all in giving birth to a son, who was christened
Martin.

The loss of her and the ruinous state of the family finances completely
broke the spirit of this younger Nicholas. He dismissed the servants and
worked in the fields and gardens about his fine house as a common market
gardener. On fair-days at Liskeard or St. Austell the ex-soldier,
prematurely aged, might have been seen in the market-place, standing as
nearly at 'Attention' as his knee-pan allowed beside a specimen apple
tree, which he held to his shoulder like a musket. Thus he kept sentry-go
against hard Fortune--a tall man with a patient face. Thanks to a natural
gift for gardening, and the rare fertility of the slopes below Hall, he
managed to pay interest on the mortgages and support the family at home--
his sad-browed mother, his brother Michael, and his son Martin. And he
lived to taste his reward, for his son Martin had a financial genius.

This genius awoke in Martin Rosewarne one Sunday, in his fifteenth year,
as he sat beside his father in the family pew and listened to a dull
sermon on the Parable of the Talents. He was a just child, and he could
not understand the crime of that servant who had hidden his talent in a
napkin. In fault he must be, for the Bible said so.

The boy spent that afternoon in an apple-loft of the deserted chapel, and
by evening he had hit on a discovery which, new in those days, now informs
the whole of commerce--that it is more profitable to trade on borrowed
capital than upon one's own.

He put it thus: "Let me, not knowing the meaning of a 'talent,' put it at
100 pounds. Now, if the good and faithful servant adventured five
talents, or 500 pounds, at ten per cent, he made 50 pounds a year.
But if the servant with one talent can borrow four others, he has the same
capital of 500 pounds. Suppose him to borrow at five per cent. and make
ten like the other, he pays 20 pounds profit in interest, and has thirty
per cent, left on the talent he started with."

"Father," said the boy that night at supper, "what ought the wicked
servant to have done with his talent?"

"Parson told you that plain enough, if you'd a-been listening."

"But what do _you_ think?"

"I don't need to think when the Bible tells me. 'Thou wicked and slothful
servant,' it says, 'thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers,
and then I should have received mine own with usury.'"

"That means he ought to have lent it?"

"Yes, sure."