The party sits down to supper, but soon someone notices that Jingle and Miss Rachael are missing. A man comes running in with the news that he saw them down the road, eloping. Tupman is upset; he realizes that Jingle cheated him. Wardle also feels put out by Joe, thinking the fat boy deliberately misled him into thinking that it was Tupman in whom Rachael was interested. Wardle and Pickwick take off after the couple, but their carriage overturns and is damaged. Jingle stops to laugh at them but refuses to help them. Wardle tells Pickwick there is nothing left to do but walk if they intend to stop Jingle and Rachael from procuring a marriage license.

At an inn in London, Sam Weller, the boot man, is attending to Jingle’s and Rachael’s shoes. Sam directs Jingle to the nearest license bureau to secure a marriage license for the next day. Rachael does not want so long. She is afraid her brother will arrive and stop her marriage. Jingle takes off to get the license. In the meantime, Wardle and Pickwick arrive at the inn with Wardle’s attorney, Mr. Perker. Sam leads them up to the room where Rachael is waiting—just as Jingle returns with the license. Rachael cries as Wardle berates Jingle for encouraging his sister to run off with him. Mr. Perker points out that Rachael is of age and cannot be forced to leave against her will. Speaking privately, Wardle offers to pay Jingle to leave his sister alone. He points out that Rachael, who is fifty years old, will have no money until their mother dies. Old Mrs. Wardle comes from a very long-living family, Wardle tells Jingle, so he cannot expect to get Rachael’s money any time soon. Jingle agrees to leave for one hundred and twenty pounds. Rachael is beside herself to find that Jingle has jilted her. Everyone returns to Dingley Dell the next day.

When Pickwick and Wardle return to Manor Farm, they discover that Tupman has gone, leaving behind a note that sounds ominously suicidal. The Pickwickians leave at once to find Tupman at a nearby ale house; he looks anything but depressed. At the inn, Pickwick finds a curiously engraved stone. He thinks it must be of great historical significance, so he buys it from the innkeeper and proposes to the other club members that they return home as soon as possible to examine this strange specimen. In his room at night, Pickwick reads the manuscript given him by the old clergyman from Dingley Dell. It contains a story of a madman who frightened his young wife to death, only to learn that her brother had pressured her to marry him for his money. Pickwick and the others return to the Pickwick Club, which must deal with the obstreperous Mr. Blotton, who had previously mocked Mr. Pickwick.