is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable

consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in

that individuality, and which I shall carry in mind to my life’s end.

In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is

there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in

their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the

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messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the

King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in

London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow

compass of one lumbering old mail-coach; they were mysteries to

one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and

six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county

between him and the next.

The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often

at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep

his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had

eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a

surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too

near togetheras if they were afraid of being found out in

something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister

expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered

spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which

descended nearly to the wearer’s knees. When he stopped for

drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he

poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he

muffled again.

“No, Jerry, no!” said the messenger, harping on one theme as

he rode. “It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest

tradesman, it wouldn’t suit your line of business! Recalled! Bust

me if I don’t think he’d been a drinking!”

His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain,

several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the

crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing

jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad,

blunt nose. It was so like smith’s work, so much more like the top

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of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of

players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most

dangerous man in the world to go over.

While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the

night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by

Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the

shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the

message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of her

private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she

shied at every shadow on the road.

What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and

bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables