a woman's. "See, there is my husband!" she
cried, pointing him out. "See Defarge!" She
stood immovable close to the grim old officer,
and remained immovable close to him;
remained immovable close to him through the
streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him
along; remained immovable close to him
when he was got near his destination, and
began to be struck at from behind; remained
immovable close to him when the
long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy;
was so close to him when he dropped dead
under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her
foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife—
long ready—hewed off his head.

The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was
to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men
for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint
Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny
and domination by the iron hand was down—
down on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville where
the governor's body lay—down on the sole of
the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had
trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation.
"Lower the lamp yonder?" cried Saint
Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of
death; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on
guard!" The swinging sentinel was posted, and
the sea rushed on.

The sea of black and threatening waters, and
of destructive upheavings of wave against wave,
whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose
forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea
of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of
vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of
suffering until the touch of pity could make no
mark on them.

But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce
and furious expression was in vivid life, there
were two groups of faces—each seven in
number—so fixedly contrasting with the rest,
that never did sea roll which bore more
memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of
prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had
burst their tomb, were carried high over head:
all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as
if the Last Day were come, and those who
rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other
seven faces there were, carried higher, seven
dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen
eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet
with a suspended—not an abolished—expression
on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as
having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes,
and bear witness with the bloodless lips, "THOU
DIDST IT!"

Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads
on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the
eight strong towers, some discovered letters and
other memorials of prisoners of old time, long
dead of broken hearts,—such, and such-like,
the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine
escort through the Paris streets in mid-July,
one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.
Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay,
and keep these feet far out of her life! For,
they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and
in the years so long after the breaking of the
cask at Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not
easily purified when once stained red.

RICE.

THE sun had set heavily behind a range of
low hills topped with mango topes, after one
of those oppressively hot days known only in
India during the dry season. The sky was of a
deep coppery hue, without one fleecy cloud
to relieve its intensely fiery sameness. Not
one of the parched leaves in the jungle moved;
nor did there appear to be a single living
creature for miles, save myself, as I rode slowly
towards a little seaport town in Western India.
The season had been a very trying one for the
natives, nearly all their grain crops in that part
of the continent having perished for want of the
usual periodic supply of moisture.

In the opening of the monsoon the rain had
fallen very heavily, had swollen the streams, filled
the few imperfectly formed bunds or reservoirs
to overflowing, and these, not sufficiently
strengthened and mostly out of repair, giving
way, had flooded the entire country for many
miles, and, when the season of drought
arrived, were of course empty. Deprived of the
ordinary means of irrigating their lands, the
ryots had beheld with dismay the setting in of
an unusually hot and dry season. The grain
crops had indeed come up after a fashion, but
rapidly fell away before the hot blast of the
sirocco months, and left the bewildered villagers
without the means of support.

In many of the villages through which I
passed l had not seen half a dozen inhabitants; and,
the few I had seen, appeared emaciated to the last
degree. Hunger was stamped on their haggard
countenances, children lay exhausted and dying
at the doors of some of the miserable huts.
All work appeared to be abandoned. Fields
lay sterile, burnt up by the scorching heat;
gardens, with a few exceptions, were withered
and brown, as blasted by lightning; the
nullahs were quite dry; the smail rivers crept
sluggishly over their pebbly beds with scarcely
sufficient water to keep themselves moving.
The roads were strewn with dead cattle; and,
not unfrequently, with human corpses, over whom
scores of birds of prey were hovering, to whom
this season of affliction was an unexpected boon.

Passing through these scenes in the country,
I was prepared for what I beheld in the
town. The same deep lines of hunger were
stamped upon the countenances; but, unlike
the inhabitants of other places, the people were
flocking through the streets in sad and melancholy
throngs, in one direction. Mothers were
dragging their children after them, scarcely able
to support their own tottering steps. Fathers
were passing outwards with uncertain haste,
carrying young squalid infants in their arms.

As I drew near the sea-beach the eager
throngs appeared to thicken, and looks of startled
excitement in their faces told of some important