been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites.

Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow

starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and

wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and

hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a

small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he

had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some

night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to