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 alw