Hello and welcome to the final special My Time Capsule release of The Battle of Life,

a love story by Charles Dickens.

The first two parts of this 1846 novella, which has rarely been recorded,

are available wherever you get your My Time Capsule episodes from normally.

It's worth listening to them before you listen to this final episode. But if you're up to

date with your listening, then Merry Christmas and I hope you have fun. Thank you. Chapter 3, Part the Third

The world had grown six years older since that night of the return.

It was a warm autumn afternoon, and there had been heavy rain.

The sun burst suddenly from among the clouds,

and the old battleground, sparkling brilliantly and cheerfully at sight of it in one green place,

flashed a responsive welcome there, which spread along the countryside as if a joyful beacon

had been lighted up, and answered from a thousand stations.

How beautiful the landscape kindling in the light, and that luxuriant influence passing on like a celestial presence, brightening everything. The wood, a somber mass before,

revealed its varied tints of yellow, green, brown, red, its different forms of trees,

with raindrops glittering on their leaves and twinkling as they fell.

The verdant meadowland, bright and glowing, seemed as if it had been blind a minute since,

and now had found a sense of sight wherewith to look up at the shining sky. Cornfields, hedgerows,

fences, homesteads and clustered rudes, the steeple of the church, the stream, the water-mill,

all sprang out of the gloomy darkness smiling. Birds sang sweetly. Flowers raised their drooping heads. Fresh scents arose from the invigorated ground.

The blue expanse above extended and diffused itself. Already the sun's slanting rays pierced mortally the sun and bank of cloud that lingered in its flight.

And a rainbow, spirit of all the colours that adorned the earth and sky,

spanned the whole art with a triumphant glory. At such a time, one little roadside inn,

...