`Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.'

`It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-by into our lives.'

`There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,' Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.

The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.

`Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?'

`I don't know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the foot-steps the people who are to come into my life, and my father's.'

`I take them into mine!' said Carton. `I ask no questions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them---by the Lightning.' He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.

`And I hear them.' he added again, after a peal of thunder.