anxious than he; but--there was Richards! Richards was a neighbor
who thought as he did about Henry George and Spiritualism,
and belonged to the Farmers' Alliance, and had lent Nelson all the works
of Henry George that he (Richards) could borrow. Richards was
in deep trouble. He had lost his wife; he might lose his farm.
He appealed to Nelson, for the sake of old friendship, to save him.
And Nelson could not resist; so, two thousand of the thirty-four
hundred dollars that the Maine man paid went to Richards,
the latter swearing by all that is holy, to pay his friend off
in full at the end of the year. There was money coming to him
from his dead wife's estate, but it was tied up in the courts.
Nelson would not listen to Tim's prophecies of evil.
But he was a little dashed when Richards paid neither interest nor
principal at the year's end, although he gave reasons of weight;
and he experienced veritable consternation when the renewed
mortgage ran its course and still Richards could not pay.
The money from his wife's estate had been used to improve his farm
(Nelson knew how rundown everything was), his new wife was sickly
and "didn't seem to take hold," there had been a disastrous hail-storm--
but why rehearse the calamities? they focussed on one sentence:
it was impossible to pay.

Then Nelson, who had been restfully counting on the money from Richards
for his own debt, bestirred himself, only to find his patient creditor
gone and a woman in his stead who must have her money. He wrote again--
sorely against his will--begging Richards to raise the money somehow.
Richards's answer was in his pocket, for he wore the best black broadcloth
in which he had done honor to the lawyer, yesterday. Richards plainly
was wounded; but he explained in detail to Nelson how he (Nelson)
could borrow money of the banks on his farm and pay Miss Brown.