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The jackal then invigorated himself with a bum for his throttle,
and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the
collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the
same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in
the morning.

"And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch," said Mr. Stryver.

The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming
again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.

"You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses
to-day. Every question told."

"I always am sound; am I not?"

"I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper?
Put some punch to it and smooth it again."

With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.

"The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver,
nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the
past, "the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now
in spirits and now in despondency!"

"Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "yes! The same Sydney, with the
same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did
my own."

"And why not?"

"God knows. It was my way, I suppose."

He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out
before him, looking at the fire.

"Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying
air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained
endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the
old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it,
"your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and
purpose. Look at me."

"Oh, botheration!" returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-
humoured laugh, "don't _you_ be moral!"

"How have I done what I have done?" said Stryver; "how do I do what I do?"

"Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth
your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to
do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind."

"I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?"

"I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were," said
Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.

"Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,"
pursued Carton, "you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen
into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter
of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs
that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was
always nowhere."

"And whose fault was that?"

"Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always
driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless
degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's
a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's own past, with the day

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