"Frank," said Mr Allfrey, somewhat solemnly, as he turned his gaze full on the animated face of his nephew, "_if_ I could get you put into a lunatic asylum without a doctor's certificate I would do so without delay, but, that being impossible just now--although I think it will be not only possible but necessary ere long--I have to make you a final proposal. It is this:--that, as you express such a powerful objection to enter an office in this country, you should go abroad and see whether a three-legged stool is more attractive in foreign parts than it is in England. Now, I happen to have a friend in California. If your geography has not been neglected as much as your Latin, you will remember that this country lies on the western seaboard of North America, not far from those gold-fields which have been recently turning the world upside-down. Will you go?" "I shall be delighted to go," said Frank with enthusiasm. "Eh!" exclaimed Mr Allfrey, with a look of surprise, as if he could not understand the readiness with which his nephew agreed to the proposal, "why, how's this? I had fully expected you to refuse. Remember, boy, it is not to be a romantic gold-digger, which is another name for a born idiot, that I would send you out to California. It is to be a clerk, a quill-driver. D'you understand?" "I understand, uncle, perfectly," replied Frank with a smile. "The fact is that I had made up my mind, lately, not to oppose your wishes any longer, but to agree to go into an office at home. Of course it is more agreeable to me to think of going into one abroad." "I'm glad you take such a sensible view of the matter, Frank," said Mr Allfrey, much mollified. "Besides," continued Frank, "I have read a good deal about that country of late, and the descriptions of the magnificence of the scenery have made me long to have an opportunity of painting it and--" He paused abruptly and started up, for his uncle had seized a book, which usually lay open on his desk, and was in fact a sort of dummy intended to indicate the "study" that was supposed to go on there. Next moment Frank sprang laughing into the passage, and the book flew with a crash against the panels of the door as he shut it behind him, leaving Mr Allfrey to solace himself with a large meerschaum, almost the only unfailing friend that he possessed. Thus it came to pass that Frank Allfrey went out to the gold regions of California. CHAPTER TWO. FRANK DISCUSSES HIS PROSPECTS WITH A FRIEND. We pass over our hero's long voyage round "the Horn," and introduce him in a totally new scene and under widely different circumstances--seated near a magnificent tree of which he is making a study, and clad in a white linen coat and pantaloons and a broad-brimmed straw hat.