God and the Man by Robert W. Buchanan — Read

When Robert Christianson was dead and buried, there came at last the revelations that had long been predicted. First of all, it was discovered in a general way that he was far more heavily in debt than any one had guessed; that, indeed, his affairs were a ravelled skein which it would take all the ingenuity of the law or all its cruelty to disentangle. Then, when the various threads of obligation were separated from each other, and the widow and her children thought that the coast was clear, came a letter, like a thunderbolt, announcing that the freehold of the greater part of the farm lands was under a mortgage, that the interest was long in arrear, and that, to crown all, the holder of the fatal mortgage was their hereditary enemy, Richard Orchardson of the Willows.

At first it was too horrible for belief. The very thought was an outrage on the beloved dead. The widow sat with stern sceptical face, while the boy Christian was loud in his expression of indignation. But confirmation quickly came. It was made only too clear that the deceased farmer, in the extremity of his distress, had accepted assistance from the enemy of his father and his father's father, and had given as substantial security the mortgage upon the choicest of the farm lands.