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196 OLIVER TWIST. muddy ditch six or eight feet deep, and fifteen or twenty wide, when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in these days as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled up at high water by opening the sluices at the head mills from which it took its old name. At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden | bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, | will see the inhabitants of the houses on | either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, jars, domestic | utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs of halfa-dozen houses, with holes from | which to look upon the sluice beneath ; windows broken and patched, with poles thrust out on which to dry linen that is | never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of | poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage — all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch. In Jacob’s Island the warehouses are roofless and empty, the walls are crumbling down, the windows are windows no - more, the doors are falling into the street, the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. ‘Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open and entered upon by those who have the courage, and there they | live and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island. In an upper room of one of the houses —a detached house of a fair size—ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window, of which the back commanded the ditch, in manner already described, there were assembled three | men, who, regarding each other every now then with looks expressive of per- | plexity and expectation, sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence. One of | these was Toby Crackit, another Mr. Clutling, and the third a robber of fifty | years, whose nose had been almost beaten in in some old scuffle, and whose face bore a frightful scar, which might probably be traced back to the same occasion. ‘This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags. 6 [ wish,” said Toby, turning to Mr. Chitling, “ that you had picked out some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and not come here, my fine feller.” 6 Why didn’t you, blunder-head?” said Kags. “ Well, I thought you’d have been a little more glad to see me than this,” replied Mr. Chitling with a melancholy air. 6 Why lookee, young gentleman,” said Toby, “ when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive, as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head, with nobody prying and smelling about it, it’s rather a startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conveniency) circumstanced as you are." “ Especially when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping with him, that ’s arrived sooner than was expected, from foreign parts, and too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,’ added Mr. Kags. There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon as hopeless, any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said— ‘When was Fagin took, then?” “ Just at dinner time—two o’clock this afternoon,” was thereply. ‘Charley and I made our lucky up the washer’s chimney, and Bolter got into the empty waterbutt, head downwards, but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too.” *“ And Bet!" “ Poor Bet! she went to see the body to speak to who it was,” replied Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad, screaming and raving and beating her head against the boards, so they put a strait weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she is.” “ Wot’s come of young Bates?" demanded Kags. “ He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling. “ There’s no where else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the
