Oliver Twist grew up in the peaceful and happy home of Mrs. Maylie, under the tender affection of two good women.  Later on, Mr. Brownlow was found, and Oliver’s character restored.  It was proved, too, that the portrait Mr. Brownlow possessed was that of Oliver’s mother, whom its owner had once esteemed dearly.  Betrayed by fate, the unhappy woman had sought refuge in the workhouse, only to die in giving birth to her son.

In that same workhouse, where his authority had formerly been so considerable, Mr. Bumble came—­as a pauper—­to die.

Tragic was the fate of poor Nancy.  Suspected by Fagin of plotting against her accomplices, the Jew so worked on Sikes that the savage housebreaker murdered her.

But neither Fagin nor Sikes escaped.

For the Jew was taken and condemned to death, and in the condemned cell came the recollection to him of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold, some of them through his means.

Sikes, when the news of Nancy’s murder got abroad, was hunted by a furious crowd.  He had taken refuge in an old, disreputable uninhabited house, known to his accomplices, which stood right over the Thames, in Jacob’s Island, not far from Dockhead; but the pursuit was hot, and the only chance of safety lay in getting to the river.

At the very moment when the crowd was forcing its way into the house, Sikes made a running noose to slip beneath his arm-pits, and so lower himself to a ditch beneath.  He was out on the roof, and then, when the loop was over his head, the face of the murdered girl seemed to stare at him.

“The eyes again!” he cried, in an unearthly screech, and threw up his arms in horror.

Staggering, as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled over the parapet.  The noose was on his neck.  It ran up with his weight, tight as a bowstring.  He fell for five-and-thirty feet, and then, after a sudden jerk, and a terrible convulsion of the limbs, swung lifeless against the wall.

* * * * *

Old Curiosity Shop

      “The Old Curiosity Shop” was begun by Dickens in his new
     weekly publication called “Master Humphrey’s Clock,” in 1840,
     and its early chapters were written in the first person.  But
     its author soon got rid of the impediments that pertained to
     “Master Humphrey,” and “when the story was finished,” Dickens
     wrote, “I caused the few sheets of ‘Master Humphrey’s Clock,’
     which had been printed in connection with it, to be
     cancelled.”  “The Old Curiosity Shop” won a host of friends for
     the author; A.C.  Swinburne even declared Little Nell equal to
     any character in fiction.  The lonely figure of the child with
     grotesque and wild, but not impossible, companions, took the
     hearts of all readers by storm, and the death of Little Nell