When the boat was within a yard of the wharf, the jumping commenced; and all the able-bodied men, most of the boys, and some of the ladies, were off before the boat butted with tremendous force against the wharf, shaking both wharf and boat to their foundations, and giving to the people on both a parting jar, which they carried in their bones for the rest of the day.

Once safely on the wharf, the scramble was continued in various directions and for various objects.  Marcus, Tiffles, and Patching indulged in the eccentricity of not scrambling; and, when they reached the Erie Railroad cars, they found every seat taken, some by two persons, but many by one lady and a bandbox or carpet bag, which was intended to signify to the inquiring eye that the lawful human occupant of that half of the seat was absent, but might be expected to come in and claim it at any moment.

The three companions understood this conventional imposture, and politely claimed the spare half seats from the nearest ladies.  The fair occupants looked forbidding, and slowly removed their bandboxes, baskets, and other parcels, to the floor beneath, or the rack overhead; and the disturbers of their peace and comfort ruthlessly took the vacated seats, with a bow, signifying “Thank you.”

The seats thus procured were some distance apart; and so the three companions were precluded from conversing with each other.  This suited the taciturn mood of each that morning.  As for the ladies who filled the other half of the three seats, they might as well have been lay figures from a Broadway drygoods store; conversation with them being prohibited by the etiquette of railway travelling.  A man may journey two hundred and fifty miles in a car, with his elbow unavoidably jogging a lady’s all the way, and still be as far from her acquaintance (unless she is graciously inclined to say something first) as if the pair were leagues apart.  This is proper, but peculiar.

The strange sadness that possessed Marcus that morning was intensified as the ears rolled on.  There is something in the monotonous vibration of the train, and the recurring click of the wheels against the end of the rails, that provokes melancholy.  Marcus looked out of the window at the flying landscape, and the distant patches of wood which seemed to be slowly revolving about each other, and was profoundly wretched.  He was totally unconscious of the sharp, pale, nervous face by his side.

The owner of the face was about thirty-five years old, though the lines on her brow and cheeks added an apparent five years to her age.  If she had been put upon her trial for murder, the police reporters would have discovered traces of great beauty in her countenance.  An ordinary spectator, having no occasion to spice a paragraph, would have made the equivocal remark that she had once been handsomer.