Some hastened up stairs to the office door, to find that the escaping prisoner had seriously complicated the difficulties of the situation by carrying off the key. Others, dashing around corners, stared up and down the streets, and under the bridge, and up and down the canal, and into various dark places, including a pig-sty, Sellick’s wagon-seat, and an old molasses-hogshead half filled with rain water, standing under the eaves, without making any noteworthy discoveries. In the mean while a boatman on a passing scow drew Peternot’s hat out of the water with a pike-pole, and reached it to somebody, who placed it on the wooden head of a short post, well grooved by the friction of cables, where it was left to drip and dry.