a brief period of
drinking, betting, and high living. The old man had left a small sum of
ready money in the bank, which to the son, who had always been denied the
handling of money, seemed riches. It was soon spent, and then unexpected
burdens and claims disclosed themselves. There was a debt to the bank,
which there were no means of paying. And he discovered to his dismay that
a spinster cousin of his mother's had lent money to his father within the
preceding five years, on the security of his stock and furniture. Where
the borrowed money had gone no one knew, but the spinster cousin, alarmed
perhaps by exaggerated accounts of the new man's drinking habits, pressed
for repayment.

Brand set his teeth, ceased to spend money, and did his best to earn it.
But he was a stupid man, and the leading-strings in which his life had
been held up to middle age had enfeebled such natural powers as he
possessed. His knowledge was old-fashioned, his methods slovenly; and his
wife, as harmless as himself, but no cleverer, could do nothing to help
him. By dint, however, of living and working hard he got through two or
three years, and might just have escaped his fate--for his creditors, at
that stage, were all ready to give him time--had not ill-fortune thrown
him across the path of Edmund Melrose. The next farm to his belonged to
the Threlfall estate. Melrose's methods as a landlord had thrown out one
tenant after another, till he could do nothing but put in a bailiff and
work it himself. The bailiff was incompetent, and a herd of cattle made
their way one morning through a broken fence that no one had troubled to
mend, and did serious damage to Brand's standing crops. Melrose was asked
to compensate, and flatly declined. The fence was no doubt his; but he
claimed that it had been broken by one of Brand's men. Hence the
accident. The statement was false, and the evidence supporting it
corrupt. Moreover the whole business was only the last of a series of
unneighbourly acts on the part both of the bailiff and landowner, and a
sudden fury blazed up in Brand's slow mind. He took his claim to the
county court and won his case; the judge allowing himself a sharp
sentence or two on the management of the Threlfall property. Brand spent
part of his compensation money in entertaining a group of friends at a
Pengarth public. But that was the last of his triumph. Thenceforward
things went mysteriously wrong with him. His creditors, first one, th