`You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.'

`I always am sound; am I not?'

`I don't gainsay it. What has roughen'ed your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.

With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.

`The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,' said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, `the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!'

`Ah!' returned the other, sighing: `yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own.'

`And why not?' `God knows. It was my way, I suppose.'

He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.

`Carton,' said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, `your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.

`Oh, botheration!' returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh, `don't *you be moral!'

`How have I done what I have done?' said Stryver; `how do I do what I do?'

`Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.'

`I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?'

`I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,' said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.

`Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,' pursued Carton, `you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always--nowhere.'

`And whose fault was that?'

`Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and pressing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's Own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.'

`Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,' said Stryver, holding up his glass. `Are you turned in a pleasant direction?'

Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.

`Pretty witness,' he muttered, looking down into his glass. `I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who's your pretty witness?'

`The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Manette.'


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