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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


13

I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the
form of Lead. So now let’s look at you.” The figures of a horse and
rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side
of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and,
casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small
folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and
rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat
of the man.

“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.
The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised
blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,
answered curtly, “Sir.” “There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to
Tellson’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am
going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?” “If
so be as you’re quick, sir.” He opened it in the light of the coach-
lamp on that side, and read-first to himself and then aloud: “’Wait
at Dover for Mam’selle.’ It’s not long, you see, guard.

Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.” Jerry started
in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing strange answer, too,” said he, at his
hoarsest.

“Take that message back, and they will know that I received this,
as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.”

With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in;
not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously
secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now
making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite
purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of
action.

The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing
round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his
blunderbuss in his armchest, and, having looked to the rest of its
contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he
wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in
which there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a
tinderbox. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the
coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did
occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep
the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with
tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.
“Tom!” softly over the coach roof.

“Hallo, Joe.” “Did you hear the message?” “I did, Joe.” “What did
you make of it, Tom?” “Nothing at all, Joe.”

“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the same
of it myself.” Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted
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