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 s