“You know the answer to that as well as I do, Harry. In the old rut at home I had to be once more a Pharisee among the people who had known me from childhood, and one week of that was enough. Another week of it would have stifled me.” The play-boy’s smile broadened into a grin. “There is plenty of breathing room out here, if that is what you want.” “Not room enough--in Denver.” “No? Whereabouts, then?” Philip picked up a badly spelled letter written in pencil and glanced over it. “This is from Jim Garth. He has found a prospect up somewhere near the Mount of the Holy Cross, and he asks me if I will grub-stake him for a winter’s work on it. I shall leave this evening to put in the winter with Jim. He says his claim is at altitude eleven thousand and something. There ought to be breathing space enough up there.” “But why, Phil?” “I think you know why. This gold-mad country, or my own innate weakness or wickedness--call it what you please--has made a sorry castaway of me, Harry. As you know very well, I’ve travelled a long and crooked trail since we came out of the mountains together last spring. I don’t know whether or not I can find my way out of the woods; it’s all rather chaotic just now. I only know that I want to go bury myself for a while and see if I can’t fight through to daylight, somewhere and somehow.” After a little pause, Bromley said: “You are thinking only of yourself, Phil? What about Jean?” “Jean? I thought I had given you time enough there, Harry.” “Nonsense! Jean loves me dearly--as a brother--as she ought to. I’m going to marry Mysie when she is old enough; that is, if she’ll have me.” “Mysie? I never dreamed of that! But how about the Follansbee affair?” “Humph!” said the play-boy. “You don’t keep up with the neighborhood gossip. Eugie begged off some time ago. She is going to marry Stephen Drew next month.” “Oh; so that little problem solves itself, does it? But we were speaking of Jean. How much does she know about my father--and me?” “All there is to know. She has known it all along.” “And she doesn’t despise me?” “You’ll not get anything out of me; go and ask her for yourself. Or are you going to drop out for a whole winter without seeing her?” It was the new Philip who turned his face away and said, quite humbly: “I’m not fit to go to her now, Harry; you know that. It would be a sacrilege--another and worse indecency--to go to her with the smell of the pit-fires still in my clothes. I love her too well for that.” “But you have never told her so.” “No; and it is too late, now.” The play-boy got out of his chair. “Perhaps you are right, Phil; I won’t say you are not. Is there anything I can do toward helping you in the make-ready?” “No; nothing that I think of. I’ll outfit in Leadville.”