Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Chapter 12 Page 2

new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.

Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously around.

‘What room is this? Where have I been brought to?’ said Oliver. ‘This is not the place I went to sleep in.’

He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak; but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed’s