"Yes. Hurry, dear."

"Sure?"

"It's in the trunk. Look out--jump!"

The gangplank was rising, but with a little run Mrs. Adams did jump and
landed safely. Charley laughed. They didn't catch his mother--no,
siree. And she was the last person to leave the boat.

Up rose the gangplank. The engine bell jangled. The negro roustabouts
cast off the bow and stern hawsers from the wharf posts, and scrambled
over the gunwale as the _Robert Burns_ began to back out into the stream.
Mrs. Adams waved her handkerchief. Everybody on the wharf waved--mostly
handkerchiefs, which were suddenly very popular. The people on board
waved back--and they, too, used handkerchiefs pretty generally. Faster
and farther backed the _Robert Burns_, until in midcurrent, after
describing a great half-circle, she was pointing down stream. The engine
bell jangled to stop, and to go ahead--and she was started for New
Orleans.

They were off for California!

The levee, with his mother's handkerchief now fading into the whitish
blur of other handkerchiefs, drifted behind; Charley took a long breath,
straightened his shoulders, stole a glance at his father, who was winking
violently in queer fashion, and began to take stock of the other
passengers. Some were leaving the rail; a number of others already had
left it, and were negligently strolling about or seating themselves for
comfort. They mostly were men--business men, planters, and the like,
traveling down-river on pleasure or errands of importance, and a few
miners bound for California. There was no Mr. Jacobs, that Charley knew,
among them, and he felt easier. Probably "J. Jacobs" was some other
Jacobs, and not the long-nosed man.

"Let's go in and put our room to rights, Charley," proposed Mr. Adams, as
the buildings of old St. Louis merged one with another, on the shore line
behind.

He briskly limped across the deck, and Charley followed. This would be
something to do, at any rate. But as he passed the door of the long
salon, or lounging room, he glanced in and saw clear to the other end,
where there was a bar for sale of liquors. And he was certain that he
glimpsed the long-nosed man, just coming from the bar!

Charley's heart fairly skipped a beat. No, he would not say anything to
his father, for perhaps he had been mistaken--and what was the sense in
being scared? Supposing that was the long-nosed man. He was not bigger
or smarter than they, and besides, as Mr. Ad