“This baby girl--she must be a young woman now, if she lives,” Tom mused--“is evidently the person the poor old chap wanted me to divide with. It ought not to be difficult to trace her from San Francisco, I suppose the convent Sisters knew where she went to when they gave her up. But, hello! here's a picture.” It was an old-fashioned daguerrotype of a handsome woman of perhaps four-and-twenty, in bridal finery, whose face seemed to him to have something familiar in its expression. But no name or date was to be found, and with the natural conclusion that this was probably Pierson's wife he puzzled a moment more over the pretty face, and then put it away. After a few days, when Burke was able to travel, the prospector's memorandum and their mountain craft together led them almost directly to the coveted gold vein, which ran across a shoulder of the mountain at the head of the gulch, like an obscure trail, finally disappearing under a great talus at the foot of a line of snowcapped crags. Tracing it along, they presently came upon the old man's claim marks. The stakes were lettered pathetically with the name of the old man's choosing--“Polly's Hope.” Adjoining the “Hope” Tom staked out one claim for himself and another for his sweetheart, intending to do the proper assessment work on it himself if Corbitt couldn't or wouldn't; and Cooper used up most of what remained of the visible outcrop in a claim for himself. Returning to town their claims were registered in the Crimson Mineral District, and their report sent a flight of gold hunters in hot haste to the scene. Tom Burke, after selling everything he could send to market to turn into ready money, departed to Denver, carrying with him documents and specimens of the gold quartz to support his assertions. Keen men fêted and flattered him, buttonholing him at every corner with whispered advice, and many proffered schemes. But he was indifferent to it all, and anxious as yet only to hear what Marion should say. Not a word had he heard from her directly during all the weeks of her absence, but indirectly he knew she had been a star in the local society. He had even to hunt out where she lived, finding it in a cottage near where the stately court house now stands. He went there, after tea, with a fastbeating heart. Had she forgotten, or withdrawn or been turned away by hardhearted parents and friends? He suspected everything and everybody, yet could give no reasons. And how absurd these fears looked to him--how _foolish!_--when, sitting in the little parlor, hand in hand, they talked over the past, and she confided that the same doubts had worried her now and then--“most of all, Tom, dear, when I hear of this wonderful success of yours.” “Bless me! I had forgotten it. By your side all else----”