Mr.Sleighter, moreover, had a remarkable instinct for values, more especially for salvage values.

It was this instinct that led him to the purchase of the National Machine Company wreckage, which included as well the Mapleton general store, with its assets in stock and book debts.
Mr.Sleighter's methods with the easy-going debtors of the company in Mapleton and the surrounding district were of such galvanic vigour that even so practiced a procrastinator as Farmer Martin found himself actually drawing money from his hoarded bank account to pay his store debts--a thing unheard of in that community--and to meet overdue payments upon the various implements which he had purchased from the National Machine Company.

It was not until after the money had been drawn and actually paid that Mr.Martin came fully to realise the extraordinary nature of his act.
"That there feller," he said, looking from the receipt in his hand to the store door through which the form of Mr.Sleighter had just vanished, "that there feller, he's too swift fer me.

He ain't got any innards to speak of; he'd steal the pants off a dog, he would." The application of these same galvanically vigorous methods to Mr.
Gwynne's debtors produced surprising results.

Mr.Sleighter made the astounding discovery that Mr.Gwynne's business instead of being bankrupt would produce not only one hundred cents on the dollar, but a slight profit as well.