ng time as a _suspect_. Well, coming right down to the
point, _I had the dust all the time_! and the working out of the mystery
would be rather interesting reading if it was written up, and, as you
are such an accomplished liar, I wouldn't be surprised if you made it
the base-line of one of them yarns of yourn--only, mind you, don't go
too far with it, for it's as curious as a lie itself. I would not try to
improve on it, if I was you. I'll tell it to you as it was.

"About four days before the robbery, I was introduced to Rachel
Rokesby, daughter of one of the partners in the Black Prince. I met her,
in what seemed to be a casual way, at Mother Cameron's hash-foundry, but
I found out, a long time afterward, that she had worked for two weeks to
bring about the introduction.

"I don't know as you remember seeing her, but she was a quiet, retiring,
well-educated, rosy-cheeked English girl--impressed you right away as
being the pure, unrefined article, about twenty-two karat. She "chinned"
me about an hour, that evening, and just cut a cameo of her pretty face
right on my old heart.

"Well, course I saw her home, and tried my best to be interesting, but
if a fellow ever in his natural life becomes a double-barreled jackass,
it's just immediately after he falls in love. Why, he ain't as
interesting as the unlettered side of an ore-sack.

"But we got on amazing well; the girl did most of the talking and along
toward the last, mentioned that she was in great trouble--of course I
wa'n't interested in that at all. I liked to have broken my neck in
getting her to tell me at once if I couldn't do something to help her,
say, for instance, move Raton mountain up agin Pike's Peak.

"I went home that night, promising to call on her the next trip, not to
let any one know I was coming, not to tell anybody I had been there, not
for _worlds_ to repeat or intimate what she told me, and she would tell
me her trouble from start to finish, and then I could help her, if I
wanted to. Well, I wanted to, _bad_.

"I went up to the Rokesby's cabin, next trip in; it was dark, and as I
went up the front walk, I heard the old gentleman going out the back,
bound for the village 'diggin's.' I had it all to myself--the secret, I
mean.

"When I went in, I got about a forty-second squeeze of a neat little
hand, and things did look so nice and clean and homelike that I had it
on the end of my tongue to ask right then to camp in the place.

"After