"Meanwhile my sister, your Aunt Lucy, and Uncle Joe went West for her health, and settled in Colorado Springs. Uncle Joe became a real estate dealer and also interested in mines and mining properties. He was greatly interested in the tunnel, and predicted great things for its future. About this time all the land around the canyon, both north and south, became a part of the Pike's Peak Forest Reserve, so that your father had to refile on his claim and prove to the land office that he was working a real mineral vein. In refiling, his claim was not big enough to include the shanty, but anticipating no trouble on account of it he neglected to lease his cabin from the Forest Reserve officials. The news leaked out that gold had been discovered in Cookstove Gulch, and in a few days the entire stream was staked from one end of the canyon to the other as placer claims. Of course the cabin site became the property of another man, and with it the cabin, as it could not be moved. The new owner was a little, short, pudgy man with an ever-ready eye for business, so father and Tad were forced to rent the cabin they had built and paid for. That winter was the one your sister Mabel was taken from us, and the last year we were all together." She stopped and gazed into the fire, seemingly forgetting the boy who sat by her side. Then she reached forward and placed the last stick on the slowly-dying embers. As it caught, and the flames leaped into the chimney in response to the wind outside, she continued: "The next summer was the last. I never knew just how it happened exactly; but some way, while making a new side drift in the tunnel, a blast went off prematurely, and he was caught in the falling rocks and crushed to death. Uncle Joe wrote me the particulars--all that I ever had. "He was too badly mangled to be recognized, so even before I knew of the accident his poor, broken body was laid to rest under the pines in Evergreen Cemetery. The tunnel was closed and locked, and your uncle packed father's few belongings in the little old trunk I gave you last spring for your own and sent it home--all that I ever saw again of your father. "Then followed the terrible fever that nearly took my life. How I prayed, my boy, that I might die, so great was my sorrow and utter loneliness; but the Great Father saw fit to keep me here, and now I am thankful. He needed me to help you become a man. When I was so sick grandfather came and brought us home, and here we have been ever since." "But, mother, have you never wanted to go to Colorado?"