tangible, something that might give even a clue to the reason for it
all, there was nothing. In that super-calmness which accompanies great
agitation, Fairchild folded the paper, placed it in its envelope, then
slipped it into an inside pocket. A few steps and he was before the
safe once more and reaching for the second envelope.

Heavy and bulky was this, filled with tax receipts, with plats and
blueprints and the reports of surveyors. Here was an assay slip,
bearing figures and notations which Robert Fairchild could not
understand. Here a receipt for money received, here a vari-colored map
with lines and figures and conglomerate designs which Fairchild
believed must relate in some manner to the location of a mining camp;
all were aged and worn at the edges, giving evidence of having been
carried, at some far time of the past, in a wallet. More receipts,
more blueprints, then a legal document, sealed and stamped, and bearing
the words:

County of Clear Creek, ) ss.
State of Colorado. )

DEED PATENT.

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS: That on this day of our Lord, February
22, 1892, Thornton W. Fairchild, having presented the necessary
affidavits and statements of assessments accomplished in accordance
with--

On it trailed in endless legal phraseology, telling in muddled,
attorney-like language, the fact that the law had been fulfilled in its
requirements, and that the claim for which Thornton Fairchild had
worked was rightfully his, forever. A longer statement full of
figures, of diagrams and surveyor's calculations which Fairchild could
neither decipher nor understand, gave the location, the town site and
the property included within the granted rights. It was something for
an attorney, such as Beamish, to interpret, and Fairchild reached for
the age-yellowed envelope to return the papers to their resting place.
But he checked his motion involuntarily and for a moment held the
envelope before him, staring at it with wide eyes. Then, as though to
free by the stronger light of the window the haunting thing which faced
him, he rose and hurried across the room, to better light, only to find
it had not been imagination; the words still were before him, a
sentence written in faint, faded ink proclaiming the contents to be
"Papers relating to the Blue Poppy Mine", and written across this a
word in the bolder, harsher strokes of a man under stress of emotion, a
word which held the eyes of Robert