A Tale of Two Cities by Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens (easy readers .txt) 📖

moving to the very top of the hill, where it looked down on the village.

"See!" returned the road worker, pointing. "You go down here and straight through the street, past the fountain..."

"To the devil with all that!" the other cut in, moving his eyes over the country below them. "I go through no streets and past no fountains. Okay?"

"Okay! What you want is six miles past the top of that hill on the other side of the village."

"Good. When do you finish your work?"

"When the sun goes down."

"Will you wake me up before you go home? I have walked through two nights without resting. When I finish my pipe I will sleep like a child. Can you wake me?"

"Sure."

The traveller finished his pipe, put it inside his shirt, pulled off his big timber shoes, and lay down on his back on the pile of stones. He was soon deeply asleep.

As the labourer went about his dirty work, and the hail clouds rolled away, showing strong lines of sunlight that lighted up different parts of the land, the little man (who was wearing a red hat now, in place of his blue one) seemed very interested in the man lying on the pile of stones. He looked that way so often that he was not able to use his tools well, and one could see that he was not getting much real work done. The sleeping man's sun-browned face, the long black hair and beard, the rough red wool hat, the mix of hand- made cloth and animal skins, the big body, made thin by a hard life, and the angry look on his lips even when he was sleeping, all interested the road worker. The traveller had walked a long way, and his feet were sore, his ankles rubbed and bleeding. His big shoes, filled with leaves and grass, had been heavy to carry over the many long miles, and his clothes had many holes in them, like the sores on his own body. Bending down near him, the road worker tried to see if there was a secret weapon in his shirt, but he could not, because the man kept his arms folded strongly over his chest when sleeping. Strong cities with walls, guards, gates, big ditches, and bridges over them that could be lifted and dropped, seemed easy to break when measured against this man. And when the worker lifted his eyes to look out at the sky, he could see in his mind's eye, other men like this, men who would let nothing stop them, going to important places all over France.

The man did not wake either when hail fell or when the sun came through, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was filled with colour. Then the road worker, having brought his tools together for the walk down to the village, went to wake him.

"Good!" said the sleeper, lifting himself up on one elbow. "Six miles past the top of that hill?” he asked.

"About."

"About. Good!"

The road worker went home, with dust moving ahead of him as the wind chose, and he was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in between thin cows that had been brought there to drink. It was almost like he was whispering to the cows too as he whispered to others in the village. When the people had finished what little food they had that night, they did not go quietly to bed as they did most nights. Instead, they came out into the open again, and stayed there. A strange movement of whispers was on them all; and on top of that, when they came together at the fountain after dark, they all started looking in the same direction, at the sky there. Mr. Gabelle, the Marquis' leader in that place, started to worry. He went alone to the top of his house and looked at the sky in that direction too. Hiding behind his chimney, he looked down at the faces in the dark by the fountain below, and he sent word to the man who cared for the church building to be ready to ring the warning bell soon.

The night grew later. The trees around the old castle, separating it from the rest of the world, moved as the wind grew stronger, as if they were trying to destroy the building in the darkness of the night. Up the steps, the rain itself hit wildly against the great front door, like a runner with news to wake up the people sleeping inside. Little pieces of the wind moved through the rooms, around the old spears and knives on the walls, and sadly up the steps, where it shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis used to sleep. From east, west, north, and south, through the trees, four rough men with heavy steps were breaking small branches and pushing flat the grass as they moved carefully toward the castle's yard, where four lanterns were lighted. Then they each moved off in a different direction before all was black once again.

But not for long. Soon the castle started to make itself seen by some light of its own, as if it was a light. Then a line of light could be seen moving behind the walls, showing through windows and other openings. It grew bigger and stronger. Then, from twenty big windows, flames came out, and the stone faces of the castle, awake now, were looking out from a fire.

There was some talk outside the house, from the few people who were still there, and someone put a saddle on a horse and went off on it. In the darkness, the horse was pushed on through the rain, not stopping until it reached Mr. Gabelle's door, near the village fountain.

"Help, Gabelle! Everyone, help!"

The warning bell started ringing, but no one came to help. The road worker and two hundred and fifty of his friends, stood with their arms folded at the fountain, looking at the fire in the sky. "It must be forty feet high," they said angrily; and they never moved.

The rider from the castle, and the tired horse ran through the village and up the hill leading to the prison. At the gate, a group of officers were watching the fire. At some distance from them were a group of soldiers. "Help, men... officers! The castle is on fire. We can still save some important things from the fire if we hurry! Help, help!" The officers looked toward the soldiers who looked at the fire. They said nothing to the soldiers, but answered the rider by biting their lips and lifting there shoulders. "It must burn."

As the rider raced down the hill again, the village was also starting to light up. The road worker and his two hundred and fifty friends, acting as one, had raced into their houses and were putting candles in every window. Because people were so poor, they needed to get most of their candles from Mr. Gabelle, but when he would not give them candles, the road worker, who had always been very humble to such leaders, had said that coaches could be used to make a fire if needed, and they could cook the man's horses with the fire if they so chose.

The castle was left to flame and burn. In the noise of the fire, a red-hot wind coming as if from hell itself, seemed to be blowing the building away. The stone faces looked like they were in great pain. When big pieces of timber and stone fell, the face with two little marks on each side of its nose, was, at first covered. But it soon worked its way out of the smoke again, like it was the face of the cruel Marquis, burning to death and fighting with the fire as he died.

The castle burned. The closest trees, touched by the fire coming from the castle, also burned and died. Trees at a distance, set on fire by the four angry men, became an even bigger circle of fire and smoke around the burning building. Metal melted in the stone lake of the castle fountain after the water dried up. Containers of water at the top of the four towers, that were there to be used in stopping a fire, were of no effect against the fire, as four great walls of flame ate them up. Big tears in the wall branched out like a chemical action moving quickly from one atom to another. Birds, caught by surprise, only had time to turn before the heat killed them and they fell into the burning building below them. Four angry shapes moved away, east, west, north, and south, along the dark roads toward new targets, helped on their way by the light they had helped to make. The people in the village had control of the bell now, having done away with the man whose job it was to ring it, and they were now ringing it to show their happiness.

Not only that, but the village, drunk with hunger, fire, and bell-ringing, and thinking that Mr. Gabelle was the one behind the taxes... forgetting that not many taxes were paid in those last days, because the people were too poor to pay anything... was in a hurry to talk with him about it, and made a circle around his house, asking for him to come out and talk. Seeing this, Mr. Gabelle put heavy bars across his door, and chose instead to talk to himself. The end effect of this talking was that he returned to the roof of his house behind his chimney. This time he was thinking (because he was a little man and still wanted to hurt those who were planning to hurt him) that he would throw himself head first from there, hoping to kill one or two people in the crowd below as he himself died.

It must have been a long night for Mr. Gabelle up there, with the burning castle for his candle, and the bell and hits on his door for music. And it was made worse by the lantern rope the crowd had put up in front of his gate. The village clearly wanted to hang him in place of the lantern. It would have been a very difficult time, spending a whole summer night so close to the black ocean, ready as Mr. Gabelle was, to take that jump into it! But the sun came up at last with the candles of the village burning out and the people happily leaving. Mr. Gabelle came down, carrying his life with him for a while.

In other villages, less than a hundred miles away, in the light of other fires, there were government leaders who were not as lucky, not that night and not on other nights. For them, when the sun came up, it found them hanging over streets that had once been at peace, in villages where they had been born and where they had lived all their lives. Also, there had been other people from towns and villages who had not been as lucky as the road worker and his friends in this village. The government leaders had been able in those towns and villages to turn the soldiers against the people and they were the ones hanging from ropes in the morning light. The angry shapes did not stop moving, east, west, north, and south. It made no difference who was hanged; the fires still burned. No government leader, even those expert in numbers, could tell how high the hanging stage would need to be to stop that fire.

24. Pulled Toward the Rock

In such a growing fire and growing storm -- the solid earth being shaken by the movements of an angry ocean which grew higher and higher without ever falling back, and bringing fear to those on the beach -- three years of such weather followed. Three more birthdays for little Lucie had been added by the golden thread to the happy cloth of her home life.

Many days and nights had the people living in that house listened to footsteps on the corner, with hearts that stopped when they heard the sound of crowds. The steps had come to be, in their minds, the steps of an angry crowd that had been turned into wild animals by all that they had been through before then. They carried a red flag to mark the danger that covered their country.

French Sirs, as a class, had stopped worrying about people liking or not liking them. They were so not wanted in France that there was danger of them being forced out of the country and out of life itself. Like the man who wanted badly to see the devil and then ran in fear when it happened, so the rich class, after saying the Lord's Prayer backwards for so many years, and doing many other things to bring evil on themselves, no sooner saw what was coming from their actions before they were running in fear of it.

The sharp "eye"