Francisco.

"Edward Sinton, Esquire, Little Creek Diggings.

"My Dear Sir,--I have just time before the post closes, to say that I
only learned a few days ago that you were at Little Creek, otherwise I
should have written sooner, to say that--"

Here the captain seemed puzzled. "Now, ain't that aggravatin'?" he
said; "the seal has torn away the most important bit o' the letter. I
wish I had the villains by the nose that opened it! Look here, Larry,
can you guess what it was?"

Larry took the letter, and, after scrutinising it with intense gravity
and earnestness, returned it, with the remark, that it was "beyant him
entirely."

"That--that--" said the captain, again attempting to read, "that--
somethin'--great success; so you and Captain Bunting had better come
down at once.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, Yours faithfully, John Thomson."

"Now," remarked the captain, with a look of chagrin, as he laid down the
letter, folded his hands together, and gazed into Larry's grave visage,
"nothin' half so tantalisin' as that has happened to me since the time
when my good ship, the _Roving Bess_, was cast ashore at San Francisco."

"It's purvokin'," replied Larry, "an' preplexin'."

"It's most unfortunate, too," continued the captain, knitting up his
visage, "that Sinton should be away just at this time, without rudder,
chart, or compass, an' bound for no port that any one knows of. Why,
the fellow may be deep in the heart o' the Rocky Mountains, for all I
can tell. I might start off at once without him, but maybe that would
be of no use. What can it be that old Thompson's so anxious about? Why
didn't the old figur'-head use his pen more freely--his tongue goes fast
enough to drive the engines of a seventy-four. What _is_ to be done?"

Although Captain Bunting asked the question with thorough earnestness
and much energy, looking first at Larry and then at Ah-wow, he received
no reply. The former shook his head, and the latter stared at him with
a steady, dead intensity, as if he wished to stare him through.

After a few minutes' pause, Larry suddenly asked the captain if he was
hungry, to which the latter replied that he was; whereupon the former
suggested that it was worth while "cookin' the haunch o' ven'son," and
offered to do it in a peculiar manner, that had been taught to him not
long ago by a hunter, who had passed that way, and fallen into the hole
in the tent and sprained his ankle, so that he, (Larry),