tempt to wrest a living from these neglected
Hoosier acres. His main qualifications for a farming career were a
dogged determination to succeed and a vigorous, healthy body.

The Holtons had always carried their failures lightly, and even Samuel,
who had died at Indianapolis amid a clutter of dead or shaky financial
schemes, was spoken of kindly in Montgomery. Samuel had saved himself
with the group of politicians he had persuaded to invest in the Mexican
mine by selling out to a German syndicate just before he died; and
Samuel had always made a point of taking care of his friends. He had
carried through several noteworthy promotion schemes with profit before
his Mexican disasters, and but for the necessity of saving harmless his
personal and political friends he might not have left so little for his
children. So spake the people of Montgomery.

Charles Holton was nearing thirty, and having participated in his
father's political adventures, and been initiated into the mysteries of
promotion, he had a wide acquaintance throughout central Indiana. He had
been graduated from Madison, and in his day at college had done much to
relieve the gray Calvinistic tone of that sedate institution. It was he
who had transformed the old "college chorus"--it had been a "chorus"
almost from the foundation--into a glee club, and he had organized the
first guitar and banjo club. The pleasant glow he left behind him still
hung over the campus when Fred entered four years later. Charles's
meteoric social career had dimmed the fact (save to a few sober
professors) that he had got through by the skin of his teeth. Fred's
plodding ways, relieved only by his prowess at football, had left a very
different impression. Fred worked hard at his studies because he had to;
and even with persistence and industry he had not shone brilliantly in
the scientific courses he had elected. The venerable dean once said that
Fred was a digger, not a skimmer and skipper, and that he would be all
right if only he dug long enough. He was graduated without honors and
went South to throw in his fortunes with his father's Mexican projects.
He was mourned at the college as the best all-round player a Madison
eleven had ever boasted; but this was about all.

When he accepted Listening Hill Farm as his share of his father's
estate, Fred had a little less than one thousand dollars in cash, which
he had saved from the salaries paid him respectively by the plantation
and m