ple's
money. The lawyer's judgment of men was as keen as Frank's judgment of
cattle. He helped Frank to get into a large farm, advancing the money with
which to work it. He ran no risk; for, of course, he had Frank tight in
the grasp of his legal fist, and he was the agent for the landlord. The
secret was this--the lawyer paid his clients four per cent, for the safe
investment of their money. Frank had the money, worked a large farm with
it, and speculated in the cattle markets, and realised some fifteen or
perhaps twenty per cent., of which the lawyer took the larger share.
Something of this sort has been done in other businesses besides farming.
Frank, however, was not the man to remain in a state of tutelage, working
for another. His forte was not saving--simple accumulation was not for
him; but he looked round the district to discover those who had saved.

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 gre