“The water!” thought Oliver, turning sick with fear. “He has brought me to this lonely place to murder me!”
He was about to throw himself on the ground, and make one struggle for his young life, when he saw that they stood before a solitary house: all ruinous and decayed. There was a window on each side of the dilapidated entrance; and one story above; but no light was visible. The house was dark, dismantled: and, to all appearance, uninhabited.
Sikes, with Oliver’s hand still in his, softly approached the low porch, and raised the latch. The door yielded to the pressure, and they passed in together.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE BURGLARY
“Hallo!” cried a loud, hoarse voice, as soon as they set foot in the passage.
“Don’t make such a row,” said Sikes, bolting the door. “Show a glim, Toby.”
“Aha! my pal!” cried the same voice. “A glim, Barney, a glim! Show the gentleman in, Barney; wake up first, if convenient.”
The speaker appeared to throw a boot-jack, or some such article, at the person he addressed, to rouse him from his slumbers: for the noise of a wooden body, falling violently, was heard; and then an indistinct muttering, as of a man between sleep and awake.
“Do you hear?” cried the same voice. “There’s Bill Sikes in the passage with nobody to do the civil to him; and you sleeping there, as if you took laudanum with your meals, and nothing stronger. Are you any fresher now, or do you want the iron candlestick to wake you thoroughly?”
A pair of slipshod feet shuffled, hastily, across the bare floor of the room, as this interrogatory was put; and there issued, from a door on the right hand; first, a feeble candle: and next, the form of the same individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under the infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at the public-house on Saffron Hill.