ers to
see them off. Moments were growing very precious. The _Robert Burns_
was there, waiting, the smoke welling from her tall twin stacks. The
levee was crowded with passengers and their friends and relatives. Negro
roustabouts were hard at work hustling freight and baggage aboard.
Charley saw their trunk carried over the gangplank--and he nudged his
father and pointed, for several passengers, dressed in California
costume, were carrying up the gangplank rolls of bedding just like theirs!

It was high time he hunted up their roll, too. He found it, where it had
been pitched from the wagon. As he was proudly inspecting it to see that
all was right, he stumbled over a small cowhide trunk. Attached to the
handle was a card that read: "J. Jacobs"!

"Jacobs!" That was the long-nosed man's name. Was he booked on the
_Robert Burns_? And why? Charley grew excited at the thought, and when
his father and mother strolled across, to be near the bundle, he called:
"Father! Look here!"

Mr. Adams limped over (and big and fine he was in his rough clothes), to
see.

"Humph!" he muttered. "Well, what of it, Charley?"

"Do you think that's his?"

"Whose?"

"Why, the long-nosed man's."

"I'm sure I don't know," answered his father, coolly.

"But that's his name," pursued Charley. "Do you think he's going on our
boat?"

"We can't very well stop him, boy," smiled Mr. Adams. "It isn't 'our'
boat, exactly; and he can't do us any harm, anyway. You aren't afraid of
him, are you?"

"N--no, not if you aren't," asserted Charley. "But he's no business
following us up as he said he would."

"Humph!" again remarked his father. "We can take care of ourselves.
We'll mind our own affairs, and we'll expect him to mind his. If that's
his trunk, probably he's only going down-river a way. We won't borrow
trouble this early in the game, Charley."

That sounded reasonable, and Charley had a lot of trust in his soldier
father. Only--_if_ that trunk belonged to the long-nosed man, and if the
long-nosed man was going down to New Orleans with them, and if he boarded
the same steamer there, for California, things looked mighty peculiar.
He seemed to be such a mean, obstinate fellow that there was no knowing
what he might have up his sleeve.

Mrs. Adams was curious to know the cause of Charley's evident excitement
over the trunk.

"Oh, it bears the name Jacobs, dear," explained Mr. Adams, easily.
"Charley has the notion it