About this story
The Republic sets a grindstone in your Paris courtyard and makes prisoners sharpen the blades; Madame Defarge knits her register of names; Sydney Carton takes the tumbril in Darnay's place, one of the day's fifty-two. Forty-five chapters carry you from a message on the Dover road to the far, far better thing he does.
How it opens
Mud gripped the Dover mail while three passengers walked beside it through a cold November night.
Horses strained on Shooter's Hill, their breath white beneath a moonless sky and a nervous coachman's lamp.
Coach GuardKeep together, gentlemen; a traveller behind us may be a robber before he gives his name.
Jerry CruncherHalloa there! I want Mr Jarvis Lorry, passenger from Tellson's Bank.
Choose
I am Lorry. Hold where the lamp can reach your face.
Name the bank's porter who sent you before you approach.