A Tale of Two Cities

and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of
the horse to the hat of the man.

"Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised
blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,
answered curtly, "Sir."

"There is nothing to apprehend.  I belong to Tellson's Bank.
You must know Tellson's Bank in London.  I am going to Paris
on business.  A crown to drink.  I may read this?"

"If so be as you're quick, sir."

He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side,
and read--first to himself and then aloud:  "`Wait at Dover for
Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard.  Jerry, say that my
answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE."

Jerry started in his saddle.  "That's a Blazing strange answer, too,"
said he, at his hoarsest.

"Take that message back, and they will know that I received this,
as well as if I wrote.  Make the best of your way.  Good night."

With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in;
not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had
expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots,
and were now making a general pretence of being asleep.  With no
more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating
any other kind of action.

The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing
round it as it began the descent.  The guard soon replaced his
blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its
contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore
in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which
there were a few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box.
For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps
had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had
only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well
off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he
were lucky) in five minutes.

"Tom!" softly over the coach roof.

"Hallo, Joe."

"Did you hear the message?"

"I did, Joe."

"What did you make of it, Tom?"

"Nothing at all, Joe."

"That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the
same of it myself."

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile,
not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his
face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be
capable of holding about half a gallon.  After standing with the
bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the
mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still
again, he turned to walk down the hill.

"After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust
your fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse
messenger, glancing at his mare.  "`Recalled to life.'  That's a
Blazing strange message.  Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry!
I say, Jerry!  You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life
was to come into fashion, Jerry!"



III

The Night Shadows


A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is
constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that
every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret;
that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that
every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there,
is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to
this.  No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved,
and vainly hope in time to read it all.  No more can I look into the
depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights
glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other
things submerged.  It was appointed that the book should shut with
a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page.  It was
appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when
the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the
shore.  My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling
of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and