lass.

Howard Archie is standing at the window of his private room in the
offices of the San Felipe Mining Company, on the sixth floor of the
Raton Building, looking off at the mountain glories of his State while
he gives dictation to his secretary. He is ten years older than when we
saw him last, and emphatically ten years more prosperous. A decade of
coming into things has not so much aged him as it has fortified,
smoothed, and assured him. His sandy hair and imperial conceal whatever
gray they harbor. He has not grown heavier, but more flexible, and his
massive shoulders carry fifty years and the control of his great mining
interests more lightly than they carried forty years and a country
practice. In short, he is one of the friends to whom we feel grateful
for having got on in the world, for helping to keep up the general
temperature and our own confidence in life. He is an acquaintance that
one would hurry to overtake and greet among a hundred. In his warm
handshake and generous smile there is the stimulating cordiality of good
fellows come into good fortune and eager to pass it on; something that
makes one think better of the lottery of life and resolve to try again.

When Archie had finished his morning mail, he turned away from the
window and faced his secretary. "Did anything come up yesterday
afternoon while I was away, T. B.?"

Thomas Burk turned over the leaf of his calendar. "Governor Alden sent
down to say that he wanted to see you before he sends his letter to the
Board of Pardons. Asked if you could go over to the State House this
morning."

Archie shrugged his shoulders. "I'll think about it."

The young man grinned.

"Anything else?" his chief continued.

T. B. swung round in his chair with a look of interest on his shrewd,
clean-shaven face. "Old Jasper Flight was in, Dr. Archie. I never
expected to see him alive again. Seems he's tucked away for the winter
with a sister who's a housekeeper at the Oxford. He's all crippled up
with rheumatism, but as fierce after it as ever. Wants to know if you or
the company won't grub-stake him again. Says he's sure of it this time;
had located something when the snow shut down on him in December. He
wants to crawl out at the first break in the weather, with that same old
burro with the split ear. He got somebody to winter the beast for him.
He's superstitious about that burro, too; thinks it's divinely guided.
You ought to hear the line of talk he put up h