very different
cause; for he hoped that the dispute might really end in his being
taken back.

'Come! Hand over, will you?' said Sikes.

'This is hardly fair, Bill; hardly fair, is it, Nancy?' inquired the
Jew.

'Fair, or not fair,' retorted Sikes, 'hand over, I tell you! Do you
think Nancy and me has got nothing else to do with our precious time
but to spend it in scouting arter, and kidnapping, every young boy as
gets grabbed through you? Give it here, you avaricious old skeleton,
give it here!'

With this gentle remonstrance, Mr. Sikes plucked the note from between
the Jew's finger and thumb; and looking the old man coolly in the face,
folded it up small, and tied it in his neckerchief.

'That's for our share of the trouble,' said Sikes; 'and not half
enough, neither. You may keep the books, if you're fond of reading.
If you ain't, sell 'em.'

'They're very pretty,' said Charley Bates: who, with sundry grimaces,
had been affecting to read one of the volumes in question; 'beautiful
writing, isn't is, Oliver?' At sight of the dismayed look with which
Oliver regarded his tormentors, Master Bates, who was blessed with a
lively sense of the ludicrous, fell into another ectasy, more
boisterous than the first.

'They belong to the old gentleman,' said Oliver, wringing his hands;
'to the good, kind, old gentleman who took me into his house, and had
me nursed, when I was near dying of the fever. Oh, pray send them back;
send him back the books and money. Keep me here all my life long; but
pray, pray send them back. He'll think I stole them; the old lady:
all of them who were so kind to me: will think I stole them. Oh, do
have mercy upon me, and send them back!'

With these words, which were uttered with all the energy of passionate
grief, Oliver fell upon his knees at the Jew's feet; and beat his hands
together, in perfect desperation.

'The boy's right,' remarked Fagin, looking covertly round, and knitting
his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot. 'You're right, Oliver, you're
right; they WILL think you have stolen 'em. Ha! ha!' chuckled the Jew,
rubbing his hands, 'it couldn't have happened better, if we had chosen
our time!'

'Of course it couldn't,' replied Sikes; 'I know'd that, directly I see
him coming through Clerkenwell, with the books under his arm. It's all
right enough. They're soft-hearted psalm-singers, or they wouldn't
have taken him in at all; and they'll ask no questions after him, fear