Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 2.djvu/216

198 Acting upon this suggestion, they adjourned to a neighbouring apartment, where Mr. Brittles, being called in, involved himself and his respected superior in such a wonderful maze of fresh contradictions and impossibilities as tended to throw no particular light upon any thing save the fact of his own strong mystification; except, indeed, his declarations that he shouldn't know the real boy if he were put before him that instant: that he had only taken Oliver to be he because Mr. Giles had said he was, and that Mr. Giles had five minutes previously admitted in the kitchen that he began to be very much afraid he had been a little too hasty.

Among other ingenious surmises, the question was then raised whether Mr. Giles had really hit any body, and upon examination of the fellow pistol to that which he had fired, it turned out to have no more destructive loading than gunpowder and brown paper:—a discovery which made a considerable impression on every body but the doctor, who had drawn the ball about ten minutes before. Upon no one,