Life on the farm was mighty pleasant, nowadays. Work was hard, of
course, but it was bringing results that made it more than worth
while. Ferris and his dog were living on the fat of the land. And
they were happy.

Then came the interruption that had been inevitable from the very
first.

A taciturn and eternally dead-broke man, in a rural region, need
not fear intrusion on his privacy. Convivial folk make detours
round him, as if he were a mud puddle. Thriftier and more
respectable neighbors eye him askance or eye him not at all.

But when a meed of permanent success comes to such a man he need
no longer be lonely unless he so wills. Which is not cynicism,
but common sense. The convivial element will still fight shy of
him. But he is welcomed into the circle of the respectable.

So it was with Link Ferris. Of old he had been known as a
shiftless and harddrinking mountaineer with a sour farm that was
plastered with mortgages. Now, he had cleared off his mortgages
and had cleaned up his farm; and he and his home exuded an
increasing prosperity.

People, meeting him in the nearby village of Hampton or at
church, began to treat him with a consideration that the
long-aloof farmer found bewildering.

Yet he liked it rather than not; being at heart a gregarious