He meanwhile, had walked along, on his way to the bookstall, thinking how
happy and contented he ought to feel, when he was startled by a young
woman screaming out very loud, "Oh, my dear brother!"--and then he was
stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.

"Don't!" cried Oliver, struggling. "Let go of Who is it? What are you
stopping me for?"

"Oh my gracious!" said the young woman, "I've found him! Oh you naughty
boy, to make me suffer sich distress on your account! Come home, dear,
come!" With these and more incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst
out crying, and told the onlookers that Oliver was her brother, who had
run away from his respectable parents a month ago, joined a gang of
thieves and almost broke his mother's heart,--to which Oliver, greatly
alarmed, replied that he was an orphan, had no sister, and lived at
Pentonville. Then, catching sight of the woman's face for the first time,
he cried,--"Why, it's Nancy!"

"You see he knows me!" cried Nancy. "Make him come home, there's good
people, or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!"
With this a man who was Nancy's accomplice, Bill Sikes by name, came to
the rescue, tore the volumes from Oliver's grasp, and struck him on the
head. Weak still, and stupified by the suddenness of the attack,
overpowered and helpless, what could one poor child do? Darkness had set
in; it was a low neighbourhood; no help was near--resistance was useless.
In another moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark narrow courts:
and was forced along them, at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared
to give utterance to, unintelligible.

At length they turned into a very filthy street, and stopped at an