he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in

which there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a

tinderbox. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the

coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did

occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep

the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with

tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.

“Tom!” softly over the coach-roof.

“Hallo, Joe.”

“Did you hear the message?”

“I did, Joe.”

“What did you make of it, Tom?”

“Nothing at all, Joe.”

“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the

same of it myself.”

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted

meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud

from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might

be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the

bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail

were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again,

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

he turned to walk down the hill.

“After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won’t trust

your forelegs till I get you on the level,” said this hoarse

messenger, glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a

Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry!

I say, Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was

to come into fashion, Jerry!”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter III

THE NIGHT SHADOWS

A

wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature

is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to

every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great

city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses

encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them

encloses its own secret; that every breathing heart in the hundreds

of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret

to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death

itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear

book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more

can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as

momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried

treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the

book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had

read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked

in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I

stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour