Fagin's Last Day
(From Oliver Twist.)
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
[It will be remembered that Fagin was leader of a band of thieves, and that little Oliver Twist had once been held in the Jew's school for educating criminals. Through the influence of Mr. Brownlow and some friends the kidnapped boy was rescued and the Jew brought to justice.]
e sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for a seat and bedstead, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After a while he began to remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said, though it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more; so that in a little time he had the whole almost as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead—that was the end—to be hanged by the neck till he was dead!
As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold, some of them through his means. They rose up in such quick succession that he could hardly count them. He had seen some of them die—and had joked, too, because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down, and how suddenly they changed, from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!
Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon that very spot. It was very dark; why didn't they bring a light? The cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies—the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil. Light, light!
At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door and walls, two men appeared—one bearing a