comrades dwelt, in my company, upon his business talents or his generosity for public purposes; when my back was turned, they remembered him no more.  My father had loved me; I had left him alone to live and die among the indifferent; now I returned to find him dead and buried and forgotten.  Unavailing penitence translated itself in my thoughts to fresh resolve.  There was another poor soul who loved me:  Pinkerton.  I must not be guilty twice of the same error.

A week perhaps had been thus wasted, nor had I prepared my friend for the delay.  Accordingly, when I had changed trains at Council Bluffs, I was aware of a man appearing at the end of the car with a telegram in his hand and inquiring whether there were any one aboard “of the name of London Dodd?” I thought the name near enough, claimed the despatch, and found it was from Pinkerton:  “What day do you arrive?  Awfully important.”  I sent him an answer giving day and hour, and at Ogden found a fresh despatch awaiting me:  “That will do.  Unspeakable relief.  Meet you at Sacramento.”  In Paris days I had a private name for Pinkerton:  “The Irrepressible” was what I had called him in hours of bitterness, and the name rose once more on my lips.  What mischief was he up to now?  What new bowl was my benignant monster brewing for his Frankenstein?  In what new imbroglio should I alight on the Pacific coast?  My trust in the man was entire, and my distrust perfect.  I knew he would never mean amiss; but I was convinced he would almost never (in my sense) do aright.

I suppose these vague anticipations added a shade of gloom to that already gloomy place of travel:  Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, scowled in my face at least, and seemed to point me back again to that other native land of mine, the Latin Quarter.  But when the Sierras had been climbed, and the train, after so long beating and panting, stretched itself upon the downward track—­when I beheld that vast extent of prosperous country rolling seaward from the woods and the blue mountains, that illimitable spread of rippling corn, the trees growing and blowing in the merry weather, the country boys thronging aboard the train with figs and peaches, and the conductors, and the very darky stewards, visibly exulting in the change—­up went my soul like a balloon; Care fell from his perch upon my shoulders; and when I spied my Pinkerton among the crowd at Sacramento, I thought of nothing but to shout and wave for him, and grasp him by the hand, like what he was—­my dearest friend.

“O Loudon!” he cried.  “Man, how I’ve pined for you!  And you haven’t come an hour too soon.  You’re known here and waited for; I’ve been booming you already; you’re billed for a lecture to-morrow night:  Student Life in Paris, Grave and Gay:  twelve hundred places booked at the last stock!  Tut, man, you’re looking thin!  Here, try a drop of this.”  And he produced a case bottle, staringly labelled Pinkerton’s thirteen star Golden state brandy, warranted entire.