"I knew it! You want to be the death of me. I shall be rendered Suspect by my own sister. Just as I am getting on!" "The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid!" cried Miss Pross. "Far rather would I never see you again, dear Solomon, though I have ever loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me, and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will detain you no longer.' the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember faces well. Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you with the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved converPoor, good Miss Pross! As if the estrange-sation, and the rumor openly going about among ment between them had come of any culpability of hers. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it for a fact, years ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had spent her money and left her! your admirers, the nature of your calling. And "It would be troublesome, and might be danHe was saying the affectionate word, how-gerous, to explain in the street. Could you faever, with a far more grudging condescension vor me, in confidence, with some minutes of and patronage than he could have shown if your company-at the office of Tellson's Bank, their relative merits and positions had been re- for instance ?" versed (which is invariably the case, all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder, hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following singular question: 66 "I say! Might I ask the favor? Whether your name is John Solomon, or Solomon John?" The official turned toward him with sudden distrust. He had not previously uttered a word. "Come!" said Mr. Cruncher. 66 'Speak out, you know." (Which, by-the-way, was more than he could do himself.) "John Solomon, or Solomon John? She calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And I know you're John, you know. Which of the two goes first? And regarding that name of Pross, likewise. That warn't your name over the water." "Under a threat?" "Oh! Did I say that!" "Then why should I go there ?" 66 'Really, Mr. Barsad, I can't say, if you can't." "You mean that you won't say, Sir?" the spy irresolutely asked. "You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won't.' Carton's negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his quickness and skill in such a business as he had in his secret mind, and with such a man as he had to do with. His practiced eye saw it, and made the most of it. "Now, I told you so," said the spy, casting a reproachful look at his sister; "if any trouble comes of this, it's your doing." "Come, come, Mr. Barsad!" exclaimed Sydney. "Don't be ungrateful. But for my great respect for your sister, I might not have led up so pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank?" "I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with you." "I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her own street. Let me take your arm, Miss Pross. This is not a good city, at this time, for you to be out in, unprotected; and as your escort knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry's with us. Are we ready? Come, then!" Miss Pross recalled soon afterward, and to the end of her life remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Sydney's arm and looked up in his face, imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced purpose in the arm, and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not "Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry's, to his surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed that I would not pre-only contradicted his light manner, but changed sent myself elsewhere until all was well, or unless I could be useful; I present myself here to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a better-employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your sake-Mr. Barsad understands me he was a man, and not a Sheep of the Prisons." Sheep was the cant word of the time for a spy, under the jailers. The spy, who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared "I'll tell you," said Sydney. "I lighted on you, Mr. Barsad, coming out of the prison of and raised the man. She was too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved her affection, and with Sydney's friendly reassurances, adequately to heed what she observed. They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to Mr. Lorry's, which was within a few minutes' walk. John Barsad, or Solomon Pross, walked at his side. Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery little log or two of fire-perhaps looking into their blaze for the picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who had looked into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with which he saw a stranger. "Miss Pross's brother, Sir," said Sydney. "Mr. Barsad." "Barsad?" repeated the old gentleman, "Barsad? I have an association with the nameand with the face." "I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad," observed Carton, coolly. "Pray sit down." As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry wanted, by saying to him with a frown, "Witness at that trial." Mr. Lorry immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised look of abhorrence. "Mr. Barsad has been recognized by Miss Pross as the affectionate brother you have heard of," said Sydney, "and has acknowledged the relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again." Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, "What do you tell me! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and am about to return to him!" "Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad ?" "Just now, if at all." "Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, Sir," said Sydney; "and I have it from Mr. Barsad's communication to a friend and brother Sheep over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left the messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no earthly doubt that he is retaken." Mr. Lorry's business eye read in the speaker's face that it was loss of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, bat sensible that something might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was silently attentive. "You need have good cards, Sir," said the spy. "I'll run them over," returned Sydney: "I'll see what I hold.-Mr. Lorry, you know what a brute I am; I wish you'd give me a little brandy.' It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful-drank off another glassful-pushed the bottle thoughtfully away. "Mr. Barsad," he went on thoughtfully, in the tone of one who really was looking over a hand at cards: "Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer, so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name. That's a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That's an excellent card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Barsad ?" "Not to understand your play," returned the spy, somewhat uneasily. "I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don't hurry." He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he poured out and drank another glassful. "Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time." It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing cards in it that Sydney Car "Now, I trust," said Sydney to him, "that the name and influence of Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead to-morrow-you said he would be before the Tribunal again to-mor-ton knew nothing of. Thrown out of his honrow, Mr. Barsad ?—" "Yes; I believe so." "In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own to you I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doctor Manette's not having had the power to prevent this arrest." orable employment in England through too much unsuccessful hard swearing there-not because he was not wanted there: our English reasons for vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern date—he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in France: first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen there : "But that very circumstance would be alarm-gradually as a tempter and an eavesdropper ing, when we remember how identified he is with his son-in-law." "He may not have known of it beforehand," said Mr. Lorry. "That's true," Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton. "In short," said Sydney, "this is a desperate time, when desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game; I will play the losing one. No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one carried home by the people to-day may be condemned to-morrow. Now, the stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win is Mr. Barsad." among the natives. He knew that under the overthrown government he had been a spy upon Saint Antoine and Defarge's wine-shop; had received from the watchful police such heads of information concerning Doctor Manette's imprisonment, release, and history; as should serve him for an introduction to familiar conversation with the Defarges; had tried them on Madame Defarge, and had broken down with them signally. He always remembered with fear and trembling that that terrible woman had knitted when he talked with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved. He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over again produce her knit ted registers, and denounce people whose lives the guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as every one employed as he was did, that he was never safe; that flight was impossible; that he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind, he foresaw that the dreadful woman, of whose unrelenting character he had seen many proofs, would produce against him that fatal register, and would quash his last chance of life. Besides that all secret men are men soon terrified, here were surely cards enough of one black suit to justify the holder in growing rather livid as he turned them over. "You scarcely seem to like your hand," said Sydney, with composure. "Do you play?" "I think, Sir," said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to Mr. Lorry, "I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence to put it to this other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he can under any circumstance reconcile it to his station to play that Ace of which he has spoken. I admit that I am a spy, and that it is considered a discreditable station-though it must be filled by somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean himself as to make himself one?" "I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking the answer on himself, and looking at his watch, "without any scruple, in fifteen minutes." "I should have hoped, gentlemen both," said the spy, always striving to hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, "that your respect for my sis ter-" "I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally relieving her of her brother," said Sydney Carton. "You think not, Sir?" "I have thoroughly made up my mind upon it." The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanor, received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton who was a mystery to wiser and honester men than he-that it faltered here and failed him. While he was at a loss, Carton said, resuming his former air of contemplating cards: "And indeed, now I think again, have a strong impression that I have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country prisons; who was he?" "French. You don't know him," said the spy, quickly. 66 French, eh?" repeated Carton, musing, and not appearing to notice him at all, though he echoed his word. "Well; he may be." "Is, I assure you," said the spy; "though it's not important." "It-can't-be," muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and filling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. "Can'tbe. Spoke good French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought?" "Provincial," said the spy. "No. Foreign!" cried Carton, striking his open hand on the table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. "Cly! Disguised, but the same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey." "Now there you are hasty, Sir," said Barsad, with a smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side; "there you really give me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly admit, at this distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years. I attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity with the blackguard multitude at the moment prevented my following his remains, but I helped to lay him in his coffin." Here Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher's head. "Let us be reasonable," said the spy, "and let us be fair. To show you how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will lay before you the certificate of Cly's burial, which I happen to have carried in my pocket-book”—with a hurried hand he produced and opened it-" ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it! You may take it in your hand; it's no forgery." Here Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more violently on end if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack built. Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched him on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff. "That there Roger Cly, master," said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and iron-bound visage. "So you put him in his coffin?" "I did." "Who took him out of it?" Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, "What do you mean?" "I mean, ," said Mr. Cruncher, "that he warn't never in it. No! Not he! I'll have my head took off if he was ever in it." The spy looked round at the two gentlemen; they both looked in unspeakable astonishment at Jerry. "I tell you," said Jerry, "that you buried paving-stones and earth in that there coffin. Don't go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two more knows it." "How do you know it?" "What's that to you? Ecod!" growled Mr. Cruncher, "it's you I have got a old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen! I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea." Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement at this turn of the busi- | at the risk of being ducked to death, and that ness, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and explain himself. "At another time, Sir," he returned, evasively, "the present time is ill-conwenient for explainin'. What I stand to is, that he knows well wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was, in so much as a word of one syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea”Mr. Cruncher repeated this as quite a liberal offer-" or I'll out and announce him." 66 Humph! I see one thing," said Carton. "I hold another card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again! A plot in the prison of the foreigner against the Republic. A strong card-a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?" "No!" returned the spy. "I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England Cly was so ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham is a wonder of wonders to me." "Never you trouble your head about this man," retorted the contentious Mr. Cruncher; "you'll have trouble enough with giving your attention to that gentleman. And look here! Once more!"-Mr. Cruncher could not be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his liberality-"I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea." The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said, with more decision, "It has come to a point now. I go on duty soon, and can't overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal; what is it? It is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do any thing in my office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my life to the chances of refusal than the chances of consent. In short, I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here. Remember! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my way through "I am sometimes." "You can be when you choose?" 66 I can pass in and out when I choose." During this short dialogue and its pauses Sydney Carton had filled another glass with brandy, had poured it slowly out upon the hearth, had watched it as it dropped. It was all spent now, and he said, rising: "So far we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me. Come into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone." WHILE Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's manner of receiving the look did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough re 66 My mind misgives me much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger at him, "that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson's as a blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description. If you have, don't expect me to befriend you when you get back to England. If you have, don't expect me to keep your secret. Tellson's shall not be imposed upon." "I hope, Sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, "that a gentleman like yourself wot I've had the honor of odd jobbing till I'm gray at it, would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so-I don't say it is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if it wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side. There'd be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking up their guineas where a honest tradesman don't pick up his fardens-fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens-half fardens! no, nor yet his quarter-a banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesmen on the sly, a going in and going out to their own carriages-ah! equally like smoke, if not superior. Well, that'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's. For you can not sarse the goose and not the gander. And here's Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a floppin' agen the business to that degree as is ruinating-stark ruinating! Whereas them medical doctors' wives don't flop-catch 'em at it! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favor of more patients, and how can you rightly have one without the t'other? Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it was And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him, Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it; he'd want all along to be out of the line, if he could see his way out, being once in-even if it wos so." So. "Ugh!" cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless. "I am shocked at the sight of you." "Now, what I would humbly offer to you, Sir," pursued Mr. Cruncher, "even if it wos so, which I don't say it is-" "Don't prevaricate," said Mr. Lorry. "No, I will not, Sir," returned Mr. Cruncher, as if nothing were further from his thoughts or practice-"which I don't say it is-wot I would humbly offer to you, Sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general light-job you, till your heels is where your head is if such should be your wishes. If |