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Soon there was a knock at the door . It was Charley Bates . When he saw Sikes , he did not run . He attacked him with all his strength . “ Murderer ! ” he screamed . “ Help ! He’s here ! Break down the door ! ” People heard him , and a great crowd gathered round the house . There were police officers among them , and an old gentleman in the crowd , Mr Brownlow , offered fifty pounds to the man who took Sikes alive . Men were trying to break in , and the angry crowd shouted for his death . Sikes took a rope and climbed to the roof . Behind the house there was a deep ditch full of mud . If he could let himself down into it , he might escape in the dark . He tied one end of the rope to a chimney and made a loop in the other end , ready to slip it under his arms . Just then he looked behind him and threw up his arms . “ The eyes again ! ” he cried in a terrible voice . He staggered and lost his balance . He fell from the roof , and the loop was round his neck . The rope pulled tight , and Bill Sikes hung dead against the wall . The dog , which had been hiding on the roof , ran up and down and howled . Then it jumped towards the dead man’s shoulders . It missed and fell into the ditch , and it never rose again . XVI . The Truth about Oliver On the same evening , a few hours before the crowd found Sikes , two strong men had taken Monks in the street and brought him by force to Mr Brownlow’s house . Monks was angry and pale , but when he saw who was waiting for him , he became quiet . “ I was your father’s oldest friend , ” said Mr Brownlow . “ Your real name is Edward Leeford , and Oliver Twist is your brother . ” Then the old gentleman told the story . Monks’s father , Edwin Leeford , had been forced into a marriage with a woman much older than himself . They had been very unhappy , and after some years they had separated . The wife took their only son to live abroad , and he grew up as cruel and greedy as she was . Some time later Edwin Leeford met the family of a retired naval officer , and he fell in love with the elder daughter , a girl of nineteen called Agnes . They promised to marry , but before that could happen , he had to go to Rome on business . There he fell ill and died . “ Before he left England , ” said Mr Brownlow , “ he came to see me and gave me a portrait of the girl he loved . It hung in my house for years . When I first saw Oliver , I saw her face in his . ” He turned to Monks . “ Your father wrote a will before he died . He left almost everything to Agnes and to the child she was going to have . Your mother found it and burned it . Agnes went away to hide her shame , and her child was born in a workhouse . You knew all this from your mother . And when you saw Oliver by chance in the street , you made a plan with Fagin to turn your own brother into a thief . ”
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