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"I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks."

"What," said Carton, still only half turned towards him, "do you
expect, Mr. Darnay?"

"The worst."

"It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think
their withdrawing is in your favour."

Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard no
more: but left them--so like each other in feature, so unlike each
other in manner--standing side by side, both reflected in the glass
above them.

An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal crowded
passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale.
The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that
refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid
tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried
him along with them.

"Jerry! Jerry!" Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when
he got there.

"Here, sir! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir!"

Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng.
"Quick! Have you got it?"

"Yes, sir."

Hastily written on the paper was the word "AQUITTED."

"If you had sent the message, `Recalled to Life,' again," muttered
Jerry, as he turned, "I should have known what you meant, this time."

He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything
else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey; for, the crowd came
pouring out with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a
loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were
dispersing in search of other carrion.



IV

Congratulatory


From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the
human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off,
when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the
solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood
gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay--just released--congratulating him
on his escape from death.

It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in
Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the
shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at
him twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of
observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave
voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without
any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference
to his long lingering agony, would always--as on the trial--evoke this
condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to
arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to
those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of
the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the
substance was three hundred miles away.

Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from
his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond

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