most likely to serve his own interest.  His assurance, and, it must be owned, his ready wit, helped him in coming to the front.  When at the front, he was invited to the houses of really well-to-do country people.  They condoned his bluff manners—­they were the mark of the true, solid British agriculturist.  Some perhaps in their hearts thought that another day they might want a tenant, and this man would serve their turn.  As a matter of fact, Frank took every unoccupied farm which he could get at a tolerably reasonable rent.  He never seemed satisfied with the acreage he held, but was ever desirous of extending it.  He took farm after farm, till at last he held an area equal to a fine estate.  For some years there has been a disposition on the part of landlords to throw farms together, making many small ones into one large one.  For the time, at all events, Frank seemed to do very well with all these farms to look after.  Of course the same old-fashioned folk made ill-natured remarks, and insisted upon it that he merely got what he could out of the soil, and did not care in the least how the farming was done.  Nevertheless, he flourished—­the high prices and general inflation of the period playing into his hand.

Frank was now a very big man, the biggest man thereabout.  And it was now that he began to tap another source of supply—­to, as it were, open a fresh cask—­i.e. the local bank.  At first he only asked for a hundred or so, a mere bagatelle, for a few days—­only temporary convenience.  The bank was glad to get hold of what really looked like legitimate business, and he obtained the bagatelle in the easiest manner—­so easily that it surprised him.  He did not himself yet quite know how completely his showy style of life, his large acreage, his speeches, and politics, and familiarity with great people, had imposed upon the world in which he lived.  He now began to realise that he was somebody.  He repaid the loan to the day, waited awhile and took a larger one, and from that time the frequency and the amount of his loans went on increasing.

We have seen in these latter days bank directors bitterly complaining that they could not lend money at more than 7/8 or even 1/2 per cent., so little demand was there for accommodation.  They positively could not lend their money; they had millions in their tills unemployed, and practically going a-begging.  But here was Frank paying seven per cent, for short loans, and upon a continually enlarging amount.  His system, so far as the seasons were concerned, was something like this.  He took a loan (or renewed an old one) at the bank on the security of the first draught of lambs for sale, say, in June.  This paid the labourers and the working expenses of the hay harvest, and of preparing for the corn.  He took the next upon the second draught of lambs in August, which paid the reapers.  He took a third on the security of the crops, partly cut, or in process of cutting, for his Michaelmas rent.  Then for