After Thorn had kicked and rolled and yelled a little of the joy out of his system, he started to take a drink of the water, but Jim stopped him with: 

“Taste her if you wanter, but she’s one of them min’rul springs which leaves a nasty smack behind.”  And then he added:  “I reckon she’s a winner.  We’ll christen her the Infunt Fernomerner, an’ gin a lib’rul investor a crack at her.”

The next morning Thorn started back, doing fancy steps up the trail.

He hadn’t been in Leadville two days before he bumped into an old friend of his uncle’s, Tom Castle, who was out there on some business, and had his daughter, a mighty pretty girl, along.  Thorn sort of let the spring slide for a few days, while he took them in hand and showed them the town.  And by the time he was through, Castle had a pretty bad case of mining fever, and Thorn and the girl were in the first stages of something else.

Castle showed a good deal of curiosity about Thorn’s business and how he was doing, so he told ’em all about how he’d struck it rich, and in his pride showed a letter which he had received from Jim the day before.  It ran: 

“Dere Thorn:  The Infunt Fernomerner is a wunder and the pile groes every day.  I hav 2 kittles, a skilit and a duzzen cans in the spring every nite wich is awl it wil hold and days i trys out the silver frum them wich have caked on nites.  This is to dern slo. we nede munny so we kin dril and get a bigger flo and tanks and bilers and sech. hump yoursel and sell that third intrest. i hav to ten the kittles now so no mor frum jim.”

“You see,” Thorn explained, “we camped beside the spring one night, and a tin cup, which Jim let fall when he first tasted the water, discovered its secret.  It’s just the same principle as those lime springs that incrust things with lime.  This one must percolate through a bed of ore.  There’s some quality in the water which acts as a solvent of the silver, you know, so that the water becomes charged with it.”

Now, Thorn hadn’t really thought of interesting Castle as an investor in that spring, because he regarded his Western business and his Eastern friends as things not to be mixed, and he wasn’t very hot to have Castle meet Jim and get any details of his life for the past few years.  But nothing would do Castle but that they should have a look at The Infant, and have it at once.

Well, sir, when they got about a mile from camp they saw Jim standing in the trail, and smiling all over his honest, homely face.  He took Castle for a customer, of course, and after saying “Howdy” to Thorn, opened right up:  “I reckon Thorn hev toted you up to see thet blessid infunt as I’m mother, father and wet-nuss to.  Thar never was sich a kid.  She’s jest the cutest little cuss ever you see.  Eh, Thorn?”

“Do you prefer to the er—­er—­Infant Phenomenon?” asked Castle, all eagerness.