eft England; but he is such a d---- unbelieving infidel that he
wouldn't credit the man's own brother. He won't learn much here about
him."

"Ferdinand Lefroy," said the first man, "died on the way as he was going
out West. I was over the road the day after."

"You know nothing about it," said Robert. "He died at 'Frisco two days
after we'd got him there."

"He died at Ogden Junction, where you turn down to Utah City."

"You didn't see him dead," said the other.

"If I remember right," continued the first man, "they'd taken him away to
bury him somewhere just there in the neighbourhood. I didn't care much
about him, and I didn't ask any particular questions. He was a drunken
beast,--better dead than alive."

"You've been drunk as often as him, I guess," said Robert.

"I never gave nobody the trouble to bury me at any rate," said the other.

"Do you mean to say positively of your own knowledge," asked Peacocke,
"that Ferdinand Lefroy died at that station?"

"Ask him; he's his brother, and he ought to know best."

"I tell you," said Robert, earnestly, "that we carried him on to 'Frisco,
and there he died. If you think you know best, you can go to Utah City
and wait there till you hear all about it. I guess they'll make you one
of their elders if you wait long enough." Then they all went to bed.

It was now clear to Mr. Peacocke that the man as to whose life or death he
was so anxious had really died. The combined evidence of these men, which
had come out without any preconcerted arrangement, was proof to his mind.
But there was no evidence which he could take back with him to England and
use there as proof in a court of law, or even before the Bishop and Dr.
Wortle. On the next morning, before Robert Lefroy was up, he got hold of
the man who had been so positive that death had overtaken the poor wretch
at the railway station which is distant from San Francisco two days'
journey. Had the man died there, and been buried there, nothing would be
known of him in San Francisco. The journey to San Francisco would be
entirely thrown away, and he would be as badly off as ever.

"I wouldn't like to say for certain," said the man when he was
interrogated. "I only tell you what they told me. As I was passing along
somebody said as Ferdy Lefroy had been taken dead out of the cars on to
the platform. Now you know as much about it as I do."

He was thus assured that at any rate the journey to San Francisco ha