Rulers of Kings by Gertrude Atherton

Fessenden was so preoccupied that even the voices and laughter of girls did not attract his attention for some moments. He was inserting the little nickel troughs called spiles into the trees of the maple orchard, and hanging the red buckets beneath to catch the sap. Dolf was in the sugar shanty nearby, scouring out the vats, for the boiling would begin to-morrow, and maple-sugar was an industry from which the Nettlebecks derived a yearly income of several hundred dollars. This year Fessenden, who was now seventeen and tired of being a farm-hand, had stipulated that he was to work on shares, arguing that if he did two-thirds of the work he was entitled to at least one-third of the profits. Nettlebeck, after some demur, and a long growl over his pipe one evening, capitulated when young Abbott threatened to stake off a claim on government land and in partnership with Jeff Hunter build his own vats.

Fessenden was feeling much elated over his rise in life, and his imagination was running riot in a great future to which sugar should be the stepping-stone -- he had recently read several articles on self-made men in magazines sent to Morris -- when his house of cards came tumbling down, and the future financier rose from the ruins, a blushing, shivering, gibbering swain.