Our rentable property is three
ramshackle cabins on the alley at the rear of the lot, for which we
get four dollars a month each, when we can collect it. Our country
estate is a few acres of poor land, which we rent on shares, and from
which we get a few bushels of corn, an occasional load of firewood,
and a few barrels of potatoes. As for my own life, I husband our small
resources; I keep the house, and wait on mother, as I have done since
she became helpless, ten years ago. I look after Graciella. I teach in
the Sunday School, and I give to those less fortunate such help as the
poor can give the poor."
"How did you come to lose Belleview?" asked the colonel, after a
pause. "I had understood Major Treadwell to be one of the few people
around here who weathered the storm of war and emerged financially
sound."
"He did; and he remained so--until he met Mr. Fetters, who had made
money out of the war while all the rest were losing. Father despised
the slavetrader's son, but admired his ability to get along. Fetters
made his acquaintance, flattered him, told him glowing stories of
wealth to be made by speculating in cotton and turpentine. Father was
not a business man, but he listened. Fetters lent him money, and
father lent Fetters money, and they had transactions back and forth,
and jointly. Father lost and gained and we had no inkling that he had
suffered greatly, until, at his sudden death, Fetters foreclosed a
mortgage he held upon Belleview.
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