“We mean to pay our honest debts in full,” he said; “but see how the thing works out: I borrowed a thousand dollars when wheat was selling at a dollar a bushel. If I raised a thousand bushels, I could pay my debt by selling them. But when wheat has fallen to fifty cents a bushel, I must raise two thousand to meet the obligation. That came of appreciation in the value of money. It is to the interest of Wall Street men to have it so, while we need an increased volume of money. They deal in dollars and we in wheat, and the more they can make us raise for a dollar, the better off they are. It costs me as much time and labor and wages to raise a thousand bushels of wheat as when it sold for a dollar, and the justice of the case would be in my paying my debt with a thousand bushels, for I don’t raise dollars, I raise wheat.” No abstract reasoning or historical examples could have convinced him that an appreciation in the value of money was due to causes other than a conspiracy among what he called “the money kings,” who, in some manner, had got control of the volume of currency and so determined the prices of commodities. But with all his hallucinations in finance, it was very plain that the charge of dishonesty had been misapplied. It was toward the end of the day’s march that I came by the second lift. For miles the country had grown more hilly, and when I left behind me the village of Coon Rapids I found myself climbing a hill that was really steep, then making a sharp descent into a valley, only to begin another hill longer and steeper than any before. I was slowly ascending one of the longest hills when a farmer in a light market wagon called to me, making offer of a drive. I waited at the crest of the hill and climbed to the seat at his side, while the horses stood panting lightly in the cooler air that moved across the hill-tops.