rp, 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.

Marcus, Tiffles, and Patching were out of their seats and at the door
with American despatch. Before the car had quite stopped, they had
jumped off. Marcus did not notice that, behind him, was a woman
struggling between the two rows of seats with a bandbox, a workbasket,
an umbrella, and her hoops, all of which caught in turn on one side or
the other. Nor did the conductor observe that this burdened and
distressed lady was trying to make her way out; for, after looking from
the rear of the train, and seeing that three persons had landed, and
that there was nobody to get on, he concluded that it would be a waste
of time to stop a minute, and so rang the bell to go ahead. The engine