"Provincial," said the spy.

"No. Foreign!" cried Carton, striking his
open hand on the table, as a light broke clearly
on his mind. "Cly! Disguised, but the same
man. We had that man before us at the Old
Bailey."

"Now, there you are hasty, sir," said Barsad,
with a smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra
inclination to one side; "there you really give
me an advantage over you. Cly (who I
will unreservedly admit, at this distance of
time, was a partner of mine) has been dead
several years. I attended him in his last illness.
He was buried in London, at the church of
Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity
with the blackguard multitude at the moment,
prevented my following his remains, but I helped
to lay him in his coffin."

Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where
he sat, of a most remarkable goblin shadow on
the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered
it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising
and stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on
Mr. Cruncher's head.

"Let us be reasonable," said the spy, "and
let us be fair. To show you how mistaken you
are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is,
I will lay before you a certificate of Cly's
burial, which I happen to have carried in my
pocket-book," with a hurried hand he produced
and opened it, "ever since. There it is. Oh,
look at it, look at it! You may take it in your
hand; it's no forgery."

Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflexion on
the wall to elongate, and Mr. Cruncher rose and
stepped forward. His hair could not have been
more violently on end, if it had been that
moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled
horn in the house that Jack built.

Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at
his side, and touched him on the shoulder like a
ghostly bailiff.

"That there Roger Cly, master," said Mr.
Cruncher, with a taciturn and iron-bound visage.
"So you put him in his coffin?"

" I did."

"Who took him out of it?"

Barsad leaned back in his chair, and
stammered, "What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Mr. Cruncher, "that he
warn't never in it. No! Not he! I'll have
my head took off, if he was ever in it."

The spy looked round at the two gentlemen;
they both looked in unspeakable astonishment
at Jerry.

"I tell you," said Jerry, "that you buried
paving-stones and earth in that there coffin.
Don't go and tell me that you buried Cly. It
was a take in. Me and two more knows it."

"How do you know it?"

"What's that to you? Ecod!" growled Mr.
Cruncher, "it's you I have got a old grudge
again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon
tradesmen! I'd catch hold of your throat and
choke you for half a guinea."

Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been
lost in amazement at this turn of the business,
here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and
explain himself.

"At another time, sir," he returned, evasively,
"the present time is ill-conwenient for explainin'.
What I stand to, is, that he knows well wot that
there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let
him say he was, in so much as a word of one
syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his throat
and choke him for half a guinea;" Mr. Cruncher
dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer; "or
I'll out and announce him."

"Humph! I see one thing," said Carton.
"I hold another card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible,
here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling
the air, for you to outlive denunciation, when
you are in communication with another aristocratic
spy of the same antecedents as yourself,
who, moreover, has the mystery about him of
having feigned death and come to life again! A
plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the
Republic. A strong card—a certain Guillotine
card! Do you play?"

"No!" returned the spy. "I throw up.
I confess that we were so unpopular with
the outrageous mob, that I only got away from
England at the risk of being ducked to death,
and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that
he never would have got away at all but for that
sham. Though how this man knows it was a
sham, is a wonder of wonders to me."

"Never you trouble your head about this
man," retorted the contentious Mr. Cruncher;
"you'll have trouble enough with giving your
attention to that, gentleman. And look here!
Once more!"—Mr. Cruncher could not be
restrained from making rather an ostentatious
parade of his liberality—"I'd catch hold of your
throat and choke you for half a guinea."

The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to
Sydney Carton, and said, with more decision,
"It has come to a point. I go on duty soon,
and can't overstay my time. You told me you
had a proposal; what is it? Now, it is of no use
asking too much of me. Ask me to do
anything in my office, putting my head in great extra
danger, and I had better trust my life to the
chances of refusal than the chances of consent.
In short, I should make that choice. You talk
of desperation. We are all desperate here.
Remember! I may denounce you if I think
proper, and I can swear my way through stone
walls, and so can others. Now, what do you
want with me?"

"Not very much. You are a turnkey at the
Conciergerie?"

"I tell you once for all, there is no such thing
as an escape possible," said the spy, firmly.

"Why need you tell me what I have not
asked? You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?"

"I am sometimes."

"You can be when you choose?"

"I can pass in and out when I choose."

Sydney Carton filled another glass with
brandy, poured it slowly out upon the hearth,
and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent,
he said, rising:

"So far, we have spoken before these two,