HE story I am about to narrate happened this way, Thomas Burke and I were old schoolmates. But his course and mine had been widely divergent for a score of years, so that by the time he had brought his family back to New York, and our acquaintance could be renewed, many untold things had happened to each.

I knew Tom had won his fortune by mining in the Rocky Mountains. It was rumored that his accomplished wife also had wealth in her own right, but Tom never had much to say in regard to his financial matters, and I did not like to question him notwithstanding our intimacy. I had dined with him two Christmases in succession, and now for the third time had eaten my Christmas dinner at his table.

On each of these occasions Mrs. Burke had worn at her throat a magificient brooch which I had never seen at any other time, though I had met her often when such an ornament would have been suitable enough. This brooch was a bear's face, holding in its teeth a tiny steel key. It was a marvel of delicacy in the goldsmith's art, and evidently very costly; for the eyes were each a ruby, and the head was encircled with large diamonds, half hidden by hairs of gold, as though they represented a collar round bruin's hirsute neck.

“Tom,” I said, when Mrs. Burke had left us to ourselves after dinner, “I am very curious about that bear's head brooch your wife wears. Why do I never see it except at Christmas? I am sure it has a history, and if there is no secret about it I wish you would enlighten me.”

“Well,” said my old friend, “that is rather a lengthy story. There is no secret about it—at least none to keep from an old chum like you. As for the brooch, that's only an ornament I had made some years ago; but the design and the little key—which is a real key—remind Marion and myself of what we call our Christmas story, because it culminated on that day.

“When you and I left the old university in 1870, and you came here, and I went West——”

But if I were to tell the story as he did, it would hardly be as plain to you as it was to me. I must write it out.

When Tom Burke left the university after his graduation he took the few hundred dollars which were the measure of his capital and went to the Rocky Mountains to seek his fortune. In the autumn of 1871 he became the superintendent of the Crimson Canyon Mining Company in Southern Colorado, where he found as assayer, and scientific assistant generally, a queer, learned and proud old Scotchman named Corbitt. This man had been one of the “Forty-niners” and had made a fortune which he had greatly enjoyed while it lasted, and the loss of which, in some wrong-headed speculation, he never ceased to deplore.

Now, a few weeks before Tom's arrival at the camp, Corbitt's home had been brightened by the coming of his daughter Marion, on what he told his envious acquaintances was a “veesit,” implying that she could not be expected to make her home there.

And truly this remote mountain settlement, inclement in climate, uncouth, dusty, filled with rough men, and bountiful only in pure air and divine pictures of crag and glen, icy-blue peaks and chromatic patches of stained cliff above or flower meadow below—all this was anything but the sort of place for a girl like her to spend her maiden days in.

Perhaps it was not quite a case of love at first sight between her and Tom, but certainly the winter had not passed before each had confessed that there was no one else in the world beside the other whose presence much mattered in the way of happiness.

But that seemed to be the end of it, for Corbitt gave young Burke to understand most decisively that he could hope for nothing more—an engagement to marry was out of the question.

“Love, let us wait,” was Marion's last word, when, on her first and last tryst, she had stolen away to meet him, and he counted her kisses as a miser counts his gold.

“Let us wait. I care for nobody else, and nobody can marry me against my will. We are young yet. Who knows what may happen? You may get money enough to satisfy papa—I don't suppose he holds me at a very, very high price, do you? Or I may be freer after a while to do as I wish.”

This was commonplace advice enough, but Tom saw both the good sense and the pure love in it, and accepted the decree, steeling his heart against the impulses of rage and revolt.

And then, quite unexpectedly, Mr. Corbitt resigned his place and went to Denver, taking his family with him. The same week the mine changed owners, and Burke was superseded by a new superintendent; and so, almost at a stroke, the lad lost both his sweetheart and the weapon by which he was to fight for her in the business tournament of the world. However, the latter evil was presently remedied, and he worked on, saving his money and teasing his brain for suggestions how to make it increase faster.

At that time the mighty range had never been very carefully prospected. Men had, indeed, ascended Crimson Creek to its sources in search of the deposits of quartz whence the auriferous gravels below had been enriched, but they had brought back a discouraging report. Tom was not satisfied to accept their conclusions. He was confident, from the geological and other indications, that treasures of ore lay undiscovered among those azure heights. At last, resolved to see for himself, he enlisted the help of a young miner and mountaineer named Cooper, and one day late in August they started.

After passing the pillared gateways of the Canyon, and ascending for a few miles the great gorge down which the creek cascaded over boulders and ledges of granite and rounded fragments of trachyte and quartz, you come to a noble cataract leaping into the Canyon from the left through a narrow gash or depression in the wall. By climbing up the opposite slope a little way, you see that this stream comes tumbling white and furious down a long rugged stairway of rocky fragments before it reaches the brink, whence it shoots out in the air and then falls in a thousand wreaths of dangling vapor.

“Cooper,” Tom called out to his companion, who was more comrade than servant, “I guess we'll camp here. I want to examine this side gorge a bit.”

“It looks to me,” remarked Tom, “as if this had formerly been the main stream, and had carried pretty much all the drainage of the valley until a big landslide—and it didn't happen so very long ago either—dammed the exit of the valley and changed the shape of things generally, eh?”

“That's about the size of it, I guess. But, I say, ain't that smoke down there by the lake?”

“I reckon we've got time enough to go and see. It ain't far down there, and the moon'll show us the way back if we get late.”

Noting their bearings, they began the descent toward the lake and presently came out upon its border, where the walking was easier. Advancing cautiously half a mile or thereabout, they again caught sight of the smoke through the bushes—a feeble column rising from some embers before a small shelter of boughs and bark that hardly deserved the name of hut. A skillet, a light pick and shovel, and one or two other household articles lay near by, but nothing alive appeared.

“No Injun 'bout that,” said Cooper.

“No, Cooper; more likely a prospector.”

Hallooing as they neared the hut, a lean and miserable dog rushed out and greeted them with ferocious growls, whereupon they heard a weak voice speaking to him, and saw a frowsy gray head and a bony hand, clutching a revolver, stretched out of the opening that answered for a door.

“Hello!” Tom cried. “Call off your dog; we're friends.”

Then a tousled, ragged, gaunt-limbed figure, emaciated with hunger, wild eyed with fever, dragged itself from the sheltering brush, gave one long look at the stalwart strangers, and fell back on the stony ground in a dead faint, while the dog, rushing forward with the courage of a starved wolf, planted himself before the corpse-like form and defied them to touch it.

They fought off the animal, brought water from the lake and revived the man. A dram from Tom's flask stimulated him, whereupon he sat up and began to chatter incoherently, thanks to God and wild exclamations about some hidden treasure mingling with such plaintive cries as “She'll be all right now!” and “Mebbe she'll forgive her old dad!” making up the whole of his ceaseless talk.

“He's clean crazy!” was Cooper's opinion.

“Yes,” Tom assented, “but it is fever and famine. Couldn't you shoot a rabbit or something? Then I could make him a stew. Try it.”

But all that Cooper could quickly find to kill were three mountain jays, which were converted into a broth, thickened with the dust of flour that remained. A little tea was also found in the sick man's pack, and this was brewed for him. Then Cooper volunteered to go back to their own camp and bring over more food and Tom's little medicine case.

The next day he fetched the rest of their luggage, and in the afternoon shot a deer. So they encamped here beside the lake and nursed the old fellow until his fever subsided and the delirium had ceased to a great extent. Then by easy stages, partly carrying him on a stretcher, partly assisting him to walk, they managed to take him back to Crimson Camp and gave him a bed in Tom's cabin.

But the strain of this effort had been too much for the aged and feeble frame. No sooner was the excitement of the march at an end than a relapse occurred, and for a fortnight the old man hovered on the edge of death; skill and care seemed to conquer, however, and one morning peace came to the tortured brain and the old prospector began to get better.

Now at last he was awake, with seeming intelligence in his eyes, asking where he was and who were the people around him. Tom explained and then questioned him in return.

But the mystery was not to be so easily solved. The invalid could not tell his name, nor where he had come from. He said he had been prospecting all his life—where—how long—all particulars were a blank.

“I can't remember anything but the cache—nothing else at all,” he declared, gazing piteously into one face after another.

“Tell us about that, then.”

He felt in his bosom and drew out the little pouch. It was opened for him and its contents—a fragment of quartz heavy with gold and a tiny steel key—taken out.

“Ah! What do you call that?” he inquired eagerly, pointing to the yellow metal.

“Gold.”

“Yes? Well, there is lots of that in my cache.”

“Where is your cache?” inquired Tom.

The old fellow dropped his head and tried to think, but couldn't clutch any of the motes of memory dodging like phantasmagoria before his eyes.

“I can't tell,” he confessed, with infinite sadness. “I reckon I'd know the place if I saw it. And I've forgotten everything before that, but it seems to me that I fell a great ways, and lay for years and years with an awful pain in my head. Then all at once my head got better and I opened my eyes—mebbe it was a dream—and there I and the dog were in a little camp 'way up a big gulch. I knew the place, but I felt kind o' weak and dizzy-like and 'lowed I'd make a cache o' all my stuff, and go down to Del Nort' and see a doctor. So I dug a hole beside a big rock that had a peculiar mark on it, and put into it most o' my grub and some papers, and a lot o' that yellow stuff—what d'ye call it?—and reckoned they'd be safe till I come back in three or four weeks. I can remember all about the cache and my camp there, and my leavin' it and climbin' down a devilish steep place, and there I stop and can't remember nothin' since.”

This was absolutely all that was left of the man's memory, and, though he was now quite sane, he had to be taught the names and uses of many of the commonest objects. Moreover, he seemed to grow weaker instead of stronger, and after a few days the physician announced that his patient's end was near. When the old fellow was told this he called Tom to his bedside, and said to him:

“Pardner, you've done the square thing by me, and I want you to have half the traps in that cache after I've passed in my checks, and give the other half to—to—oh, God! Now I can't remember!”

Then his face brightened again.

“Oh, the letters'll tell! Read the letters and give her half of it. I'll sign a paper if you'll write it.”

So a will was made, and the dying man made a mark before witness, in lieu of the signature he had lost the power to make, and the next day he died.

The miners generally believed the stranger's story of this cache to be a figment of his disordered imagination, and Tom himself might have yielded to this theory had not the physician assured him that there was a fair chance of its truth.

So Tom preserved the will, the quartz and the key, hoping that chance might sometime disclose the treasure trove if there were any; and a few days later he and young Cooper started a second time on their prospecting tour. This time they took a burro with them, and so were able to carry a small tent and outfit for a fortnight's trip.

By active marching they reached the lake that night, finding it slow work to get their unwilling donkey up the steep rocks at the fall, by a circuitous trail and aided by some actual lifting of the little beast. They researched the hut, but found nothing new. The dog, now fat and strong, and a devoted friend, accompanied them and betrayed most excitedly his recognition of the bivouac. Next morning they made their way up to the head of the lake, where the breadth of the gulch and the appearance of things confirmed Tom's previous surmise that this was originally the main channel of drainage.

If this were true they ought to get evidence of drift gold; and several days were spent in panning the gravels (nowhere, however, of great extent), with most encouraging results. A few miles above the lake they found the gulch forked into two ravines divided by a rocky spur. They chose the right-hand one and lost three days in fruitless exploration of its bed and walls. Shep (the dog was a collie and they had rechristened him) did not display anything like the joy he had shown in the advance up the main stream, and when they finally returned to the forks they could not but notice his renewed spirits. The dog was again all eagerness, and intensely delighted when on the following morning they started up the left-hand gulch.

“It looks as though his master had come down that way, doesn't it?” said Tom. “Maybe he could guide us right back to where he came from; but he'll have to wait a while, for I like the look of that crag up there,” directing his companion's attention to the crest of the wall on the left, “and I want to examine it. You'd better stay here and try to get a blacktail. Bacon three times a day is getting monotonous.”

“Don't you think you'd better take the Winchester?” said Cooper. (They had brought but one rifle.) “You might hit up against a grizzly or a mountain lion. I heard one of 'em screeching last night.”

“No; I can't lug a gun. I've got my six shooter, and I'll risk it. Come on, Shep! It's noon now, and we won't get back to supper if we don't hurry.”

The dog raced gleefully ahead as the young man strode up the gulch, scanning its rugged slope in search of a convenient place to begin the ascent, and presently, as though cognizant of the plan, the dog turned aside and with loud barking and much tail wagging invited attention to a dry watercourse that offered a sort of path.

“I guess you're right, Shep,” Tom assented, and set his face to the sturdy climb.

Half way up a ledge, covered with cedars and Spanish bayonet, made the ascent really arduous for a little way, and here the dog, which as usual was some rods in advance, suddenly began barking furiously, and capering around a small object.

“Chipmunk, I reckon,” said Tom to himself, as he scrambled on, short of breath; but when Shep came sliding down, holding in his mouth a battered old felt hat, curiosity changed to amazement. The dog growled at first, and refused to give up his prize, but after a little coaxing yielded it into Tom's hands.

The old prospector had had no hat when found. Could this be it? It did not seem to have lain out of doors long, and the dog would hardly show so much interest unless his sharp nose had recognized it as something belonging to his former inaster. Closely scrutinizing, Tom found tucked into the lining a slip of sweat-stained paper with a name upon it—

ARTHUR F. PIERSON,

Tucsony Arizona.

Stuffing the hat into his pocket Tom scrambled on, thinking out the meaning of the incident; and now he began to notice in this steeper place that some of the boulders had been misplaced, and here and there was a broken branch, as, if someone had descended very hastily or clumsily.

“If that crazy old man came down here, and perhaps caught a second bad fall, I don't wonder he was used up by the time he reached the lake” was Tom's mental ejaculation, as he toiled up the acclivity and at last, panting and leg weary, gained a narrow grassy level at the foot of a crag “spiked with firs,” which had been conspicuous from the valley not only by its height and castellated battlements, but because a colossal X was formed on its face by two broad veins of quartz crossing each other.

With his eyes fixed upon the rocky wall he walked along in the face of a stiff breeze, until he noticed a pinkish streak upon the dark cliff, betokening the outcrop of another vein, and turned aside to climb a pile of fallen fragments at the foot of the crag to reach it. These fragments were overgrown with low, dense shrubbery. He ducked his head and was pushing into them, when suddenly he saw a huge brown body rise almost into his face, heard the tremendous growl of a grizzly, and amid a crash of bushes and dislodged stones felt himself hurled backward.

Clutching instinctively at one of the shrubs as he fell, he whirled under its hiding foliage, and the vicious stroke of the bear's paw came down upon his leg instead of his head, while the released branches snapped upward into the face of the brute, which, as much surprised as its victim, paused in its onslaught to collect its wits. An instant later Shep dashed up, and at the bear's hindquarters. Bruin spasmodically sank his claws deeper into Tom's thigh, but turned his head and shoulders with a terrific ursine oath at this new and most palpable enemy; and ten seconds afterward Tom's revolver, its muzzle pressed close underneath the bear's ear, had emptied half an ounce of lead into its brain. A blood-freezing death squeal tore the air, and the ponderous carcass sank down, stone dead, upon Tom's body and upon the dwarfed spruce which covered it. It pinned him to the ground with an almost insupportable weight. Perhaps if the animal alone had lain upon him he might have wriggled out; but the brute's carcass also held down the tough and firmly-rooted tree, and the rocks on each side formed a sort of trough. Turn and strain as he would Tom could not free himself from the burden which threatened to smother him. Moreover, the convulsive death throe had forcibly tightened the grip of the claws in the side of his knee, which felt as if in some horrible torturing machine of the Inquisition; and had he not been able at last to reach that paw with his left hand and pull it away from the wound he would have died under the agony.

Then, as he felt the blood running hot and copious down his leg, a new fear chilled his heart. Might he not bleed to death? There seemed no end to the hemorrhage, and what hope had he of succor? He thought of firing signals of distress, but could not reach the pistol, which had been knocked out of his hand. He spoke to the dog, which was barking and worrying at the bear's hind leg, and Shep came and licked his face and sniffed at his blood-soaked trousers. Then, as if even he realized how hopeless was the situation, he sat on his haunches and howled until Tom, hearing him less and less distinctly, imagined himself a boulder slowly but musically crunching to powder under the resistless advance of a glacier, and lost consciousness as the cold-blue dream-ice closed over his dust.

By and by he awoke. It was dark, and something cold and soft was blowing against his face. He moved and felt the shaggy fur and the horrible pain in his leg and in his right arm, which was confined in a twisted position. Then he remembered, but forgot again.

A second time he awoke. It was still dark, but a strange pallor permeated the air, and all around him was a mist of white.

It was snowing fast. He closed his left hand and grasped a whole fistful of flakes. The body of the bear was a mound of white—like a new-made grave over him, he dismally thought. The snow had drifted under and about his shoulders. Its chill struck the wound in his thigh, which throbbed as though hit with pointed hammers, keeping time to the pulsations of his heart; but, thank God! he no longer felt that horrible warm trickling down his leg. He had been preserved from bleeding to freeze to death. How long before that would happen; or, if it were not cold enough for that, how long before the snow would drift clear over him and cut off the little breath which that ponderous, inert, dead-cold beast on his chest prevented from entering his lungs? Where was the dog? He called feebly: “Shep! Shep! Hi-i-i, Sh-e-p!” But no moist nose or rough tongue responded. He tried to whistle, but his parched mouth refused. Heavens, how thirsty! He stretched out his hand and gathered the snow within his reach. Then he closed his eyes and dreamed that two giants were pulling him asunder, and that a third was pouring molten lead down his throat.

But it was only Bill Cooper trying to make him drink whiskey.

He understood it after a little and realized that he ought to swallow. Then life came back, and with the knowledge that he was no longer alone on the cold, remote, relentless mountain top, but that Cooper was lifting away the bear, and that Shep was wild with sympathy and gladness because he had been able to bring help, came courage and forbearance of his suffering. In the morning new strength came with the sunshine. The snow rapidly melted. Cooper got breakfast and Tom rebandaged his knee.

“These gashes won't amount to much, unless the claws were poisoned. You'll have to make me a crutch, and give me a couple of days to get rid of the stiffness, but then I'll be all right.”

“How did you and the bear get into this scrimmage, anyhow? You surely didn't go hunting him with that there six shooter?”

“Not I. The wind was blowing hard toward me, so he didn't smell nor hear me, and I ran right on to him. Shep was not there to warn me, but if he hadn't come back just as he did, or if I hadn't been able to get at my revolver, Old Ephraim would ha' used me up in about a minute.”

“I ain't a betting on one pistol shot against a grizzly, anyhow.”

“Of course, the chances were about one in a thousand, but I wasn't going to die without a shot. I suppose the bullet struck the lower part of the brain.”

“Yes,” said Bill, who had been probing its track. “Tore it all to pieces. But what was the bear after in that brush?”

“Give it up—ants, likely. You know—Great Scott! What's that dog got now?” Shep was coming out of the bushes, dragging a package wrapped in buckskin which was almost too heavy for him to handle. Cooper went and took it from him and brought it to the fire. It was a sort of pouch firmly tied with a thong. Running a knife under this the bundle fell apart, and a double handful of flakes and nuggets of gold and quartz rolled out.

“The cache!” Tom shouted, comprehending instantly the meaning of this. “The bear was tearing it to pieces!”

It was true. His strong feet had displaced the loosely-heaped stones, and a half-devoured side of bacon lay close by where the animal had been disturbed.

Evidently the marauder had just begun his work. There remained in the cache two more pouches of gold—perhaps a quart of the metal pieces in all, more or less pure, for all of it had been dug out of a vein with hammer and knife point, none of the fragments showing the water-worn roundness characteristic of placer gold. Then there were a small quantity of provisions, some ammunition and a small rosewood box with an ornamental brass lock having a remarkably small and irregular keyhole.

From an inner pocket of his purse Tom drew the odd little key the dead prospector had given him. It fitted into the hole and easily turned the lock. The cover sprang open, revealing a package of letters. He lifted them out, but did not pause to read them.

Then came an envelope containing a patent to ranch lands in Arizona, certificates of stock in Mexican and other mines that Burke had never heard of, and a commission as lieutenant of artillery in the Confederate army. All these documents were made out to “Arthur F. Pierson,” establishing the fact that the lost hat was really that worn by the old man, as his dog had recognized.

At the bottom of the box, however, Tom found what interested him most—a formal “claim” and description of the lode whence the gold had been taken, and how to reach it from this cache. It was written in pencil, in a very shaky hand, on two or three soiled leaves torn from a memorandum book and eked out with one of the covers.

Then Tom took up the letters. Most of them were recent and of business importance, but several were old and worn with much handling. One of these latter was from a lawyer in San Francisco, acknowledging funds “sent for the support of your infant daughter,” describing her health and growth, and the care taken of her “at the convent”—all in curt business phrase, but precious to the father's heart. Then there were two or three small letters, printed and scratched in a childish hand, to “dear, dear papa,” and signed “Your little Polly.” One of these spoke of Sister Agatha and Sister Theresa, showing that it was written while the child was still in the convent; but the others, a little later, prattled about a new home with “my new papa and mamma,” but gave no clew to name or place.

“This baby girl—she must be a young woman now, if she lives,” Tom mused—“is evidently the person the poor old chap wanted me to divide with. It ought not to be difficult to trace her from San Francisco, I suppose the convent Sisters knew where she went to when they gave her up. But, hello! here's a picture.”

It was an old-fashioned daguerrotype of a handsome woman of perhaps four-and-twenty, in bridal finery, whose face seemed to him to have something familiar in its expression. But no name or date was to be found, and with the natural conclusion that this was probably Pierson's wife he puzzled a moment more over the pretty face, and then put it away.

After a few days, when Burke was able to travel, the prospector's memorandum and their mountain craft together led them almost directly to the coveted gold vein, which ran across a shoulder of the mountain at the head of the gulch, like an obscure trail, finally disappearing under a great talus at the foot of a line of snowcapped crags.

Tracing it along, they presently came upon the old man's claim marks. The stakes were lettered pathetically with the name of the old man's choosing—“Polly's Hope.”

Adjoining the “Hope” Tom staked out one claim for himself and another for his sweetheart, intending to do the proper assessment work on it himself if Corbitt couldn't or wouldn't; and Cooper used up most of what remained of the visible outcrop in a claim for himself.

Returning to town their claims were registered in the Crimson Mineral District, and their report sent a flight of gold hunters in hot haste to the scene.

Tom Burke, after selling everything he could send to market to turn into ready money, departed to Denver, carrying with him documents and specimens of the gold quartz to support his assertions.

Keen men fÊted and flattered him, buttonholing him at every corner with whispered advice, and many proffered schemes. But he was indifferent to it all, and anxious as yet only to hear what Marion should say.

Not a word had he heard from her directly during all the weeks of her absence, but indirectly he knew she had been a star in the local society. He had even to hunt out where she lived, finding it in a cottage near where the stately court house now stands.

He went there, after tea, with a fastbeating heart. Had she forgotten, or withdrawn or been turned away by hardhearted parents and friends? He suspected everything and everybody, yet could give no reasons. And how absurd these fears looked to him—how foolish!—when, sitting in the little parlor, hand in hand, they talked over the past, and she confided that the same doubts had worried her now and then—“most of all, Tom, dear, when I hear of this wonderful success of yours.”

“Bless me! I had forgotten it. By your side all else——”

Here the door opened—not too abruptly—and Mr. Corbitt came in, grimly hospitable and glad, no doubt for his own sake, to see this young fellow who was still true to his daughter; while Mrs. Corbitt was more openly cordial, as became her.

“An' what's this we're hearin' aboot your new mines? They're sayin' down town that you've struck a regular bonanza, an'll soon be worth your meellions. But I told 'em 'Hoot! I'd heard the like o' that before!'”

So Tom recounted briefly the story of the prospector's death and his will; still more briefly his adventure with the grizzly, and how it led to the curious disclosure of the cache. Then, with no little dramatic force, seeing how interested was his audience, he described the hunt for the vein and the finding it, produced his specimens and handed to Miss Marion a mass of almost solid gold embedded in its matrix.

“I can't promise you,” he said, as she tried to thank him with her eyes and a timid touch of her fingers, “that the whole ledge will equal that, but it is a genuine sample from near the surface.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” the old Scotchman ejaculated, with gleaming eyes, as Tom went on to show how regular and secure was the title to this possession. “But did ye no find out the name of the poor vagabone?”

“Oh, yes. Didn't I mention it? His name was Arthur Pierson.”

Corbitt and his wife both started from their seats.

“Man, did I hear ye aright?—Arthur F. Pierson?”

“That was the name exactly. I can show it to you on the letters.”

“An' he charged ye to give the half of all ye found to his daughter Polly?”

“Yes, and I mean to try to find her.”

“There she sits!” cried Mother Corbitt excitedly, before her cautious husband, could say “Hush!”—pointing at Marion, who gazed from one to the other, too much amazed to feel grieved yet at this stunning announcement. “We took the lassie when she was a wee bairn, and she would never ha' known she wasn't ours really till maybe we were dead and gone. Her feyther was a cankert, fashious body, but her mother was guid and bonnie (I knew her well in the auld country) and she died when Mary—that's you, my dearie—was born.”

“Is this her picture?” Tom asked, showing the daguerrotype.

“Aye, that it is. Puir Jennie!”

The rest is soon told. A company of capitalists was formed to work the four consolidated claims on the new vein, under the name of the Hope Mining Company.

All the next season was spent by Tom Burke in developing the property and erecting machinery. Corbitt was there too, much thawed by the sun of prosperity, but his wife and daughter remained in Denver. In the autumn, however, the ladies went East, and as the holidays approached Tom and Corbitt followed them to New York, where, on Christmas eve, my hero and heroine were married quietly in a little church up town; and his gift to her was the brooch which had attracted my attention and whose significance was now plain.