Bildungsromans; Boys -- Fiction; Criminals -- Fiction; Kidnapping victims -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction
“He!” the other man seemed to answer; “could I mistake him, think you?
If a crowd of ghosts were to put themselves into his exact shape, and
he stood amongst them, there is something that would tell me how to
point him out. If you buried him fifty feet deep, and took me across
his grave, I fancy I should know, if there wasn’t a mark above it, that
he lay buried there?”
The man seemed to say this, with such dreadful hatred, that Oliver
awoke with the fear, and started up.
Good Heaven! what was that, which sent the blood tingling to his heart,
and deprived him of his voice, and of power to move! There—there—at the
window—close before him—so close, that he could have almost touched him
before he started back: with his eyes peering into the room, and
meeting his: there stood the Jew! And beside him, white with rage or
fear, or both, were the scowling features of the man who had accosted
him in the inn-yard.
It was but an instant, a glance, a flash, before his eyes; and they
were gone. But they had recognised him, and he them; and their look was
as firmly impressed upon his memory, as if it had been deeply carved in
stone, and set before him from his birth. He stood transfixed for a
moment; then, leaping from the window into the garden, called loudly
for help.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CONTAINING THE UNSATISFACTORY RESULT OF OLIVER’S ADVENTURE; AND A
CONVERSATION OF SOME IMPORTANCE BETWEEN HARRY MAYLIE AND ROSE
When the inmates of the house, attracted by Oliver’s cries, hurried to
the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and agitated,
pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely
able to articulate the words, “The Jew! the Jew!”
Mr. Giles was at a loss to comprehend what this outcry meant; but Harry
Maylie, whose perceptions were something quicker, and who had heard
Oliver’s history from his mother, understood it at once.
“What direction did he take?” he asked, catching up a heavy stick which
was standing in a corner.
“That,” replied Oliver, pointing out the course the man had taken; “I
missed them in an instant.”
“Then, they are in the ditch!” said Harry. “Follow! And keep as near
me, as you can.” So saying, he sprang over the hedge, and darted off
with a speed which rendered it matter of exceeding difficulty for the
others to keep near him.
Giles followed as well as he could; and Oliver followed too; and in the
course of a minute or two, Mr. Losberne, who had been out walking, and
just then returned, tumbled over the hedge after them, and picking
himself up with more agility than he could have been supposed to
possess, struck into the same course at no contemptible speed, shouting
all the while, most prodigiously, to know what was the matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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