could dispense with the escort.”

“Silence!” growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the

butt-end of his musket. “Peace, aristocrat!”

“It is as the good patriot says,” observed the timid functionary.

“You are an aristocrat, and must have an escortand must pay for

it.”

“I have no choice,” said Charles Darnay.

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“Choice! Listen to him!” cried the same scowling red-cap. “As if

it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!”

“It is always as the good patriot says,” observed the functionary.

“Rise and dress yourself, emigrant.”

Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guardhouse,

where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking,

and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his

escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three

o’clock in the morning.

The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and

tricoloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres,

who rode one on either side of him. The escorted governed his

own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of

which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state

they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering

at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out

upon the mire-deep roads. In