He took his ticket, and seated himself on the shelf in one of those wooden boxes which benevolent railway directors set aside for the conveyance of parliamentarians. His companions were two navvies, who had not slept off the effects of last night's drunkenness, and whose language made Mr. Effingham--albeit not unused to listening to "tall talk"--shrink with disgust; an old woman with steaming black garments, and an umbrella which would not stand up in any corner and would not lie under the seat, and got itself called most opprobrious names for its persistence in leaning against the nearest navvy; and a young woman with a swollen face tied up in a check cotton handkerchief. Mr. Effingham made an effort to let the very small window on his side down, but the young woman with the toothache had it up in an instant; while the aperture on the other side was constantly stuffed with the body of one or other of the drunken navvies, who fought for the privilege of leaning half out of the carriage, and running the chance of being knocked to pieces against arches and tunnel-walls. So the navvies fought and swore, and the old woman sniffed and took little snatches of sleep, waking with a prolonged snort and start; and the young woman moaned and rubbed her face, until Mr. Effingham was nearly mad. Circumstances were almost too much for him; he grew first desponding, and then desperate. He wished he had never started on his journey; he would get out at the next station at which the train stopped (and as the parliamentary duly stopped at every station, he would not have had to wait long); he would go back to London. No, he would not do that; he had boasted about his intention to Griffiths, and would lose all authority over that satellite if he did not show at least the semblance of a fulfilment of his purpose. He would get out at the next station, and wait at a public-house in the village until the next day, and then go back and tell Griffiths he had seen Sir Charles Mitford, and had found it impossible to get any money out of him. And then, just as the whistle shrieked out and the engine reduced its particularly slow pace to a slower still, preparatory to pulling up, Mr. Effingham's hands strayed into his waistcoat-pocket, where he found only a half-sovereign and a few shillings remaining--the extent of his earthly possessions. That decided him; he would go on, come what might! Such a state of impecuniosity nerved him to anything; and--the absence of policemen in rural districts still pleasantly remembered--he determined upon pursuing his original idea and of continuing his journey.