ke; a dog would have gone the other way. But I am only part dog,
and can get very humanly stupid when excited. He had been stopping in
that house ten days; I almost know, now, that he stops long nowhere,
the past six or eight months, but is restless and has to keep moving. I
understand that feeling! and I know what it is to feel it. He still uses
the name he had registered when I came so near catching him nine months
ago--"James Walker"; doubtless the same he adopted when he fled from
Silver Gulch. An unpretending man, and has small taste for fancy names.
I recognized the hand easily, through its slight disguise. A square man,
and not good at shams and pretenses.

They said he was just gone, on a journey; left no address; didn't say
where he was going; looked frightened when asked to leave his address;
had no baggage but a cheap valise; carried it off on foot--a "stingy old
person, and not much loss to the house." "Old!" I suppose he is, now. I
hardly heard; I was there but a moment. I rushed along his trail, and
it led me to a wharf. Mother, the smoke of the steamer he had taken was
just fading out on the horizon! I should have saved half an hour if I
had gone in the right direction at first. I could have taken a fast tug,
and should have stood a chance of catching that vessel. She is bound for
Melbourne.

HOPE CANYON, CALIFORNIA, October 3, 1900.

You have a right to complain. "A letter a year" is a paucity; I freely
acknowledge it; but how can one write when there is nothing to write
about but failures? No one can keep it up; it breaks the heart.

I told you--it seems ages ago, now--how I missed him at Melbourne, and
then chased him all over Australasia for months on end.

Well, then, after that I followed him to India; almost saw him in
Bombay; traced him all around--to Baroda, Rawal-Pindi, Lucknow, Lahore,
Cawnpore, Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras--oh, everywhere; week after week,
month after month, through the dust and swelter--always approximately on
his track, sometimes close upon him, yet never catching him. And down to
Ceylon, and then to--Never mind; by-and-by I will write it all out.

I chased him home to California, and down to Mexico, and back again to
California. Since then I have been hunting him about the state from the
first of last January down to a month ago. I feel almost sure he is not
far from Hope Canyon; I traced him to a point thirty miles from here,
but there I lost the trail; some one gave