icacy, or dishonesty, he insisted upon
accrediting his peace of mind to the San Felipe, to Time, to anything
but his release from Mrs. Archie.

Mrs. Archie died just before her husband left Moonstone and came to
Denver to live, six years ago. The poor woman's fight against dust was
her undoing at last. One summer day when she was rubbing the parlor
upholstery with gasoline,--the doctor had often forbidden her to use it
on any account, so that was one of the pleasures she seized upon in his
absence,--an explosion occurred. Nobody ever knew exactly how it
happened, for Mrs. Archie was dead when the neighbors rushed in to save
her from the burning house. She must have inhaled the burning gas and
died instantly.

Moonstone severity relented toward her somewhat after her death. But
even while her old cronies at Mrs. Smiley's millinery store said that it
was a terrible thing, they added that nothing but a powerful explosive
COULD have killed Mrs. Archie, and that it was only right the doctor
should have a chance.

Archie's past was literally destroyed when his wife died. The house
burned to the ground, and all those material reminders which have such
power over people disappeared in an hour. His mining interests now took
him to Denver so often that it seemed better to make his headquarters
there. He gave up his practice and left Moonstone for good. Six months
afterward, while Dr. Archie was living at the Brown Palace Hotel, the
San Felipe mine began to give up that silver hoard which old Captain
Harris had always accused it of concealing, and San Felipe headed the
list of mining quotations in every daily paper, East and West. In a few
years Dr. Archie was a very rich man. His mine was such an important
item in the mineral output of the State, and Archie had a hand in so
many of the new industries of Colorado and New Mexico, that his
political influence was considerable. He had thrown it all, two years
ago, to the new reform party, and had brought about the election of a
governor of whose conduct he was now heartily ashamed. His friends
believed that Archie himself had ambitious political plans.

II

WHEN Ottenburg and his host reached the house on Colfax Avenue, they
went directly to the library, a long double room on the second floor
which Archie had arranged exactly to his own taste. It was full of books
and mounted specimens of wild game, with a big writing-table at either
end, stiff, old-fashioned engravings,