“Well, there was considerable sickness in the family last year and I got hard up.” “You own your house all clear?” “Yes--except that Dardoni took a first mortgage on it for the note.” “And you have five acres of land?” “Yes.” “And there’s only you and your wife?” “Yes.” “Then how--” “Doctors and medicines cost something,” he broke in, rather resenting my further questioning. Now here was a concrete example of a man without any bad habits in the ordinary meaning of the word, who had lived here fifty years in a house and on land which came to him by inheritance, who had worked with a fair amount of industry and raised three children, all now away from home and self supporting, who in a crisis had been forced to borrow money from an immigrant who hadn’t been in this country ten years and who started without a cent. On the face of it there was something wrong here, but what was it? In a nutshell, lack of thrift, lack of industry, lack of enterprise. Hadley was doing here on a farm exactly what I had done in the suburbs; he was living and always had lived up to the last cent he made. Even at this time, when he was earning forty dollars a month from me, he didn’t save a cent. He bought hay and corn for his horse; he bought expensive meats for his table; instead of mending old harnesses, he bought new harnesses; he subscribed for a daily paper and had a telephone in his house which he didn’t need any more than he needed a safe deposit vault. In the meanwhile he had five acres of idle land at his back. He was in a state of lethargy as the whole town was in a state of lethargy. He was stagnant--half-dead. A dozen things which had been luxuries to his father had become necessities to him. The price of everything had increased and he hadn’t kept pace with it. What was true of him was true of the whole town. I loaned him the money, but that night I had a talk with Ruth. “Ruth,” I said, “I’m going to give this old town the biggest shaking up it’s had since the glacial period.” “Why, Billy, what’s the matter?” she asked. “Everything’s the matter,” I said. “This village isn’t sleeping, but dead. It’s time someone blew the resurrection trumpet. I’m going to blow it; I’m going to play Gabriel.” She looked up from her sewing with a laugh, but when she saw I was in earnest she put aside her work and came over and put her arms around me. CHAPTER V STIRRING THINGS UP