Chapter 30

One morning the colonel, while overseeing the work at the new mill building, stepped on the rounded handle of a chisel, which had been left lying carelessly on the floor, and slipped and fell, spraining his ankle severely. He went home in his buggy, which was at the mill, and sent for Doctor Price, who put his foot in a plaster bandage and ordered him to keep quiet for a week.

Peter and Phil went around to the Treadwells' to inform the ladies of the accident. On reaching the house after the accident, the colonel had taken off his coat, and sent Peter to bring him one from the closet off his bedroom.

When the colonel put on the coat, he felt some papers in the inside pocket, and taking them out, recognised the two old letters he had taken from the lining of his desk several months before. The housekeeper, in a moment of unusual zeal, had discovered and mended the tear in the sleeve, and Peter had by chance selected this particular coat to bring to his master. When Peter started, with Phil, to go to the Treadwells', the colonel gave him the two letters.

"Give these," he said, "to Miss Laura, and tell her I found them in the old desk."

It was not long before Miss Laura came, with Graciella, to call on the colonel. When they had expressed the proper sympathy, and had been assured that the hurt was not dangerous, Miss Laura spoke of another matter.

"Henry," she said, with an air of suppressed excitement, "I have made a discovery. I don't quite know what it means, or whether it amounts to anything, but in one of the envelopes you sent me just now there was a paper signed by Mr. Fetters. I do not know how it could have been left in the desk; we had searched it, years ago, in every nook and cranny, and found nothing."

The colonel explained the circumstances of his discovery of the papers, but prudently refrained from mentioning how long ago they had taken place.

Miss Laura handed him a thin, oblong, yellowish slip of paper, which had been folded in the middle; it was a printed form, upon which several words had been filled in with a pen.

"It was enclosed in this," she said, handing him another paper.

The colonel took the papers and glanced over them.

"Mother thinks," said Miss Laura anxiously, "that they are the papers we were looking for, that prove that Fetters was in father's debt."

The colonel had been thinking rapidly. The papers were, indeed, a promissory note from Fetters to Mr. Treadwell, and a contract and memorandum of certain joint transactions in turpentine and cotton futures. The note was dated twenty years back. Had it been produced at the time of Mr. Treadwell's death, it would not have been difficult to collect, and would have meant to his survivors the difference between poverty and financial independence. Now it was barred by the lapse of time.