en
all, began to tighten their pressure on him; and presently the bank
manager--the Jove of Brand's little world--passed abruptly from civility
or indulgence, to a peremptory reminder that debts were meant to be paid.
A fresh bill of sale on furniture and stock staved off disaster for a
time. But a bad season brought it once more a long step nearer, and the
bank, however urgently appealed to, showed itself adamant, not only as to
any further advance, but as to any postponement of their own claim.
Various desperate expedients only made matters worse, and after a few
more wretched months during which his farm deteriorated, and his business
went still further to wreck, owing largely to his own distress of mind,
Brand threw up the sponge. He sold his small remaining interest in his
farm, which did not even suffice to pay his debts, and went out of it a
bankrupt and broken man, prematurely aged. A neighbouring squire,
indignant with what was commonly supposed to be the secret influences
at work in the affair, offered him the post of bailiff in a vacant farm;
and he and his family migrated to the new-built cottage on the Ullswater
road.

As to these secret influences, they were plain enough to many people.
Melrose who had been present on the day when the case was tried had left
the court-house in a fury, in company with a certain ill-famed solicitor,
one Nash, who had worked up the defence, and had served the master of
Threlfall before in various litigations connected with his estates, such
as the respectable family lawyers in Carlisle and Pengarth would have
nothing to do with. Nash told his intimates that night that Brand would
rue his audacity, and the prophecy soon dismally fulfilled itself. The
local bank to which Brand owed money had been accustomed for years to
deal with very large temporary balances--representing the rents of half
the Threlfall estates. Nash was well known to the manager, as one of
those backstairs informants, indispensable in a neighbourhood where every
farmer wanted advances--now on his crops--now on his stock--and the
leading bank could only escape losses by the maintenance of a surprising
amount of knowledge as to each man's circumstances and character. Nash
was observed on one or two occasions going in and out of the bank's
private room, at moments corresponding with some of the worst crises of
Brand's fortunes. And with regard to other creditors, no one could say
precisely how they were worked o