雙城記 Book1-3b The Night Shadows
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he wasfain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head.
Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiffblack hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing downhill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like smith'swork, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall thana head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog mighthave declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world togo over.
While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver tothe night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank,by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authoritieswithin, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him asarose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare asarose out of her private topics of uneasiness. They seemed tobe numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.
What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, andbumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of thenight revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes andwandering thoughts suggested.
Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bankpassenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, whichdid what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the nextpassenger, and driving him into his comer, whenever the coachgot a special jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes,the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleamingthrough them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger,became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. Therattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more draftswere honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with allits foreign and home connexion, ever paid in thrice the time.
Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such oftheir valuable stores and secrets as were known to thepassenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them),opened before him, and he went in among them with the greatkeys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, andstrong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.
But, though the bank was almost always with him, and thoughthe coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain underan opiate) was always with him, there was another current ofimpression that never ceased to run, all through the night. Hewas on his way to dig some one out of a grave.
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