ere yesterday; said when
he rode in his carriage, that burro was a-going to ride along with him."

Archie laughed. "Did he leave you his address?"

"He didn't neglect anything," replied the clerk cynically.

"Well, send him a line and tell him to come in again. I like to hear
him. Of all the crazy prospectors I've ever known, he's the most
interesting, because he's really crazy. It's a religious conviction with
him, and with most of 'em it's a gambling fever or pure vagrancy. But
Jasper Flight believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of the silver
deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving. He's a
downright noble figure. Of course I'll stake him! As long as he can
crawl out in the spring. He and that burro are a sight together. The
beast is nearly as white as Jasper; must be twenty years old."

"If you stake him this time, you won't have to again," said T. B.
knowingly. "He'll croak up there, mark my word. Says he never ties the
burro at night now, for fear he might be called sudden, and the beast
would starve. I guess that animal could eat a lariat rope, all right,
and enjoy it."

"I guess if we knew the things those two have eaten, and haven't eaten,
in their time, T. B., it would make us vegetarians." The doctor sat down
and looked thoughtful. "That's the way for the old man to go. It would
be pretty hard luck if he had to die in a hospital. I wish he could turn
up something before he cashes in. But his kind seldom do; they're
bewitched. Still, there was Stratton. I've been meeting Jasper Flight,
and his side meat and tin pans, up in the mountains for years, and I'd
miss him. I always halfway believe the fairy tales he spins me. Old
Jasper Flight," Archie murmured, as if he liked the name or the picture
it called up.

A clerk came in from the outer office and handed Archie a card. He
sprang up and exclaimed, "Mr. Ottenburg? Bring him in."

Fred Ottenburg entered, clad in a long, fur-lined coat, holding a
checked-cloth hat in his hand, his cheeks and eyes bright with the
outdoor cold. The two men met before Archie's desk and their handclasp
was longer than friendship prompts except in regions where the blood
warms and quickens to meet the dry cold. Under the general keyingup of
the altitude, manners take on a heartiness, a vivacity, that is one
expression of the half-unconscious excitement which Colorado people miss
when they drop into lower strata of air. The heart, we are told, wears
out