The Holton farmhouse, a pretentious place in the day of Frederick Holton's grandfather, was now habitable and that was the most that could be said for it. When the second generation spurned the soil and became urbanized, the residence was transformed from its primal state into a country home, and the family called it "Listening Hill Farm." Its austere parlor of the usual rural type was thrown together with the living-room, the original fireplace was reconstructed, and running water was pumped to the house by means of a windmill. The best of the old furniture had been carried off to adorn the town house, so that when Fred succeeded to the ownership it was a pretty bare and comfortless place. Samuel had never lived there, though the farm had fallen to him in the distribution of his father's estate; but he had farmed it at long range, first from Montgomery, and latterly, and with decreasing success, from Indianapolis after his removal to the capital. The year before Fred's arrival no tenant had been willing to take it owing to the impoverished state of the land. Most of the farms in the neighborhood were owned by town people, and operated by tenants. As for Fred, he knew little about agriculture. On the Mexican plantation which his father and Uncle William had controlled, he had learned nothing that was likely to prove of the slightest value in his attempt to wrest a living from these neglected Hoosier acres. His main qualifications for a farming career were a dogged determination to succeed and a vigorous, healthy body. The Holtons had always carried their failures lightly, and even Samuel, who had died at Indianapolis amid a clutter of dead or shaky financial schemes, was spoken of kindly in Montgomery. Samuel had saved himself with the group of politicians he had persuaded to invest in the Mexican mine by selling out to a German syndicate just before he died; and Samuel had always made a point of taking care of his friends. He had carried through several noteworthy promotion schemes with profit before his Mexican disasters, and but for the necessity of saving harmless his personal and political friends he might not have left so little for his children. So spake the people of Montgomery.