| I. | The Derelict |
| II. | The Battle |
| III. | The Ordeal |
| IV. | The Choice |
Link Ferris was a fighter. Not by nature, nor by choice, but to keepalive.
His battleground covered an area of forty acres—broken, scrubby,uncertain side-hill acres, at that. In brief, a worked-out farm amongthe mountain slopes of the North Jersey hinterland; six miles from thenearest railroad.
The farm was Ferris's, by right of sole heritage from his father, aCivil-War veteran, who had taken up the wilderness land in 1865 andwho, for thirty years thereafter, had wrought to make it pay. At bestthe elder Ferris had wrenched only a meager living from the light androck-infested soil.
The first-growth timber on the west woodlot for some time had stavedoff the need of a mortgage; its veteran oaks and hickories grimlygiving up their lives, in hundreds, to keep the wolf from the door oftheir owner. When the last of the salable timber was gone Old ManFerris tried his hand at truck farming, and sold his wares from a wagonto the denizens of Craigswold, the new colony of rich folk, four milesto northward.
But to raise such vegetables and fruits as would tempt the eyes and thepurses of Craigswold people it was necessary to have more than merezeal and industry. Sour ground will not readily yield sweet abundance,be the toiler ever so industrious. Moreover, there was large andgrowing competition, in the form of other huckster routes.
And presently the old veteran wearied of the eternal uphill struggle.He mortgaged the farm, dying soon afterward. And Link, his son, wasleft to carry on the thankless task.
Link Ferris was as much a part of the Ferris farm as was the giantbowlder in the south mowing. He had been born in the paintless shackwhich his father had built with his own rheumatic hands. He had workedfor more than a quarter century, in and out of the hill fields and theramshackle barns. From babyhood he had toiled there. Scant had been thechances for schooling, and more scant had been the opportunities foroutside influence.
Wherefore, Link had grown to a wirily weedy and slouching manhood,almost as ignorant of the world beyond his mountain walls as were anyof his own "critters." His life was bounded by fruitless labor, variedonly by such sleep and food as might fit him to labor the harder.