O'Hara, wild with rage, wrote, threatening Sprowl.
Then Sprowl did a vindictive and therefore foolish thing: he swore out a warrant for O'Hara's arrest, charging him with blackmail.
The case was tried in Foxville, and O'Hara was acquitted. But a chance word or two during the testimony frightened the club and gave O'Hara the opportunity of his life. He went to New York and scraped up enough money for his purpose, which was to search the titles of the lands controlled by the Sagamore Club.
He worked secretly, grubbing, saving, starving; he ferreted out the original grants covering nine-tenths of Sagamore County; he disinterred the O'Hara patent of 1760; and then he began to understand that his title to the entire Sagamore Club property was worth the services, on spec, of any first-class Centre Street shyster.
The club got wind of this and appointed Peyster Sprowl, in his capacity of lawyer and president of the club, to find out how much of a claim O'Hara really had. The club also placed the emergency fund of one hundred thousand dollars at Sprowl's command with _carte-blanche_ orders to arrest a suit and satisfy any claim that could not be beaten by money and talent.
Now it took Sprowl a very short time to discover that O'Hara's claim was probably valid enough to oust the club from three-quarters of its present holdings.
He tried to see O'Hara, but the lumberman refused to be interviewed, and promptly began proceedings. He also made his will; for he was a sick man. Then he became a sicker man, and suspended proceedings and sent for his little daughter.
Before she arrived he called Munn in, gave him a packet of papers, and made him burn them before his eyes.
"They're the papers in my case," he said. "I'm dying; I've fought too hard. I don't want my child to fight when I'm dead. And there's nothing in my claim, anyway." This was a lie, and Munn suspected it.
When the child, Eileen, arrived, O'Hara was nearly dead, but he gathered sufficient strength to shove a locked steel box towards his daughter and tell her to keep it from Munn, and keep it locked until she found an honest man in the world.
The next morning O'Hara appeared to be much better. His friend Munn came to see him; also came Peyster Sprowl in some alarm, on the matter of the proceedings threatened. But O'Hara turned his back on them both and calmly closed his eyes and ears to their presence.