“Good,” said the promoter; “then we can keep in touch, more or less, during the make-ready. I am back and forth between the mountains and Denver every week or so. Now if you will come around to the bank with me, I’ll deposit those cash advances to your credit and you’ll be footloose to do as you please.” The bank visited, and arrangements made for the transfer of the better part of their fortune-earnest to a bank in Denver, the two who, a few months before, had been merely marching privates in the eager army of prospectors, shook hands with their lessee and fared forth into the streets of Leadville as men of solid substance. “Well?” said Bromley, after they had walked in silence for something more than half the distance from the bank to their hotel--which, it is needless to say, was not the second-rate tavern at which they had put up on the occasion of their former visit. “Say it,” Philip invited. “I was just wondering where you were ‘at’; whether you were here in the flesh, or a thousand miles away in the spirit.” “I am trying to get my feet on the ground,” was the sober answer. “Still seems like a pipe-dream, does it?” “More than ever.” Bromley laughed. “A little chunk of solitude is what you need--time off in which to get used to it. Here is our bunk house. Capture a quiet corner in the lobby, if you can find one, light your pipe and have it out with yourself. I’m going to do a bit of shopping; buy me a bag and a few more articles of glad raiment.” Philip halted on the hotel steps to frown down upon his late camp-mate. “You’ve been your own man for nearly a full year, Harry. Don’t go and lie down now and roll your pack off like a fool jackass.” This time Bromley’s laugh was a shout. “So the good old New England conscience comes up smiling, after all, does it?” he chuckled. “Give it a pat on the back and tell it to go to sleep again, so far as I am concerned. I’m merely going to buy a bag and something to put in it, and I’ll promise you to come back sober as a judge. Want me to swear it?” and he held up his hand. “I’d hate to see you ditch yourself now,” said Philip gravely; and with that he went in and found the quiet corner and sat down to fill and light his pipe. An hour later he was still sitting in the corner of the writing-room alcove, with the cold pipe between his teeth, as oblivious of his surroundings as if he had been alone on a desert island. Realization was slowly coming. He was no longer a striving unit in the vast army of day-to-day bread-winners. Wealth, to which all things must bow and pay tribute, was his. Twice, and yet once again, he found himself taking the crisp bit of bank paper from his pocket to stare at it, to pass it through his fingers so that he might hear the reassuring crackle of it. To the possessor of that slip of paper, and of the treasure store of which it was assumptively only an infinitesimal fraction, all things humanly possible were as good as facts accomplished.