A Tale of Two Cities

«Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me-just a little.»

«Tell me what it is.»

«I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate-for I ca

«Yes, yes: better as it is.»

«What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this:-If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.»

«What then, my gentle sister?»

«Do you think:» the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: «that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?»

«It ca

«You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?»

«Yes.»

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him-is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

«I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.»

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

* * *

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.

One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe-a woman-had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:

«I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

«I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

«I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the a

«I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man wi

-and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

«It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.»

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