‘Hush, my dear!’ he thought he heard the
Jew say; ’it is he, sure enough. Come
away.’
‘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.
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.
