Now, it is a fact that no man is so foolish with his money as the working farmer in a small way, who has put by a little coin.  He is extremely careful about a fourpenny piece, and will wrap a sovereign up in several scraps of paper lest he should lose it; but with his hundred or two hundred pounds he is quite helpless.  It has very likely occupied him the best part of his lifetime to add one five-pound note to another, money most literally earned in the sweat of his brow; and at last he lends it to a man like Frank, who has the wit to drive a carriage and ride a thoroughbred.  With the strange inconsistency so characteristic of human nature, a half-educated, working farmer of this sort will sneer in his rude way at the pretensions of such a man, and at the same time bow down before him.

Frank knew this instinctively, and, as soon as ever he began to get on, set up a blood-horse and a turn-out.  By dint of such vulgar show and his own plausible tongue he persuaded more than one such old fellow to advance him money.  Mayhap these confiding persons, like a certain Shallow, J.P., have since earnestly besought him in vain to return them five hundred of their thousand.  In like manner one or two elderly ladies—­cunning as magpies in their own conceit—­let him have a few spare hundreds.  They thought they could lay out this money to better advantage than the safe family adviser ‘uncle John,’ with his talk of the Indian railways and a guaranteed five per cent.  They thought (for awhile) that they had done a very clever thing on the sly in lending their spare hundreds to the great Mr. Frank D——­ at a high rate of interest, and by this time would perhaps be glad to get the money back again in the tea-caddy.

But Frank was not the man to be satisfied with such small game.  After a time he succeeded in getting at the ‘squire.’  The squire had nothing but the rents of his farms to live upon, and was naturally anxious for an improving tenant who would lay out money and put capital into the soil.  He was not so foolish as to think that Frank was a safe man, and of course he had legal advice upon the matter.  The squire thought, in fact, that although Frank himself had no money, Frank could get it out of others, and spend it upon his place.  It did not concern the squire where or how Frank got his money, provided he had it—­he as landlord was secure in case of a crash, because the law gave him precedence over all other creditors.  So Frank ultimately stepped into one of the squire’s largest farms and cut a finer dash than ever.

There are distinct social degrees in agriculture.  The man who occupies a great farm under a squire is a person of much more importance than he who holds a little tenancy of a small proprietor.  Frank began to take the lead among the farmers of the neighbourhood, to make his appearance at public meetings, and to become a recognised politician—­of course upon the side most powerful in that locality, and