inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed

themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering

thoughts suggested.

Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank

passengerwith an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which

did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next

passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach

got a special joltnodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the

little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through

them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the

bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness

was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five

minutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home

connexion, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms

underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores and

secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that

he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among

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them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found

them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen

them.

But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though

the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an

opiate) was always with him, there was another current of

impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was

on his way to dig some one out of a grave.

Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves

before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of

the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of

five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the

passions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and

wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness,

submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varieties

of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures.

But the face was in the main one face, and every head was

prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger

inquired of this spectre:

“Buried how long?”

The answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.”

“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”

“Long ago.”

“You know that you are recalled to life?”

“They tell me so.”

“I hope you care to live?”

“I can’t say.”

“Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?”

The answers to this question were various and contradictory.

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Sometimes the broken reply was. “Wait! It would kill me if I saw

her too soon.” Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears,