Oliver Twist 雾都孤儿 - Chapter 19

It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew: buttoning his great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face: emerged from his den ¹. He paused on the step as the door was locked and chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure, and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down the street as quickly as he could., ,The house to which Oliver had been conveyed, was in the neighborhood of Whitechapel. The Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck off in the direction of the Spitalfields., ,The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly ² down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided ³ stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways ⁴, the hideous ⁵ old man seemed like some loathsome ⁶ reptile ⁷, engendered ⁸ in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth ⁹, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal., , ,The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed to be at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys ¹³ and streets, and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the farther end. At the door of a house in this street, he knocked; having exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he walked upstairs., ,A dog growled ¹⁴ as he touched the handle of a room-door; and a man's voice demanded who was there., ,The only way to catch tiger cubs is to go into tiger's den.不入虎穴焉得虎子 。,The river is silted up and the water flows sluggishly. 河道淤塞 ，水流迟滞
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