And as soon as the maid had gone Foster Townsend began speaking of another subject, that of the letter he had been reading. He picked up the closely written sheets and tapped their edges upon the table. “Funny how things come around,” he observed, rubbing his beard with his free hand. “Yes, it is _so_! I read once in a story-book--I don’t read many, haven’t got time to waste on yarns that a man makes up out of his head, but I do read once in a while one--I remember reading how a fellow found a letter his mother, or his best girl or somebody, had written years and years before, and when he read it this time the book said it came to him like a voice out of the past.... Humph! A voice out of the past. That’s a pretty good way to put it, seems to me. And that’s about what this letter here is,” rapping the table with the papers in his hand. “Here’s a man I used to know twenty--no, nearer thirty years ago. He did me a big favor then. He lent me money to go on with a deal that started me up the ladder. I didn’t have a cent scarcely. He was only a few years older, but well-off already, and not a relation or anything, not even a friend, at least I hadn’t counted him that. He let me have the money because he said he believed I had the right stuff in me, and he wouldn’t have charged me a penny interest if I hadn’t made him. I swore then if ever I got the chance to do him a good turn I’d do it no matter what it was. And now--when for all I knew he might be dead with the grass growing over him--here he is writing me to do that good turn. Humph! A voice from the past. Yes, sir! that is what it is. Queer enough!” Esther was interested. For the moment she forgot Paris--even Bob Griffin and Paris. “Who is he, Uncle Foster?” she asked. “Eh? Oh, he’s a man named Covell--Seymour Covell. When I knew him he was head of a meat and provision firm on Commercial Street in Boston. Used to take contracts to fit out ships and all that. Later on he went out to Chicago and got in on the ground floor with a crowd that were killing hogs and beef cattle on a big scale. He is with ’em yet, judging from this letter, commodore of the fleet or something like that.” “And he writes to you for _money_?” Townsend laughed aloud. “Money!” he repeated. “He must be a millionaire a dozen times over. No, no! he doesn’t want money. He wants me to help him with his son, a young fellow in the twenties. Had a kind of hard time with him, I guess. Here, you read yourself what he says. It will save time. Read it out loud.” He handed her the letter. It was a long one and she read it through, aloud, as requested. It began by calling the writer to Foster Townsend’s memory, speaking of old acquaintanceship and the like. Seymour Covell, it appeared, was a widower with one child, a son, now twenty-seven years of age. The requested favor had to do with the latter.