Book the First

RECALLED TO LIFE

CHAPTER 1 THE PERIOD /3

CHAPTER 2 THE MAIL /6

CHAPTER 3 THE NIGHT SHADOWS /13

CHAPTER 4 THE PREPARATION /18

CHAPTER 5 THE WINE-SHOP /31

CHAPTER 6 THE SHOEMAKER /44

Book the Second

THE GOLDEN THREAD

CHAPTER 1 FIVE YEARS LATER /59

CHAPTER 2 A SIGHT /66

CHAPTER 3 A DISAPPOINTMENT /73

CHAPTER 4 CONGRATULATORY /88

CHAPTER 5 THE JACKAL /95

CHAPTER 6 HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE /102

CHAPTER 7 MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN /116

CHAPTER 8 MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY /126

CHAPTER 9 THE GORGON’S HEAD /132

CHAPTER 10 TWO PROMISES /145

CHAPTER 11 A COMPANION PICTURE /154

CHAPTER 12 THE FELLOW OF DELICACY /159

CHAPTER 13 THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACY /167

CHAPTER 14 THE HONEST TRADESMAN /173

CHAPTER 15 KNITTING /185

CHAPTER 16 STILL KNITTING /197

CHAPTER 17 ONE NIGHT /209

CHAPTER 18 NINE DAYS /215

CHAPTER 19 AN OPINION /222

CHAPTER 20 A PLEA /231

CHAPTER 21 ECHOING FOOTSTEPS /236

CHAPTER 22 THE SEA STILL RISES /249

CHAPTER 23 FIRE RISES /256

CHAPTER 24 DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK /264

Book the Third

THE TRACK OF A STORM

CHAPTER 1 IN SECRET /279

CHAPTER 2 THE GRINDSTONE /292

CHAPTER 3 THE SHADOW /299

CHAPTER 4 CALM IN STORM /305

CHAPTER 5 THE WOOD-SAWYER /311

CHAPTER 6 TRIUMPH /318

CHAPTER 7 A KNOCK AT THE DOOR /326

CHAPTER 8 A HAND AT CARDS /332

CHAPTER 9 THE GAME MADE /346

CHAPTER 10 THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW /360

CHAPTER 11 DUSK /376

CHAPTER 12 DARKNESS /381

CHAPTER 13 FIFTY-TWO /391

CHAPTER 14 THE KNITTING DONE /404

CHAPTER 15 THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER /418

It was the best
of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it
was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of
hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the
other way, — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some
of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for
evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There were a
king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England;
there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne
of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the
State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled
forever.

It was the year
of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations
were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott
had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a
prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by
announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and
Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of
years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last
past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages
in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People,
from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have
proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received
through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

France, less
favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and
trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and
spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained
herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have
his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive,
because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession
of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty
yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there
were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the
Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable
framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely
enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent
to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts,
bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry,
which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the
Revolution. But, that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly,
work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the
rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were

awake, was to be
atheistical and traitorous.

In England,
there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national
boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in
the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out
of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for
security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and,
being recognised and challenged by

his
fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly
shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers,
and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other
four, “in consequence

of the failure
of his ammunition;” after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent
potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham
Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of
all his retinue; prisoners in London jails fought battles with their turnkeys,
and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with
rounds of shot and ball; thieves

snipped off
diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms;
musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband goods, and the mob
fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob; and nobody
thought any of

these
occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever
busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing
up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a house-breaker on
Saturday who had

been taken on
Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now
burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of
an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a
farmer’s

boy of sixpence.

All these
things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old
year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the
Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other
two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their
divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred
and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures —
the creatures of this chronicle among the rest — along the roads that lay
before them.