"Yes, all; the headstrong young woman would not be left behind, and she is at Sacramento now, that is if she hasn't been shot by some of these red-shirted miners, or come to her end some other way. We stayed two days at San Francisco. I have wandered about a good deal, but I thought before I saw Sacramento and these places, that city was the residence of the roughest and most dangerous set of rascals I ever met. "We travelled by coach across the plains, and on going to the bank at Sacramento found that you had been just shooting some highwaymen, and had got your arm broken by a bullet. So we put Alice in charge of the landlady of the hotel, and dared her to stir out of the room till we got back; we came on to the place where they said you were stopping, but found that you had come on here this morning. So we took our places in the coach again, and here we are; and the sooner we get away from here the better, so I hope you will be ready to start early in the morning." "But, my dear uncle," Frank began. "Don't give me any of your buts, sir," Captain Bayley said peremptorily. "You have been hiding too long, now you must go back and take your place again." "But I can't clear myself of this affair." "Don't tell me, sir," the old officer said angrily "you have cleared yourself to me, and I will take good care that the truth is known. As for that rascal Fred, I deserve all the trouble that I have gone through for being such an old fool as to let him take me in. I want to get back as quickly as possible to make my will again. Ever since Harry put the idea into my mind I have been fretting about the one I had made leaving Fred a third of my property. I thought if anything happened to me before the matter was cleared up, and I found out in the next world--where I suppose people know everything--that I had been wrong, I should have been obliged to have asked for a furlough to come back again to set it straight. Alice will be fidgeting her life out, and we must set out at once; so let us have no more nonsense about delay." Frank offered no further resistance, and agreed to start on the following morning. "You look more like yourself now, Frank," his uncle said, "for, except by the tones of your voice, I should hardly have known you. You must have grown ten inches bigger round the shoulders than you were, and have grown into a very big man. You don't look so big here, where there are so many burly miners about, but when you get back to London people will quite stare at you. Your face at present is tanned almost black, and that beard, which I suppose is the result of exposure, makes you look half a dozen years older than you really are. I hope you will shave it off at once, and look like a civilised English gentleman." "I suppose I must do so," Frank said, rather ruefully, "for one never sees a beard in London, except on a foreigner. I suppose some day men will be sensible and wear them."