Tales from Dickens

by Hallie Erminie Rives; Charles Dickens

The moment the latter saw the boy's face, however, he could not believe it was the face of a thief, and refused to appear against him, but the magistrate was in a bad humor and was about to sentence Oliver to prison, anyway, when the owner of the book-stall came hurrying in. He had seen the theft and knew Oliver was not guilty, so the magistrate was obliged to let him go.

But the terror and the blow he had received had been too much for Oliver. He fell down in a faint, and the old gentleman, whose name was Mr. Brownlow, overcome with pity, put him into a coach and drove him to his own home, determined, if the boy had no parents, to adopt him as his own son.

II
OLIVER'S ADVENTURES

While Oliver was resting in such good hands, very strange things were occurring in the house of Fagin. When the Artful Dodger told him of the arrest the Jew was full of anger. He had intended to make a clever thief of Oliver and compel him to bring him many stolen things; now he had not only failed in this and lost the boy's help, but he was also afraid that Oliver would tell all about the wicked practices he had seen and show the officers where he had lived. This he thought was likely to happen at any time, unless he could get the boy into his power again.

Something had occurred, too, meantime, that made Fagin almost crazy with rage at losing him. It was this: A wicked man—so wicked that he was afraid of thunder—who went by the name of Monks, had come to him and told him he would pay a large sum of money if he could succeed in making Oliver a thief and so ruin his reputation and his good name.

It was plain enough that for some reason the man hated Oliver, but, cunning as Fagin was, he would never have guessed why. For Monks was really Oliver's older half-brother!

A little while before this story began, Oliver's father had been obliged to go on a trip to a foreign country, where he died very suddenly. But before he died he made a will, in which he left all his fortune to be divided between the baby Oliver and his mother. He left only a small sum to his older son, because he knew that he was wicked, and did not deserve any. The will declared Oliver should have the money only on condition that he never stain his name with any act of meanness, dishonor, cowardice or wrong. If he did do this, then half the money was to go to the older son. The dying man also wrote a letter to Oliver's mother, telling her that he had made the will and that he was dying; but the older son, who was with him when he died, found the letter and destroyed it.

So Oliver's poor mother, knowing nothing of all this, when his father did not come back, thought at last that he had deserted her, and in her shame stole away from her home, poor and ill-clad, to die finally in the poorhouse.

The older brother, who had taken the name of Monks, hunted and hunted for them, because he hated Oliver on account of their father's will, and wanted to do him all the harm he could. He discovered that they had been taken into the poorhouse, and went there, but this was after Oliver had run away. He found, however, to his satisfaction, that the boy knew nothing about his parentage or his real name, and Monks made up his mind to prevent his ever learning.

There was only one person who could have told Oliver, and that one was Mrs. Bumble. She knew through the locket she had kept, which had belonged to Oliver's mother and which contained the dead woman's wedding-ring with her name engraved inside it. When Mrs. Bumble heard that a man named Monks was searching for news of Oliver, she thought it a capital chance to make some money. She went, therefore, to Monks's house and sold the locket and ring to him. These, Monks thought, were the only proofs in the world that could ever show Oliver who he was, and to make it impossible for him ever to see them, he dropped them through a trap-door in his house down into the river, where they could never be found.