Page:Oliver Twist (1838) vol. 1.djvu/132

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116
OLIVER TWIST.

CHAPTER VIII.

Oliver walks to London, and encounters on the road a strange sort of young gentleman.

Oliver reached the style at which the bypath terminated, and once more gained the high-road. It was eight o'clock now; and, though he was nearly five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the hedges by turns, till noon, fearing that he might be pursued and overtaken. Then he sat down to rest by the side of a mile-stone, and began to think for the first time where he had better go and try to live.

The stone by which he was seated, bore in large characters an intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London. The name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy's mind. London!—that great large place!