This was Frank's system--the system of too many farmers, far more than would be believed.

Details of course vary, and not all, like Frank, need three loans at least in the season to keep them going.

It is not every man who mortgages his lambs, his ewes (the draught from a flock for sale), and the standing crops in succession.
But of late years farming has been carried on in such an atmosphere of loans, and credit, and percentage, and so forth, that no one knows what is or what is not mortgaged.

You see a flock of sheep on a farm, but you do not know to whom they belong.

You see the cattle in the meadow, but you do not know who has a lien upon them.