The Jew raised his right hand and shook his trembling forefinger in the air; but his passion was so great that the power of speech was for the moment gone.
"Damme!" said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm. "He's gone mad. I must look to myself here."
"No, no," rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. "It's not—you're not the person, Bill. I've no—no fault to find with you."
"Oh, you haven't, haven't you?" said Sikes, looking sternly at him, and ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket. "That's lucky—for one of us. Which one that is, don't matter."
"I've got that to tell you, Bill," said the Jew, drawing his chair nearer, "will make you worse than me."
"Ay?" returned the robber, with an incredulous air. "Tell away. Look sharp, or Nance will think I'm lost."
"Lost!" cried Fagin. "She has pretty well settled that, in her own mind, already."
Sikes looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew's face, and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle there, clinched his coat-collar in his huge hand and shook him soundly.
"Speak, will you!" he said; "or if you don't, it shall be for want of breath. Open your mouth and say wot you've got to say in plain words. Out with it, you thundering old cur—out with it!"
"Suppose that lad that's lying there—" Fagin began.