most powerful in that locality, and most likely to serve his own interest.
His assurance, and, it must be owned, his ready wit, helped him in coming
to the front. When at the front, he was invited to the houses of really
well-to-do country people. They condoned his bluff manners--they were the
mark of the true, solid British agriculturist. Some perhaps in their
hearts thought that another day they might want a tenant, and this man
would serve their turn. As a matter of fact, Frank took every unoccupied
farm which he could get at a tolerably reasonable rent. He never seemed
satisfied with the acreage he held, but was ever desirous of extending it.
He took farm after farm, till at last he held an area equal to a fine
estate. For some years there has been a disposition on the part of
landlords to throw farms together, making many small ones into one large
one. For the time, at all events, Frank seemed to do very well with all
these farms to look after. Of course the same old-fashioned folk made
ill-natured remarks, and insisted upon it that he merely got what he could
out of the soil, and did not care in the least how the farming was done.
Nevertheless, he flourished--the high prices and general inflation of the
period playing into his hand.

Frank was now a very big man, the biggest man thereabout. And it was now
that he began to tap another source of supply--to, as it were, open a
fresh cask--_i.e._ the local bank. At first he only asked for a hundred or
so, a mere bagatelle, for a few days--only temporary convenience. The bank
was glad to get hold of what really looked like legitimate business, and
he obtained the bagatelle in the easiest manner--so easily that it
surprised him. He did not himself yet quite know how completely his showy
style of life, his large acreage, his speeches, and politics, and
familiarity with great people, had imposed upon the world in which he
lived. He now began to realise that he was somebody. He repaid the loan to
the day, waited awhile and took a larger one, and from that time the