the qualities that during the past years had
made his father so popular in the town. He was not the man his father
had been in any respect. "Jacob bored with a small auger," Mr Green,
the carpenter, used to say, and the miscellaneous company who were wont
to assemble in his shop for the discussion of things in general did not
differ from him in opinion. Jacob was small about small matters, they
said, and lost friends and failed to make money, where his father would
have made both friends and money safe. As a business man he had not of
late proved himself worthy of the respect of his fellow-townsmen as his
father had always done.

Things had gone well with the Holts for a long time. They had had a
share in most of the well-established business of the town. In helping
others, as they had certainly done, to a living, they had helped
themselves to wealth, and on many farms in the vicinity, and on some of
the village homes, they had held claims. In many cases these claims had
been paid in time; in others the property had passed from the hands of
the original owners into the hands of the Holts, father and son. Very
rarely in old Mr Holt's active days had this happened in a way to
excite the feeling of the community against the rich man; but of late it
had been said that Jacob had done some hard things, and some of those
who discussed his affairs were indignant because of the people who
suffered, and some who did not like Jacob for reasons of their own
joined in the cry; but it was to David Fleming and his affairs that
attention was chiefly turned when any one wanted to say hard things of
Jacob Holt.

Jacob was having a hard time altogether. Not because men were saying
hard things of him. Few of these hard sayings would be likely to reach
his ears. Some of the men who growled and frowned behind his back,
before his face were mild and deprecatory, and listened to his words and
smiled at his jokes, and carried themselves in his company very much as
they had done in years past.

As for Mr Fleming's affairs, it was coming to that with Jacob, that he
would have done to him all the evil that he was accused of planning, if
he could have had his way; but, nevertheless, not with a desire to
harass and annoy the man who had always shunned him, and who now defied
him, as people sometimes declared.

It cannot be said that he had not felt and secretly resented what he
called the folly of the unreasonable old man. But Morde