"

"What are you men doing with them pistols?" said one of the strangers,
walking across the room, and standing over the backs of their chairs.

"We are alooking at 'em," said Lefroy.

"If you're agoing to do anything of that kind you'd better go and do it
elsewhere," said the stranger.

"Just so," said Lefroy. "That's what I was thinking myself."

"But we are not going to do anything," said Mr. Peacocke. "I have not the
slightest idea of shooting the gentleman; and he has just as little of
shooting me."

"Then what do you sit with 'em out in your hands in that fashion for?"
said the stranger. "It's a decent widow woman as keeps this house, and I
won't see her set upon. Put 'em up." Whereupon Lefroy did return his
pistol to his pocket,--upon which Mr. Peacocke did the same. Then the
stranger slowly walked back to his seat at the other side of the room.

"So they told you that lie; did they,--at 'Frisco?" asked Lefroy.

"That was what I heard over there when I was inquiring about your
brother's death."

"You'd believe anything if you'd believe that."

"I'd believe anything if I'd believe in your cousin." Upon this Lefroy
laughed, but made no further allusion to the romance which he had craftily
invented on the spur of the moment. After that the two men sat without a
word between them for a quarter of an hour, when the Englishman got up to
take his leave. "Our business is over now," he said, "and I will bid you
good-bye."

"I'll tell you what I'm athinking," said Lefroy. Mr. Peacocke stood with
his hand ready for a final adieu, but he said nothing. "I've half a mind
to go back with you to England. There ain't nothing to keep me here."

"What could you do there?"

"I'd be evidence for you, as to Ferdy's death, you know."

"I have evidence. I do not want you."

"I'll go, nevertheless."

"And spend all your money on the journey."

"You'd help;--wouldn't you now?"

"Not a dollar," said Peacocke, turning away and leaving the room. As he
did so he heard the wretch laughing loud at the excellence of his own
joke.

Before he made his journey back again to England he only once more saw
Robert Lefroy. As he was seating himself in the railway car that was to
take him to Buffalo the man came up to him with an affected look of
solicitude. "Peacocke," he said, "there was only nine hundred dollars in
that roll."

"There were a thousand. I counted them half-an-hour before I handed them
to you."