or fifty in all. The people in possession of the house had let them in

at the gate, and they rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had

evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient

and retired spot.

But such awful workers, and such awful work!

The grindstone had a double handle, and turning at it madly

were two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when

the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more

horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their

most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches

were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all

bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and

glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these

ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward

over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some

women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what

with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with

the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked

atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one

creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering

one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, the men stripped

to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in

all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set

off with spoils of women’s lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain

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dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives,

bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it.

Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrist of those who

carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress: ligatures

various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic

wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of

sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in

their frenzied eyes;eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would

have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well directed gun.

All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man,

or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world

if it were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor

looked for explanation in his friend’s ashy face.

“They are,” Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully

around at the locked room, “murdering the prisoners. If you are

sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you

haveas I believe you havemake yourself known to these devils,

and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don’t know, but let

it not be a minute later!”

Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of

the room, and was in the court-yard when Mr. Lorry regained the

blind.

His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the

impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside

like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse