Our talk now gradually resolved itself to one on business matters.  I ought to have said that my father was an ambitious man and one of wide plans.  I think that even then he foresaw the day when the half-patriarchial life of our State would pass away before one of wider horizons of commercial sort.  He was anxious to hand down his family fortune much increased, and foreseeing troublous times ahead as to the institution of slavery in the South, he had of late been taking large risks to assure success in spite of any change of times.  Now, moved by some strange reasons which he himself perhaps did not recognize, he began for the first time, contrary to his usual reticence, to explain to my mother and me something of these matters.  He told us that in connection with his friend, Colonel William Meriwether, of Albemarle, he had invested heavily in coal lands in the western part of the State, in what is now West Virginia.  This requiring very large sums of money, he for his part had encumbered not only the lands themselves, but these lands of Cowles’ Farms to secure the payment.  The holder of these mortgages was a banking firm in Fredericksburg.  The interest was one which in these times would be considered a cruel one, and indeed the whole enterprise was one which required a sanguine courage, precisely as his; for I have said that risk he always held as challenge and invitation.

“Does thee think that in these times thee should go so deeply in debt,” asked my mother of him.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “that is why I have gone in debt.  Two years from now, and the value of these lands here may have been cut in half.  Ten years from now the coal lands yonder will be worth ten times what they are to-day.”

“John,” she said to him suddenly, “sell those coal lands, or a part of them.”

“Now, that I could not do,” he answered, “for half their value.  The country now is fuller of war than of investment.  But come peace, come war, there lies a fortune for us all.  For my share there remains but one heavy payment; and to-morrow I ride to raise funds for that among our tenants and elsewhere.  I admit that my bankers are shrewd and severe—­in fact, I think they would rather see the payments forfeited than not.  As Meriwether is away, it is with me to attend to this business now.”

And so, with this prelude, I may as well tell without more delay what evil fortune was in store for us.

That coming day my father rode abroad as he had planned, taking black Satan for his mount, since he needed to travel far.  He had collected from various sources, as his account book later showed, a sum of over five thousand dollars, which he must have had in gold and negotiable papers in his saddle-bags.  During his return home, he came down the deep trough road which ran in front of the Sheraton farms and ours.  He passed near to a certain clump of bushes at the roadside.  And there that happened which brought to a sudden end all the peace and comfort of our lives, and which made me old before my time.