the sense of hearing by instantaneous flashes.
So with whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all pleasant human
sounds. They leaped the gap in a moment, and went upon their way. The
varying light of fire and candle in Mrs Clennam's room made the greatest
change that ever broke the dead monotony of the spot. In her two long
narrow windows, the fire shone sullenly all day, and sullenly all night.
On rare occasions it flashed up passionately, as she did; but for the
most part it was suppressed, like her, and preyed upon itself evenly and
slowly. During many hours of the short winter days, however, when it was
dusk there early in the afternoon, changing distortions of herself
in her wheeled chair, of Mr Flintwinch with his wry neck, of Mistress
Affery coming and going, would be thrown upon the house wall that was
over the gateway, and would hover there like shadows from a great magic
lantern. As the room-ridden invalid settled for the night, these would
gradually disappear: Mistress Affery's magnified shadow always flitting
about, last, until it finally glided away into the air, as though she
were off upon a witch excursion. Then the solitary light would burn
unchangingly, until it burned pale before the dawn, and at last died
under the breath of Mrs Affery, as her shadow descended on it from the
witch-region of sleep.

Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in effect a beacon fire,
summoning some one, and that the most unlikely some one in the world,
to the spot that MUST be come to. Strange, if the little sick-room light
were in effect a watch-light, burning in that place every night until
an appointed event should be watched out! Which of the vast multitude
of travellers, under the sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills
and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by
sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one
another; which of the host may, with no suspicion of the journey's end,
be travelling surely hither?

Time shall show us. The post of honour and the post of shame, the
general's station and the drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster
Abbey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom of the deep, the mitre and
the workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the
guillotine--the travellers to all are on the great high road, but it
has wonderful divergencies, and only Time shall show us whither each
traveller is bound.

On a wintry afternoon at