Four months have passed since the trial, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton have become regular visitors at the Manettes' home in Soho, where Miss Pross, Lucie's governess, also lives. While there one Sunday, Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross discuss the numerous suitors for Lucie's hand and the progress of Doctor Manette's recovery, and Darnay tells a story of a prisoner in the Tower of London who wrote the word "dig"on a wall. Years later, when workmen found the old cell, they dug into the floor beneath the inscription and found ashes of a paper inside a leather case. Doctor Manette reacts badly to this story, jumping as if startled and looking ill.
Later in the evening, as the group drinks tea and listens to the rain, they hear the echoes of people's footsteps from other streets. Lucie shares a fancy she has sometimes that the echoing footsteps are "the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-by into our lives."Carton comments that by the sound of the footsteps, there will be "a great crowd coming one day into our lives."
