When I have
sent Sikes to the devil, I must have yours." "No, no," he wrote, in the
following month: "don't, don't let us ride till to-morrow, not having
yet disposed of the Jew, who is such an out-and-outer that I don't know
what to make of him." No small difficulty to an inventor, where the
creatures of his invention are found to be as real as himself; but this
also was mastered; and then there remained but the closing quiet chapter
to tell the fortunes of those who had figured in the tale. To this he
summoned me in the first week of September, replying to a request of
mine that he'd give me a call that day: "Come and give _me_ a call, and
let us have 'a bit o' talk' before we have a bit o' som'at else. My
missis is going out to dinner, and I ought to go, but I have got a bad
cold. So do you come, and sit here, and read, or work, or do something,
while I write the LAST chapter of _Oliver_, which will be arter a lamb
chop." How well I remember that evening! and our talk of what should be
the fate of Charley Bates, on behalf of whom (as indeed for the Dodger
too) Talfourd had pleaded as earnestly in mitigation of judgment as
ever at the bar for any client he had most respected.

The publication had been announced for October, but the third-volume
illustrations intercepted it a little. This part of the story, as we
have seen, had been written in anticipation of the magazine, and the
designs for it, having to be executed "in a lump," were necessarily done
somewhat hastily. The matter supplied in advance of the monthly portions
in the magazine formed the bulk of the last volume as published in the
book; and for this the plates had to be prepared by Cruikshank also in
advance of the magazine, to furnish them in time for the separate
publication: Sikes and his dog, Fagin in the cell, and Ro