s
the darkness closed in, they left father and daughter together.

They came back at night. A coach stood outside the courtyard, and the
lately released prisoner, in scared, blank wonder, began the journey
that was to end in England and rest.

_II.--The Jackal_

In the dimly-lighted passages of the Old Bailey, Dr. Manette, his
daughter, and Mr. Lorry stood by Mr. Charles Darnay--just acquitted on a
charge of high treason--congratulating him on his escape from death.

It was not difficult to recognise in Dr. Manette, intellectual of face
and upright in bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. He and his
daughter had been unwilling witnesses for the prosecution, called to
give evidence that might be distorted into corroboration of a paid spy's
falsehoods as to Darnay's dealings with the French king.

Darnay kissed Lucie Manette's hand fervently and gratefully, and warmly
thanked his counsel, Mr. Stryver. As he watched them go, a person who
had been leaning against the wall stepped up to him. It was Mr. Carton,
a barrister, who had sat throughout the trial with his whole attention
seemingly concentrated upon the ceiling of the court. Everybody had been
struck with the extraordinary resemblance, cleverly used by the
defending counsel to confound a witness, between Mr. Carton and Mr.
Darnay. Mr. Carton was shabbily dressed, and did not appear to be quite
sober.

"This must be a strange sight to you," said Carton, with a laugh.

"I hardly seem yet," returned Darnay, "to belong to this world again."

"Then why the devil don't you dine?"

He led him to a tavern, where Darnay recruited his strength with a good,
plain dinner. Carton drank, but ate nothing.

"Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, "why don't you give
your toast?"

"What toast?"

"Why, it's on the tip of your tongue."

"Miss Manette, then!"

Carton drank the toast, and flung his glass over his shoulder against
the wall, where it shivered in pieces.

After Darnay had gone, Carton drank and slept till ten o'clock, and then
walked to the chambers of Mr. Stryver. Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and
an unscrupulous, and a bold, and was fast shouldering his way to a
lucrative practice; but it had been noted that he had not the striking
and necessary faculty of extracting evidence from a heap of statements.
A remarkable improvement, however, came upon him as to this. Sydney
Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was his great ally.