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. This lady was dressed plainly, comfortably, and in good taste. Her hands, ungloved, were shapely, but red and hard with manual labor. On the second finger of the left hand was a little gold ring, much thinned by wearing. The eyes of this lady were regarding the unconscious Marcus obliquely, with a singular expression of mingled recollection and doubt. Sometimes her glance would drop to the ring, as if that were a link in the chain of her perplexed reflections. A sudden jolt of the car, as the train ran over a pole which had fallen on the track, roused Marcus to the existence of this face and those eyes. As he saw the eyes sternly bent on him, he thought that his staring out of the window, past the lady's profile, might have offended her. So, with a cough which was meant to serve as an apology for the unintentional rudeness, he turned his face away, and continued his gloomy revery among the odd patterns of the oilcloth on the floor of the aisle. Still the thin, nervous lady watched him obliquely. A ride of three quarters of an hour brought them to their destination, as they learned from a preliminary howl of the conductor through the rear door of the car. The engine bell rang, the whistle screamed, the clack of the wheels gradually became slower. "Only one minute. Hurry!" howled the conductor again.