ary to state that last winter--I
think it was the last week of January--my health became so alarming as
to induce me to accept my son's urgent invitation to visit him in a
far Western territory, hoping that the brighter sky and milder air
would more than compensate for the long and lonely journey to one who
is neither young nor adventurous.

And the effect of the change was almost magical. My son is a civil and
mining engineer, and, being unmarried, boards at the largest of the
three hotels in the busy mining town upon the Southern Pacific road,
which I shall call Brownville.

I reached the place on the afternoon of a bright, balmy day--a May day
it seemed to me--but being an unaccustomed traveller, the motion of
the cars and the strangeness of the transition gave everything such a
dreamlike unreality that I cannot recall the impressions of the first
few days with as much distinctness as later ones. I was continually
expecting my son to vanish, and myself to wake up in my room at home.
This soon wore off, however. I think it was on the second day after my
arrival, as we were starting down stairs to dinner, my son suddenly
drew me back into my room as if to avoid some one who was passing.

"I was afraid you might be startled," he exclaimed. "I was at first,
and I am neither sick nor a lady. Mother, there is a young man here
who will seem like one risen from the dead to you at first sight. He
looks enough like Chester Mansfield to be his twin brother. I think I
never saw so striking a resemblance before, but after you are
acquainted with him the impression will wear away, because he is so
different in every other way." Then we went down stairs, and meeting
the young man at the dining-room door, my son introduced him as "Mr.
Reynolds;" and thus began my acquaintance with him. Of course, after
my son's cautionary remark, I noticed him closely, but I should have
done so anyhow, I am sure, for the resemblance to the dead was so
strong as to give me a very strange feeling, for Chester Mansfield had
been only less dear to me than my own son. But as Howard had said, the
resemblance seemed to wear away somewhat as I talked with him, and I
began to wonder that I had felt it so much. This young man was older,
stouter--and many shades darker in complexion than my friend. His
manner, speech, and style of dress were wholly unlike those of the
dead Chester, although his voice, while deeper, was very similar. He
was attached to the h