Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 2.djvu/116

104 "Change it, then!" responded the girl with a laugh.

"Change it!" exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds by his companion's unexpected obstinacy and the vexation of the night. "I will change it! Listen to me, you drab! listen to me, who with six words can strangle Sikes as surely as if I had his bull's throat between my fingers now. If he comes back, and leaves that boy behind him,—if he gets off free, and, dead or alive, fails to restore him to me, murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack Ketch, and do it the moment he sets foot in this room, or, mind me, it will be too late!"

"What is all this?" cried the girl involuntarily.

"What is it!" pursued Fagin, mad with rage. "This: When the boy's worth hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me in the way of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang that I could whistle away the lives of,—and me bound, too, to a