.
Chester, and as he came out Tom heard him say,

"Very well, then, we will call that settled. And mind, the sooner you
start, the sooner you may expect to find yourself better and stronger."

Mr. Chester, who had followed the doctor to the door, saw the inquiring
look on Tom's face, and asked him, with a smile, how he would like to go
to Colorado.

"What! to dig for silver?" cried Tom.

"No; to seek for what is more valuable than silver--health," said his
father. "Dr. W---- says that I must go to the Rocky Mountains, and we
shall start in a few days."

* * * * *

It was dark when the train rolled into Denver, and Tom, even if he had
not been tired and sleepy, could have seen nothing of the town as they
drove to the hotel. But in the morning, when he woke up and looked out
of the windows of his room, which was on the western side of the house,
he cried aloud with surprise and delight. All along the horizon rose a
great range of mountains, with two lofty peaks towering over the others,
one at the north and the other at the south. They seemed so near that
Tom thought he could walk to them; but when he had dressed himself and
gone down to the office, he asked the clerk how long it would take, and
the man looked at him, and said, "I wouldn't advise you to try, you
little _tender-foot_."

"My feet are _not_ tender," replied Tom, sharply.

The people in the room all laughed, and a miner in a blue flannel shirt
patted Tom on the back, and said, "That's right, my boy. You remind me
of a kid of my own up at Fairplay. The fellow's only chaffing you. When
any one's been just a little while in the country, they always call him
a 'tender-foot.' You mustn't mind that."

Then he went on to explain to Tom that the foot-hills which looked so
near were at least fifteen or twenty miles away. Then he told him about
the mining towns, or "camps," as they are called, and how the men who
look for mines, called "prospectors," search through the mountains,
seeking signs of silver ore; and that when they find them, they put
stakes in the ground to mark the "claims" which the law allows, or the
right to dig in a space 1500 feet one way and 300 the other. Then he
described how they dig down in hopes of finding what they call "pay
gravel," or ore which contains enough silver to make it worth sending to
the works. He mentioned some men whom he knew who had sold "prospect
holes," as he called them (or shafts p