d not
been altogether a fiction. The man had gone "West," as had been said, and
nothing more would be known of him at St. Louis. He must still go on upon
his journey and make such inquiry as might be possible at the Ogden
Junction.

On the day but one following they started again, taking their tickets as
far as Leavenworth. They were told by the officials that they would find
a train at Leavenworth waiting to take them on across country into the
regular San Francisco line. But, as is not unusual with railway officials
in that part of the world, they were deceived. At Leavenworth they were
forced to remain for four-and-twenty hours, and there they put themselves
up at a miserable hotel in which they were obliged to occupy the same
room. It was a rough, uncouth place, in which, as it seemed to Mr.
Peacocke, the men were more uncourteous to him, and the things around more
unlike to what he had met elsewhere, than in any other town of the Union.
Robert Lefroy, since the first night at St. Louis, had become sullen
rather than disobedient. He had not refused to go on when the moment came
for starting, but had left it in doubt till the last moment whether he did
or did not intend to prosecute his journey. When the ticket was taken for
him he pretended to be altogether indifferent about it, and would himself
give no help whatever in any of the usual troubles of travelling. But as
far as this little town of Leavenworth he had been carried, and Peacocke
now began to think it probable that he might succeed in taking him to San
Francisco.

On that night he endeavoured to induce him to go first to bed, but in this
he failed. Lefroy insisted on remaining down at the bar, where he had
ordered for himself some liquor for which Mr. Peacocke, in spite of all
his efforts to the contrary, would have to pay. If the man would get
drunk and lie there, he could not help himself. On this he was
determined, that whether with or without the man, he would go on by the
first train;--and so he took himself to his bed.

He had been there perhaps half-an-hour when his companion came into the
room,--certainly not drunk. He seated himself on his bed, and then,
pulling to him a large travelling-bag which he used, he unpacked it
altogether, laying all the things which it contained out upon the bed.
"What are you doing that for?" said Mr. Peacocke; "we have to start from
here to-morrow morning at five."

"I'm not going to start to-morrow a