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of something very different.

At length they being among the trees, Mr Meagles stopped short, and

said:

'Mr Clennam, will you do me the favour to look at this man? His name

is Doyce, Daniel Doyce. You wouldn't suppose this man to be a notorious

rascal; would you?'

'I certainly should not.' It was really a disconcerting question, with

the man there.

'No. You would not. I know you would not. You wouldn't suppose him to be

a public offender; would you?'

'No.'

'No. But he is. He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of?

Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway

robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you say, now?'

'I should say,' returned Arthur Clennam, observing a faint smile in

Daniel Doyce's face, 'not one of them.'

'You are right,' said Mr Meagles. 'But he has been ingenious, and he has

been trying to turn his ingenuity to his country's service. That makes

him a public offender directly, sir.'

Arthur looked at the man himself, who only shook his head.

'This Doyce,' said Mr Meagles, 'is a smith and engineer. He is not in a

large way, but he is well known as a very ingenious man. A dozen years

ago, he perfects an invention (involving a very curious secret process)

of great importance to his country and his fellow-creatures. I won't say

how much money it cost him, or how many years of his life he had been

about it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years ago. Wasn't it a

dozen?' said Mr Meagles, addressing Doyce. 'He is the most exasperating

man in the world; he never complains!'

'Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago.'

'Rather better?' said Mr Meagles, 'you mean rather worse. Well, Mr

Clennam, he addresses himself to the Government. The moment he addresses

himself to the Government, he becomes a public offender! Sir,' said Mr

Meagles, in danger of making himself excessively hot again, 'he ceases

to be an innocent citizen, and becomes a culprit.

He is treated from that instant as a man who has done some infernal

action. He is a man to be shirked, put off, brow-beaten, sneered at,

handed over by this highly-connected young or old gentleman, to that

highly-connected young or old gentleman, and dodged back again; he is a

man with no rights in his own time, or his own property; a mere outlaw,

whom it is justifiable to get rid of anyhow; a man to be worn out by all

possible means.'

It was not so difficult to believe, after the morning's experience, as

Mr Meagles supposed.

'Don't stand there, Doyce, turning your spectacle-case over and over,'

cried Mr Meagles, 'but tell Mr Clennam what you confessed to me.'

'I undoubtedly was made to feel,' said the inventor, 'as if I had

committed an offence. In dancing attendance at the various offices, I

was always treated, more or less, as if it was a very bad offence. I

have frequently found it necessary to reflect, for my own self-support,

that I really had not done anything to bring myself into the Newgate

Calendar, but only wanted to effect a great saving and a great

improvement.'

'There!' said Mr Meagles. 'Judge whether I exaggerate. Now you'll be

able to believe me when I tell you the rest of the case.'

With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the

established narrative, which has become tiresome; the matter-of-course

narrative which we all know by heart. How, after interminable attendance

and correspondence, after infinite impertinences, ignorances, and

insults, my lords made a Minute, number three thousand four hundred

and seventy-two, allowing the culprit to make certain trials of his

invention at his own expense.

How the trials were made in the presence of a board of six, of whom two

ancient members were too blind to see it, two other ancient members were

too deaf to hear it, one other ancient member was too lame to get near

it, and the final ancient member was too pig-headed to look at it. How

there were more years; more impertinences, ignorances, and insults. How

my lords then made a Minute, number five thousand one hundred and three,

whereby they resigned the business to the Circumlocution Office. How the

Circumlocution Office, in course of time, took up the business as if

it were a bran new thing of yesterday, which had never been heard of

before; muddled the business, addled the business, tossed the business

in a wet blanket. How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults went

through the multiplication table. How there was a reference of the

invention to three Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew nothing about

it; into whose heads nothing could be hammered about it; who got bored

about it, and reported physical impossibilities about it. How the

Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred

and forty, 'saw no reason to reverse the decision at which my lords had

arrived.' How the Circumlocution Office, being reminded that my lords

had arrived at no decision, shelved the business. How there had been

a final interview with the head of the Circumlocution Office that very

morning, and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had been, upon the

whole, and under all the circumstances, and looking at it from the

various points of view, of opinion that one of two courses was to be

pursued in respect of the business: that was to say, either to leave it

alone for evermore, or to begin it all over again.

'Upon which,' said Mr Meagles, 'as a practical man, I then and there, in

that presence, took Doyce by the collar, and told him it was plain to

me that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the

government peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office

door by the collar, that the very porter might know I was a practical

man who appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here

we are!'

If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told

them perhaps that the Circumlocution Office had achieved its function.

That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship

as long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean

the ship, would be to knock them off; that they could but be knocked off

once; and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that

was the ship's look out, and not theirs.

'There!' said Mr Meagles, 'now you know all about Doyce. Except, which I

own does not improve my state of mind, that even now you don't hear him

complain.'

'You must have great patience,' said Arthur Clennam, looking at him with

some wonder, 'great forbearance.'

'No,' he returned, 'I don't know that I have more than another man.'

'By the Lord, you have more than I have, though!' cried Mr Meagles.

Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, 'You see, my experience of these

things does not begin with myself. It has been in my way to know a

little about them from time to time. Mine is not a particular case. I am

not worse used than a hundred others who have put themselves in the same

position--than all the others, I was going to say.'

'I don't know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my case;

but I am very glad that you do.'

'Understand me! I don't say,' he replied in his steady, planning

way, and looking into the distance before him as if his grey eye were

measuring it, 'that it's recompense for a man's toil and hope; but it's

a certain sort of relief to know that I might have counted on this.'

He spoke in that quiet deliberate manner, and in that undertone, which

is often observable in mechanics who consider and adjust with great

nicety. It belonged to him like his suppleness of thumb, or his peculiar

way of tilting up his hat at the back every now and then, as if he were

contemplating some half-finished work of his hand and thinking about it.

'Disappointed?' he went on, as he walked between them under the trees.

'Yes. No doubt I am disappointed. Hurt? Yes. No doubt I am hurt. That's

only natural. But what I mean when I say that people who put themselves

in the same position are mostly used in the same way--'

'In England,' said Mr Meagles.

'Oh! of course I mean in England. When they take their inventions into

foreign countries, that's quite different. And that's the reason why so

many go there.'

Mr Meagles very hot indeed again.

'What I mean is, that however this comes to be the regular way of our

government, it is its regular way. Have you ever heard of any projector

or inventor who failed to find it all but inaccessible, and whom it did

not discourage and ill-treat?'

'I cannot say that I ever have.'

'Have you ever known it to be beforehand in the adoption of any useful

thing? Ever known it to set an example of any useful kind?'

'I am a good deal older than my friend here,' said Mr Meagles, 'and I'll

answer that. Never.'

'But we all three have known, I expect,' said the inventor, 'a pretty

many cases of its fixed determination to be miles upon miles, and years

upon years, behind the rest of us; and of its being found out persisting

in the use of things long superseded, even after the better things were

well known and generally taken up?'

They all agreed upon that.

'Well then,' said Doyce, with a sigh, 'as I know what such a metal will

do at such a temperature, and such a body under such a pressure, so I

may know (if I will only consider), how these great lords and gentlemen

will certainly deal with such a matter as mine.

I have no right to be surprised, with a head upon my shoulders, and

memory in it, that I fall into the ranks with all who came before me. I

ought to have let it alone. I have had warning enough, I am sure.'

With that he put up his spectacle-case, and said to Arthur, 'If I don't

complain, Mr Clennam, I can feel gratitude; and I assure you that I

feel it towards our mutual friend. Many's the day, and many's the way in

which he has backed me.'

'Stuff and nonsense,' said Mr Meagles.

Arthur could not but glance at Daniel Doyce in the ensuing silence.

Though it was evidently in the grain of his character, and of his

respect for his own case, that he should abstain from idle murmuring,

it was evident that he had grown the older, the sterner, and the poorer,

for his long endeavour. He could not but think what a blessed thing

it would have been for this man, if he had taken a lesson from the

gentlemen who were so kind as to take a nation's affairs in charge, and

had learnt How not to do it.

Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then began

to cool and clear up.

'Come, come!' said he. 'We shall not make this the better by being grim.

Where do you think of going, Dan?'

'I shall go back to the factory,' said Dan. 'Why then, we'll all go

back to the factory, or walk in that direction,' returned Mr Meagles

cheerfully. 'Mr Clennam won't be deterred by its being in Bleeding Heart

Yard.'

'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Clennam. 'I want to go there.'

'So much the better,' cried Mr Meagles. 'Come along!'

As they went along, certainly one of the party, and probably more than

one, thought that Bleeding Heart Yard was no inappropriate destination

for a man who had been in official correspondence with my lords and the

Barnacles--and perhaps had a misgiving also that Britannia herself might

come to look for lodgings in Bleeding Heart Yard some ugly day or other,

if she over-did the Circumlocution Office.

CHAPTER 11. Let Loose

A late, dull autumn night was closing in upon the river Saone. The

stream, like a sullied looking-glass in a gloomy place, reflected the

clouds heavily; and the low banks leaned over here and there, as if they

were half curious, and half afraid, to see their darkening pictures in

the water. The flat expanse of country about Chalons lay a long heavy

streak, occasionally made a little ragged by a row of poplar trees

against the wrathful sunset. On the banks of the river Saone it was wet,

depressing, solitary; and the night deepened fast.

One man slowly moving on towards Chalons was the only visible figure in

the landscape. Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. With an old

sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of

some wood in his hand; miry, footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden

out, his hair and beard untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his

shoulder, and the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along in

pain and difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him,

as if the wail of the wind and the shuddering of the grass were directed

against him, as if the low mysterious plashing of the water murmured at

him, as if the fitful autumn night were disturbed by him.

He glanced here, and he glanced there, sullenly but shrinkingly; and

sometimes stopped and turned about, and looked all round him. Then he

limped on again, toiling and muttering.

'To the devil with this plain that has no end! To the devil with these

stones that cut like knives! To the devil with this dismal darkness,

wrapping itself about one with a chill! I hate you!'

And he would have visited his hatred upon it all with the scowl he threw

about him, if he could. He trudged a little further; and looking into

the distance before him, stopped again. 'I, hungry, thirsty, weary. You,

imbeciles, where the lights are yonder, eating and drinking, and warming

yourselves at fires! I wish I had the sacking of your town; I would

repay you, my children!'

But the teeth he set at the town, and the hand he shook at the town,