not hear them that the money-grabber could not get much more than
twelve-per-cent blood out of the nag he had ridden for so long, and
might as well set knife to neck and put the town out of its misery.

Right behind Britt, as he stood on the porch, was a sheaf of yellowed
papers nailed to the side of the tavern. Nobody in Egypt bothered to
look at the papers; all the taxpayers knew what they were; the papers
were signed by the high sheriff of the county and represented that all
the real estate of Egypt had been sold over and over for taxes and had
been bid in by the town as a municipality--and there the matter rested.
Egypt, in other words, had been trying to lift itself by the bootstraps
and was not merely still standing on the ground, but was considerably
sunk in the hole that had been dug by the boot heels while Egypt was
jumping up and down. Mr. Britt was not troubled by the sight of the
yellowed papers; he owned mortgages and pulled in profit by the legal
curiosities known as "Holmes notes"--leeches of particular drawing
power. Mr. Britt did not own real estate. Egypt, in its financial stress
and snarl of litigation, was a wonderful operating field for a man with
loose money and a tight nature.

From far swamps the whack of axes sounded. Mr. Britt knew that men were
cutting hoop poles and timber for shooks; Egypt earned ready money
with which to pay interest, getting out shooks and hoop poles. That
occupation had been the resource of the pioneers, and the descendants
stuck to the work, knowing how to do it better than anything else. There
was not enough soil for farming on a real money-making scale. The old
sheep, so cynics said, were trained to hold the lambs by their tails and
lower them head downward among the rocks to graze. Poor men usually
own dogs. But dogs would not live long in Egypt, the cynics went on to
assert; the dogs ran themselves to death hustling over the town line to