He served the abstraction that he called "PROgress" with unflinching
and unquestioning loyalty. Every new scheme of increasing
happiness by force found a helper, a fighter, and a giver in him;
by turns he had been an Abolitionist, a Fourierist, a Socialist,
a Greenbacker, a Farmers' Alliance man. Disappointment always
was followed hard on its heels by a brand-new confidence.
Progress ruled his farm as well as his politics; he bought
the newest implements and subscribed trustfully to four
agricultural papers; but being a born lover of the ground,
a vein of saving doubt did assert itself sometimes in
his work; and, on the whole, as a farmer he was successful.
But his success never ventured outside his farm gates.
At buying or selling, at a bargain in any form, the fourteen-year-old
Tim was better than Nelson with his fifty years' experience of
a wicked and bargaining world.

Was that any part of the reason, he wondered to-day,
why at the end of thirty years of unflinching toil and honesty,
he found himself with a vast budget of experience in the ruinous
loaning of money, with a mortgage on the farm of a friend,
and a mortgage on his own farm likely to be foreclosed?
Perhaps it might have been better to stay in Henry County.
He had paid for his farm at last. He had known a good moment, too,
that day he drove away from the lawyer's with the cancelled mortgage
in his pocket and Tim hopping up and down on the seat for joy.
But the next day Richards--just to give him the chance of a good thing--
had brought out that Maine man who wanted to buy him out.
He was anxious to put the money down for the new farm, to have no
whip-lash of debt forever whistling about his ears as he ploughed,
ready to sting did he stumble in the furrows; and Tim was more