utfitting store. I could not locate anyone nearer to you than an old
maiden great-aunt of your mother's although I have had every clue
investigated.

"The only relative of your father's that I could get any information
about was his youngest brother, Patrick Mullen, your uncle and a famous
gunsmith of Maiden Lane, New York. He is dead now but his reputation for
making an exceptionally fine hand-forged gun lives on even to-day.
Patrick Mullen died just before I began my search for your father, but
in digging around for facts about him, I learned that he had made a
limited number of very fine guns, on each of which he had stamped his
full name, 'Patrick Mullen.' Other guns of an inferior quality that he
made bore the simple stamp of 'P. Mullen.' The old man was very proud of
each 'Patrick Mullen' that he turned out and like the true artist that
he was he kept track of each one, sold them only to men he knew and when
the owner died he bought the gun back himself so that he always knew its
whereabouts.

"In that way all of the 101 'Patrick Mullen's' he made came back to him,
save one. There is one of the complete number still missing and no one
seems to know where it is. This is more remarkable because the missing
gun is a flint-lock rifle of the style of seventy years ago. That gun
has always struck me as being a valuable clue in our search, because it
is the only rifle ever made by the old gunsmith and I have a feeling
that that missing 'Patrick Mullen' may have been given to your father by
the brother, and that may account for the fact that among the papers of
Patrick Mullen there is no record of its whereabouts; this is in a
measure confirmed by the report that the man outfitting at Spokane had a
long old-fashioned rifle, and collectors say there used to be an expert
in antique arms by the name of Mullen."

The suggestion made me tremendously excited. Beyond a doubt in my mind
that missing "Patrick Mullen" was my father's gun. I imagined him
parting with everything else save the unique gun his famous brother had
made for him. Why he should wish for a flint-lock rifle was an
unanswerable question, but someone wanted that sort of a gun or it would
not have been made, and my father's letters showed him to be a man of
sentiment, and impractical, just the sort of fellow to use a flint-lock
when he might just as well have had a modern breech-loading high-power
rifle.

"I believe you've hit it, dad. Hot dog!" I exclaimed.