"And is that man Timothy O'Rooney?"
"Timothy O'Rooney, Esquire, from Tipperary, at your sarvice," called out the Irishman from the stern of the canoe, where he was elegantly reclining, and without removing the pipe from his mouth.
"Were you on the steamer —— —— that was burned off the coast of California?" pursued the interlocutor.
"Yes, sir."
"Then you are just the party we are looking for."
"Where do you come from?"
"We are from San Francisco, sent out by Messrs. Lawrence and Brandon in search of their children, whom they learned a few days ago from Mr. Yard, one of the survivors, were left on the coast, having wandered inland at the time the others were taken off by the Relief."
This was to the point.
"It is fortunate for all parties that we met you," added the man with a smile, "for we receive a very liberal reward to bring you back, no matter whether we met you within a dozen miles of San Francisco, or were obliged to spend the summer hunting for you among the mountains, only to succeed after giving the largest kind of a ransom."
"Prosaad," said Tim O'Rooney, with a magnificent wave of his hand, without rising from his reclining position. "We're glad to maat yez, as me uncle obsarved, whin Micky O'Shaunhanaley's pig walked into his shanty and stood still till he was salted down and stowed away in the barrel, by raisin of which Micky niver found his pig agin."