the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop.

"I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur Defarge. Leave us, good boys; we have

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The three glided by and went silently down.

There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:

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Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette ?"

"I show him in the way you have seen to a chosen few."

my name to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. there, if you please, a little moment.”

Stay

With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door—evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention he drew the key across it, three or four times before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.

The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.

He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter's waist and held her; for he felt that she was sinking.

"A—a—a—business, business!" he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. "Come in, come in!"

"I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering. "Of it? What?"

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I mean of him. Of
Of my father."

Rendered in a manner desperate by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He set her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.

Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there and faced round.

The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for the window of dormer shape was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in anyone the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet work of that kind was being done in the garret; for

with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

CHAPTER VI

66

G

THE SHOEMAKER

OOD-DAY!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the

shoemaking.

It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance: "Good-day!"

"You are still hard at work I see ?"

After a long silence the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, "Yes—I am working. This time a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner before the face had dropped again.

The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.

Some minutes of silent work had passed, and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood was not yet empty.

"I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, "to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more ?"

The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening at the floor on one side of him; then similarly at the floor on the other side of him; then upward at the speaker.

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What did you say?"

"You can bear a little more light?"

"I must bear it if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.)

The opened half-door was opened a little farther, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow that it would have been hard to say which was which.

He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light,

and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke without first wandering in this manner and forgetting to speak.

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Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward. What did you say?'

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"Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?'' "I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't

know."

But the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.

Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood for a minute or two by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an instant.

You have a visitor you see," said Monsieur Defarge. "What did you say?"

The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work.

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Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur."

Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

"Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is and the maker's name."