At the beginning of the second year of farming, Herbert learned to his amazement that the man from whom they had purchased the unexpired lease owed money to a number of tradesmen for implements and supplies. These men came to him and demanded the payment of their claims; but he was neither able nor willing to satisfy them. Herbert and his man had finished their summer tilling and their haying when a heavy rain set in near the end of August. The dreary character of the weather seemed to fill him with a foreboding of approaching calamity. One night Mr. Coke came to him with tidings that their ill fortune was about to culminate. The following morning the sheriff and some other officials, with two or three of the principal creditors, appeared and after formally demanding payment of their claims, proceeded to levy on the farm stock, implements, household effects and other worldly possessions, coupled with a threat of arrest and imprisonment for the original tenant who was invisible for some days.
Herbert and his mother stopped with a friendly neighbor while the work of levying went on. In the meantime Mr. Coke had not been idle. He denounced the proceedings as an outrage, saying that it was wrong both in law and morals to hold Herbert and his mother responsible for the faults or crimes of another. He did more than protest, however. He acted and acted promptly. He went into court, explained the matter very clearly to the Judge, and succeeded in obtaining an order by which the levy was stopped. Herbert and his mother immediately resumed their old life; but at the end of the year both decided that it would be advisable to quit farming, which in their circumstances offered little return for the hard labor involved.
The hired man, who had proven himself to be an unusually efficient and industrious man, still had two months of his time to run. He generously offered to release Herbert from this obligation; but the boy had inherited his father’s trait of pluck and manliness, declined to accept the offer. He had heard that one of the merchants in the town who had purchased a large amount of ground on the other side of the railroad, was anxious to have someone undertake the job of clearing up fifty acres of the wildest land. Herbert informed his assistant of that fact, and said that if he was willing to undertake the work he would guarantee to give him all that they had contracted to pay in the beginning. It was in November, and when the man and boy started to work the snow was just going and the water and slush in some places were knee deep.