ng the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads

and passed in“One Hundred and Five, North Tower!”

There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the

wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only

seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney,

heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old

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feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table,

and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a

rusted iron ring in one of them.

“Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,”

said Defarge to the turnkey.

“Stop!Look here, Jacques!”

“A. M.!” creaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.

“Alexandre Manette,” said Defarge in his ear, following the

letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with

gunpowder. “And here he wrote ‘a poor physician.’ And it was he,

without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is

that in your hand? A crowbar? Give it me!”

He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a

sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the

worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows.

“Hold the light higher!” he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey.

“Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here