(From Oliver Twist.)

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

[It will be remembered that Fagin was leader of a band of
thieves, and that little Oliver Twist had once been held in the
Jew's school for educating criminals. Through the influence of
Mr. Brownlow and some friends the kidnapped boy was rescued and
the Jew brought to justice.]

He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for a 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 had 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; 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 clock 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 war