Page:The Winning Touchdown.djvu/291

Rh to get up. "I say, can't some of you fellows give me a hand?"

"What's the matter, hurt?" asked Phil, anxiously.

"No, but I'm wedged in here as if I'd sat on a drum."

They pulled him out, and through the settling cloud of dust gazed at the ruin.

"Now you have gone and done it," said Sid, reproachfully.

"I guess I have," admitted Tom, regretfully, as he moved the chair to one side. Several of the bottom boards were on the floor. On top of them, amid a little pile of dirt and splinters, was a folded paper. Tom picked it up. He knocked the dust from it and slowly and wonderingly read several lines of writing on the front, and, as he read, a look of bewilderment came over his face.

"Why—why, fellows!" he exclaimed. "Look—look here! A deed—an old deed given by Simon Hess to Jacob Randall, in consideration of—and so forth and so forth—for the purpose of—um—setting aside land on which to erect a college. Why, great Cæsar's grandmother's pumpkin pie!" almost yelled Tom, "this is the missing quit-claim deed that everyone is looking for! The deed on which the title to the college depends! It was in that old chair!"