I shook my head.
"I didn't suppose you did," remarked Uncle Tom. "It is a new mining camp on one of the spurs of Mescalero Mountain in Colorado, and in the opinion of Sam Warren—my old schoolmate, you know—it has a great future before it. So he has written me that if I have the time to spare I had better come out and take a look at it."
Uncle Tom's business was that of a mining promoter, the middle man between the prospector and the capitalist, a business in which his ability and his honorable methods had gained for him an enviable reputation.
"So you have decided to go out, have you?" said I.
"Yes," he replied. "I leave to-morrow evening—and you are coming with me."
As may be imagined, I opened my eyes pretty widely at this unfolding of the "brand-new idea."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Look here, Frank, old chap," said he, seating himself on the edge of the table and becoming confidential. "You've stuck to your books very well—if anything, too well. Now, I've had my eye on you ever since the hot weather last summer, and it strikes me you need a change—you are too pale and altogether too thin."
Being fat and "comfortable" himself, Uncle Tom was disposed to regard with pity any one, like myself, whose framework showed through its covering.
"But——" I began; when Uncle Tom headed me off.