of railroad), had plunged into the
English scenery and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping
company with dukes and earls. Others, whose briefer span forbade their
devoting themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little tedium
of the way with penny-papers. A party of girls, and one young man, on
opposite sides of the car, found huge amusement in a game of ball.
They tossed it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might be
measured by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly,
the merry players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of their
mirth afar behind, and ending their game under another sky than had
witnessed its commencement. Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and rolls
of variously tinctured lozenges,--merchandise that reminded Hepzibah of
her deserted shop,--appeared at each momentary stopping-place, doing up
their business in a hurry, or breaking it short off, lest the market
should ravish them away with it. New people continually entered. Old
acquaintances--for such they soon grew to be, in this rapid current of
affairs--continually departed. Here and there, amid the rumble and the
tumult, sat one asleep. Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighter
study; and the common and inevitable movement onward! It was life
itself!

Clifford's naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused. He caught
the color of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividly
than he received it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and
portentous hue. Hepzibah, on the other hand, felt herself more apart
from human kind than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted.

"You are not happy, Hepzibah!" said Clifford apart, in a tone of
approach. "You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of Cousin
Jaffrey"--here came the quake through him,--"and of Cousin Jaffrey
sitting there, all by himself! Take my advice,--follow my example,--and
let such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah!--in
the midst of life!--in the throng of our fellow beings! Let you and I
be happy! As happy as that youth and those pretty girls, at their game
of ball!"

"Happy--" thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at the word, of her
dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in it,--"happy. He is mad
already; and, if I could once feel myself broad awake, I should go mad
too!"

If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote from it. Fast
and far as they had rattled and