do you tell me! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and

am about to return to him!”

“Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad?”

“Just now, if at all.”

“Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir,” said Sydney,

“and I have it from Mr. Barsad’s communication to a friend and

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

brother Sheep over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken

place. He left the messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted

by the porter. There is no earthly doubt that he is retaken.”

Mr. Lorry’s business eye read in the speaker’s face that it was

loss of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sensible that

something might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded

himself, and was silently attentive.

“Now, I trust,” said Sydney to him, “that the name and

influence of Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead

tomorrowyou said he would be before the Tribunal again

tomorrow, Mr. Barsad?” “Yes; I believe so.”

“In as good stead tomorrow as today. But it may not be so. I

own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doctor Manette’s not

having had the power to prevent this arrest.”

“He may not have known of it beforehand,” said Mr. Lorry.

“But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we

remember how identified he is with his son-in-law.”

“That’s true,” Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand

at his chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton.

“In short,” said Sydney, “this is a desperate time, when

desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor

play the winning game; I will play the losing one. No man’s life

here is worth purchase. Any one carried home by the people

today, may be condemned tomorrow. Now, the stake I have

resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend in the

Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr.

Barsad.”

“You need have good cards, sir,” said the spy.

“I’ll run them over. I’ll see what I hold,Mr. Lorry, you know

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what a brute I am; I wish you’d give me a little brandy.”

It was put before him, and he drank off a glassfuldrank off

another glassfulpushed the bottle thoughtfully away.

“Mr. Barsad,” he went on, in the tone of one who really was

looking over a hand at cards: “Sheep of the prisons, emissary of

Republican committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy

and secret informer, so much the more valuable here for being

English that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of

subornation in those characters than a Frenchman, represents

himself to his employers under a false name. That’s a very good

card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican French

government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic

English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That’s an