"I won't be able to do so next winter, for I shall be on wages. You're going to be a farmer, aren't you?"

"I expect to. We've got a good farm as farms go around here. But it seems about all we can do to pay our fertilizer bills and get a living off it."

"Then why don't you go about fitting yourself for your job?" "asked Hiram. Be a good farmer—an up-to-date farmer.

"No fellow expects to be a machinist, or an electrician, or the like, without spending some time under good instructors. Most that I know about soils, and fertilizers, and plant development, and the like, I learned from my father, who kept abreast of the times by reading and experiment.

"You can stumble along, working at your trade of farming, and only half knowing it all your life; that's what most farmers do, in fact. They are too lazy to take up the scientific side of it and learn why.

"That's the point—learn why you do things that your father did, and his father did, and his father before him. There's usually good reason why they did it—a scientific reason which somebody dug out by experiment ages ago; but you ought to be able to tell why."

"I suppose that's so," admitted Henry, as they worked on, side by side. "But I don't know what father would say if I sprung a college course on him!"

"I'd find out," returned Hiram, laughing. "You'd better spend your money that way than for a horse and buggy. That's the highest ambition of most boys in the country."

The labor of bushing and grubbing these acres of lowland was no light one. Hiram insisted that every stub and root be removed that a heavy plow could not tear out. They had made some progress by noon, however, when Sister came down with their dinner.

Hiram built a campfire over which the coffee was re-heated, and the three ate together, Sister enjoying the picnic to the full. She insisted on helping in the work by piling the brush and roots into heaps for burning, and she remained until midafternoon.

"I like that Henry boy," she confided to Hiram. "He don't pull my braids, or poke fun at me."

But Sister was developing and growing fast these days. She was putting on flesh and color showed in her cheeks. They were no longer hollow and sallow, and she ran like a colt-and was almost as wild.

The work of clearing the bottom land could not be continued daily; but the boys got in three full days that week, and Saturday morning. Henry, did not wish to work on Saturday afternoon, for in this locality almost all the farmers knocked off work at noon Saturday and went to town.

But when Henry shouldered his tools to go home at noon, Sister appeared as usual with the lunch, and she and Hiram cut fishing rods and planned to have a real picnic.

Trout and mullet were jumping in the pools under the bank; and they caught several before stopping to eat their own meal. The freshly caught fish were a fine addition to the repast.

They went back to fishing after a while and caught enough for supper at the farmhouse. Just as they were reeling up their lines the silence of the place was disturbed by a strange sound.

"There's a motorcycle coming!" cried Sister, jumping up and looking all around.

There was a bend in the river below this bottom, and another above; so they could not see far in either direction unless they climbed to the high ground. For a minute Hiram could not tell in which direction the sound was coming; but he knew the steady put-put-put must be the exhaust of a motor-boat.

It soon poked its nose around the lower turn. It was a good-sized boat and instantly Hiram recognized at least one person aboard.

Miss Lettie Bronson, in a very pretty boating costume, was in the bow. There were half a dozen other girls with her—well dressed girls, who were evidently her friends from the St. Beris school at Scoville.

"Oh, oh! what a pretty spot!" cried Lettie, on the instant. "We'll go ashore here and have our luncheon, girls."

She did not see Hiram and Sister for a moment; but the latter tugged at Hiram's sleeve.

"I've seen that girl before," she whispered. "She came in the carriage with the man who spoke to you—you remember? She asked me if I had always lived in the country, and how I tore my frock."

"Isn't she pretty?" returned Hiram.

"Awfully. But I'm not sure that I like her yet."

Suddenly Lettie saw Hiram and the girl beside him. She started, flushed a little, and then gave Hiram a cool little nod and turned her gaze from him. Her manner showed that he was not "down in her good books," and the young fellow flushed in turn.

"I don't know as we'd better try to make the bank here, Miss," said the man who was directing the motor-boat. "The current's mighty sharp."

"I want to land here," said Lettie, decidedly. "It's the prettiest spot we've seen—isn't it, girls?"

Her friends agreed. Hiram, casting a quick eye over the ruffled surface of the river, saw that the man was right. How well the stream below was fitted for motor-boating he did not know; but he was pretty sure that there were too many ledges just under the surface here to make it safe for the boat to go farther.

"I intend to land here-right by that big tree!" commanded Lettie Bronson, stamping her foot.

"Well, I dunno," drawled the man; and just then the bow of the boat swung around, was forced heavily down stream by the current, and slam it went against a reef!

The man shot off the engine instantly. The bow of the boat was lodged on the rock, and tip-tilted considerably. The girls screamed, and Lettie herself was almost thrown into the water, for she was standing.



CHAPTER XVII. MR. PEPPER APPEARS

But Hiram noted again that Lettie Bronson did not display terror. While her friends were screaming and crying, she sat perfectly quiet, and for a minute said never a word.

"Can't you back off?" Hi heard her ask the boatman.

"Not without lightening her, Miss. And she may have smashed a plank up there, too. I dunno."

The Western girl turned immediately to Hiram, who had now come to the bank's edge. She smiled at him charmingly, and her eyes danced. She evidently appreciated the fact that the young farmer had her at a disadvantage—and she had meant to snub him.

"I guess you'll have to help me again, Mr. Strong," she said. "What will we do? Can you push out a plank to us, or something?"

"I'm afraid not, Miss Bronson," he returned. "I could cut a pole and reach it to the boat; but you girls couldn't walk ashore on it."

"Oh, dear! have we got to wade?" cried one of Lettie's friends.

"You can't wade. It's too deep between the shore and the boat," Hiram said, calmly.

"Then—then we'll stay here till the tide rises and dr-dr-drowns us!" wailed another of the girls, giving way to sobs.

"Don't be a goose, Myra Carroll!" exclaimed Lettie. "If you waited here for the tide to rise you'd be gray-haired and decrepit. The tide doesn't rise here. But maybe a spring flood would wash you away."

At that the frightened one sobbed harder than ever. She was one of those who ever see the dark side of adventure. There was no hope on her horizon.

"I dunno what you can do for these girls," said the man. "I'd git out and push off the boat, but I don't dare with them aboard."

But Hiram's mind had not been inactive, if he was standing in seeming idleness. Sister tugged at his sleeve again and whispered:

"Have they got to stay there and drown, Hi?"

"I guess not," he returned, slowly. "Let's see: this old sycamore leans right out over them. I can shin up there with the aid of the big grapevine. Then, if I had a rope——"

"Shall I run and get one?" demanded Sister, listening to him.

"Hullo!" exclaimed Hiram, speaking to the man in the boat.

"Well?" asked the fellow.

"Haven't you got a coil of strong rope aboard?"

"There's the painter," said the man.

"Toss it ashore here," commanded Hiram.

"Oh, Hiram Strong!" cried Lettie. "You don't expect us to walk tightrope, do you?" and she began to giggle.

"No. I want you to unfasten the end of the rope. I want it clear—that's it," said Hiram. "And it's long enough, I can see."

"For what?" asked Sister.

"Wait and you'll see," returned the young farmer, hastily coiling the rope again.

He hung it over his shoulder and then started to climb the big sycamore. He could go up the bole of this leaning tree very quickly, for the huge grapevine gave him a hand-hold all the way.

"Whatever are you going to do?" cried Lettie Bronson, looking up at him, as did the other girls.

"Now," said Hiram, in the first small crotch of the tree, which was almost directly over the stranded launch, "if you girls have any pluck at all, I can get you ashore, one by one."

"What do you mean for us to do, Hiram?" repeated Lettie.

The young farmer quickly fashioned a noose at the end of the line—not a slipnoose, for that would tighten and hurt anybody bearing upon it. This he dropped down to the boat and Lettie caught it.

"Get your head and shoulders through that noose, Miss Bronson," he commanded. "Let it come under your arms. I will lift you out of the boat and swing you back and forth—there's none of you so heavy that I can't do this, and if you wet your feet a little, what's the odds?"

"Oh, dear! I can never do that!" squealed one of the other girls.

"Guess you'll have to do it if you don't want to stay here all night," returned Lettie, promptly. "I see what you want, Hiram," she added, and quickly adjusted the loop.

"Now, when you swing out over the bank, Sister will grab you, and steady you. It will be all right if you have a care. Now!" cried Hiram.

Lettie Bronson showed no fear at all as he drew her up and she swung out of the boat over the swiftly-running current. Hiram laid along the tree-trunk in an easy position, and began swinging the girl at the end of the rope, like a pendulum.

The river bank being at least three feet higher than the surface of the water; he did not have to shift the rope again as he swung the girl back and forth.

Sister, clinging with her left hand to the grapevine, leaned forward and clutched Lettie's hand. When she seized it, Sister backed away, and the swinging girl landed upright upon the bank.

"Oh, that's fun!" Lettie cried, laughing, loosing herself from "the loop. Now you come, Mary Judson!"

Thus encouraged they responded one by one, and even the girl who had broken down and cried agreed to be rescued by this simple means. The boatman then, after removing his shoes and stockings and rolling up his trousers, stepped out upon the sunken rock and pushed off the boat.

But it was leaking badly. He dared not take aboard his passengers again, but turned around and went down stream as fast as he could go so as to beach the boat in a safe place.

"Now how'll we get back to Scoville?" cried one of Lettie's friends. "I can never walk that far."

Sister had dropped back, shyly, behind Hiram, when he descended the tree. She had aided each girl ashore; but only Lettie had thanked her. Now she tugged at Hiram's sleeve.

"Take 'em home in our wagon," she whispered.

"I can take you to Scoville—or to Miss Bronson's—in the farm wagon," Hiram said, smiling. "You can sit on straw in the bottom and be comfortable."

"Oh, a straw ride!" cried Lettie. "What fun! And he can drive us right to St. Beris—And think what the other girls will say and how they'll stare!"

The idea seemed a happy one to all the girls save the cry-baby, Myra Carroll. And her complaints were drowned in the laughter and chatter of the others.

Hiram picked up the tools, Sister got the string of fish, and they set out for the Atterson farmhouse. Lettie chatted most of the way with Hiram; but to Sister, walking on the other side of the young farmer, the Western girl never said a word.

At the house it was the same. While Hiram was cleaning the wagon and putting a bed of straw into it, and currying the horse and gearing him to the wagon, Mrs. Atterson brought a crock of cookies out upon the porch and talked with the girls from St. Beris. Sister had run indoors and changed her shabby and soiled frock for a new gingham; but when she came down to the porch, and stood bashfully in the doorway, none of the girls from town spoke to her.

Hiram drove up with the farm-wagon. Most of the girls had accepted the adventure in the true spirit now, and they climbed into the wagon-bed on the clean straw with laughter and jokes. But nobody invited Sister to join the party.

The orphan looked wistfully after the wagon as Hiram drove out of the yard. Then she turned, with trembling lip, to Mother Atterson: "She—she's awfully pretty," she said, "and Hiram likes her. But she—they're all proud, and I guess they don't think much of folks like us, after all."

"Shucks, Sister! we're just good as they be, every bit," returned Mrs. Atterson, bruskly.

"I know; mebbe we be," admitted Sister, slowly. "But it don't feel so."

And perhaps Hiram had some such thought, too, after he had driven the girls to the big boarding school in Scoville. For they all got out without even thanking him or bidding him good-bye—all save Lettie.

"Really, we are a thousand times obliged to you, Hiram Strong," she said, in her very best manner, and offering him her hand. "As the girls were my guests I felt I must get them home again safely—and you were indeed a friend in need."

But then she spoiled it utterly, by adding:

"Now, how much do I owe you, Hiram?" and took out her purse. "Is two dollars enough?" This put Hiram right in his place. He saw plainly that, friendly as the Bronsons were, they did not look upon a common farm-boy as their equal—not in social matters, at least.

"I could not take anything for doing a neighbor a favor, Miss Bronson," said Hiram, quietly. "Thank you. Good-day."

Hiram drove back home feeling quite as depressed as Sister, perhaps. Finally he said to himself:

"Well, some day I'll show 'em!"

After that he put the matter out of his mind and refused to be troubled by thoughts of Lettie Bronson, or her attitude toward him.

Spring was advancing apace now. Every day saw the development of bud, leaf and plant. Slowly the lowland was cleared and the brush and roots were heaped in great piles, ready for the torch.

Hiram could not depend upon this six acres as their only piece of corn, however. There was the four-acre lot between the barnyard and the pasture in which he proposed to plant the staple crop.

He drew out the remainder of the coarse manure and spread it upon this land, as far as it would go. For enriching the remainder of the corn crop he would have to depend upon a commercial fertilizer. He drew, too, a couple of tons of lime to be used on this corn land, and left it in heaps to slake.

And then, out of the clear sky of their progress, came a bolt as unexpected as could be. They had been less than a month upon the farm. Uncle Jeptha had not been in his grave thirty days, and Hiram was just getting into the work of running the place, with success looming ahead.

He had refused Mr. Bronson's offer of a position and had elected to stick by Mrs. Atterson. He had looked forward to nothing to disturb the contract between them until the time should be fulfilled.

Yet one afternoon, while he was at work in the garden, Sister came out to him all in a flurry.

"Mis' Atterson wants you! Mis' Atterson wants you!" cried the girl. "Oh, Hiram! something dreadful's going to happen. I know, by the way Mis' Atterson looks. And I don' like the looks o' that man that's come to see her."

Hiram unhooked the horse at the end of the row and left Sister to lead him to the stable. He went into the house after knocking the mud off his boots.

There, sitting in the bright kitchen, was the sharp-featured, snaky-looking man with whom Hiram had once talked in town. He knew his name was Pepper, and that he did something in the real estate line, and insurance, and the like.

"Jest listen to what this man says, Hiram," said Mrs. Atterson, grimly.

"My name's Pepper," began the man, eyeing Hiram curiously.

"So I hear," returned the young farmer.

"Before old Mr. Atterson died we got to talking one day when he was in town about his selling."

"Well?" returned Hiram. "You didn't say anything about that when you offered twelve hundred for this place."

"Well," said the man, stubbornly, "that was a good offer."

Hiram turned to Mrs. Atterson. "Do you want to sell for that price?"

"No, I don't, Hi," she said.

"Then that settles it, doesn't it? Mrs. Atterson is the owner, and she knows her own mind."

"I made Uncle Jeptha a better offer," said Mr. Pepper, "and I'll make Mrs. Atterson the same—sixteen hundred dollars. It's a run-down farm, of course——"

"If Mrs. Atterson doesn't want to sell," interrupted Hiram, but here his employer intervened.

"There's something more, Hi," she said, her face working "strangely. Tell him, you Pepper!"

"Why, the old man gave me an option on the place, and I risked a twenty dollar bill on it. The option had—er—a year to run; dated February tenth last; and I've decided to take the option up," said Mr. Pepper, his shrewd little eyes dancing in their gaze from Hiram to the old lady and back again.



CHAPTER XVIII. A HEAVY CLOUD

Now, a rattlesnake is poisonous, but he gives fair warning; a swamp moccasin lies in wait for the unwary and strikes without sign or sound. Into Hiram Strong's troubled mind came the thought that Mr. Pepper was striking like his prototype of the swamps.

A snaky sort of a man was Mr. Pepper—sly, a hand-rubber as he talked, with a little, sickly grin playing about his thin, mean mouth. When he opened it Hiram almost expected to see a forked tongue run out.

At least, of one thing was the young farmer sure: Mr. Pepper was no more to be trusted than a serpent. Therefore, he did not take a word that the man said on trust.

He recovered from the shock which the statement of the real estate man had caused, and he uttered no expression of either surprise, or trouble. Mrs. Atterson he could see was vastly disturbed by the statement; but somebody had to keep a cool bead in this matter.

"Let's see your option," Hiram demanded, bruskly.

"Why—if Mrs. Atterson wishes to see it——"

"You show it to Hi, you Pepper-man," snapped the old lady. "I wouldn't do a thing without his advice."

"Oh, well, if you consider a boy's advice material——"

"I know Hi's honest," declared the old lady, tartly. "And that's what I'm sure you ain't! Besides," she added, sadly, "Hi's as much interested in this thing as I be. If the farm's got to be sold, it puts Hi out of a job."

"Oh, very well," said the real estate man, and he drew a rather soiled, folded paper from his inner pocket.

He seemed to hesitate the fraction of a second about showing the paper. It increased Hi's suspicion—this hesitancy. If the man had a perfectly good option on the farm, why didn't he go about the matter boldly?

But when he got the paper in his own hands he could see nothing wrong with it. It seemed written in straight-forward language, the signatures were clear enough, and as he had seen and read Uncle Jeptha's will, he was quite sure that this was the old man's signature to the option which, for the sum of twenty dollars in hand paid to him, he agreed to sell his farm, situated so-and-so, for sixteen hundred dollars, cash, same to be paid over within one year of date.

"Of course," said Hiram, slowly, handing back the paper—indeed, Pepper had kept the grip of his forefinger and thumb on it all the time—"Of course, Mrs. Atterson's lawyer must see this before she agrees to anything."

"Why, Hiram! I ain't got no lawyer," exclaimed the old lady.

"Go to Mr. Strickland, who made Uncle Jeptha's will," Hiram said to her. Then he turned to Pepper:

"What's the name of the witness to that old man's signature?"

"Abel Pollock."

"Oh! Henry's father?"

"Yes. He's got a son named Henry."

"And who's the Notary Public?"

"Caleb Schell. He keeps the store just at the crossroads as you go into town."

"I remember the store," said Hiram, thoughtfully.

"But Hiram!" cried Mrs. Atterson, "I don't want to sell the farm."

"We'll be sure this paper is all straight before you do sell, Mrs. Atterson."

"Why, I just won't sell!" she exclaimed. "Uncle Jeptha never said nothing in his will about giving this option. And that lawyer says that in a couple of years the farm will be worth a good deal more than this Pepper offers."

"Why, Mrs. Atterson!" exclaimed the real estate man, cheerfully, "as property is selling in this locality now, sixteen hundred dollars is a mighty good offer for your farm. You ask anybody. Why, Uncle Jeptha knew it was; otherwise he wouldn't have given me the option, for he didn't believe I'd come up with the price. He knew it was a high offer."

"And if it's worth so much to you, why isn't it worth more to Mrs. Atterson to keep?" demanded Hiram, sharply.

"Ah! that's my secret—why I want it," said Pepper, nodding. "Leave that to me. If I get bit by buying it, I shall have to suffer for my lack of wisdom."

"You ain't bought it yet—you Pepper," snapped Mrs. Atterson.

"But I'm going to buy it, ma'am," replied he, rather viciously, as he stood up, ready to depart. "I shall expect to hear from you no later than Monday."

"I won't sell it!"

"You'll have to. If you refuse to sign I'll go to the Chancery Court. I'll make you."

"Well. Mebbe you will. But I don't know. I never was made to do anything yet. By no man named Pepper—you can take that home with you," she flung after him as he walked out and climbed into the buggy.

But whereas Mrs. Atterson showed anger, Hiram went back to work in the field with a much deeper feeling racking his mind. If the option was all right—and of course it must be—this would settle their occupancy of the farm.

Of course he could not hold Mrs. Atterson to her contract. She could not help the situation that had now arisen.

His Spring's work had gone for nothing. Sixteen hundred dollars, even in cash, would not be any great sum for the old lady. And she had burdened herself with the support of Sister—and with Old Lem Camp, too!

"Surely, I can't be a burden on her. I'll have to hustle around and find another job. I wonder if Mr. Bronson would take me on now?"

But he knew that the Westerner already had a man who suited him, since Hiram had refused the chance Bronson offered. And, then, Lettie had shown that she felt he had not appreciated their offer. Perhaps her father felt the same way.

Besides, Hiram had a secret wish not to put himself under obligation to the Bronsons. This feeling may have sprung from a foolish source; nevertheless it was strong with the young farmer.

It looked very much to him as though this sudden turn of circumstances was "a facer". If Mrs. Atterson had to sell the farm he was likely to be thrown on his own resources again.

For his own selfish sake Hiram was worried, too. After all, he would be unable to "make good" and to show people that he could make the old, run-down farm pay a profit to its owner.

But Hiram Strong couldn't believe it.

The more he milled over the thing in his mind, the less he understood why Uncle Jeptha, who was of acute mind right up to the hour of his death, so all the neighbors said, should have neglected to speak about the option he had given Pepper on the farm.

And here they were, right in the middle of the Spring work, with crops in the ground and—as Mrs. Atterson agreed—it would be too late to go hunting a farm for this present season.

But Hiram kept to work. He had Sister and Old Lem Camp out in the garden, hand-weeding and thinning the carrots, onions, and other tender plants. That Saturday he went through the entire garden—that part already planted—with either the horse cultivator, or his wheel-hoe.

In planting parsnips, carrots, and other slow-germinating seeds, he had mixed a few radish seed in the seeding machine; these sprang up quickly and defined the rows, so that the space between rows could be cultivated before the other plants had scarcely broke the surface of the soil.

Now these radish were beginning to be big enough to pull. Hiram brought in a few bunches for their dinner on Saturday—the first fruits of the garden.

"Now, I dunno why it is," said Mrs. Atterson, complacently, after setting her teeth in the first radish and relishing its crispness, "but this seems a whole lot better than the radishes we used to buy in Crawberry. I 'spect what's your very own always seems better than other folks's," and she sighed and shook her head.

She was thinking of the thing she had to face on Monday. Hiram hated to see them all so downhearted. Sister's eyes were red from weeping; Old Lem Camp sat at the table, muttering and playing with his food again instead of eating.

But Hiram felt as though he could not give up to the disaster that had come to them. The thought that—in some way—Pepper was taking an unfair advantage of Mother Atterson knocked continually at the door of his mind.

He went over, to himself, all that had passed in the kitchen the day before when the real estate man had come to speak with Mrs. Atterson. How had Pepper spoken about the option? Hadn't there been some hesitancy in the fellow's manner—in his speech, indeed? Just what had Pepper said? Hiram concentrated his mind upon this one thing. What had the man said?

"The option had—er—one year to run."

Those were the fellow's very words. He hesitated before he pronounced the length of time. And he was not a man who, in speaking, had any stammering of tongue.

Why had he hesitated? Why should it trouble him to state the time limit of the option?

Was it because he was speaking a falsehood?

The thought stung Hiram like a thorn in the flesh. He put away the tool with which he was working, slipped on a coat, and started for Henry Pollock's house, which lay not more than half a mile from the Atterson farm, across the fields.



CHAPTER XIX. THE REASON WHY

HIRAM found Abel Pollock mending harness in the shed. Hiram opened his business bluntly, and told the farmer what was up. Mr. Pollock scratched his head, listened attentively, and then sat down to digest the news.

"You gotter move—jest when you've got rightly settled on that place?" he demanded. "Well, that's 'tarnal bad! And from what Henry tells me, you're a young feller with idees, too."

"I don't care so much for myself," Hiram hastened to say. "It's Mrs. Atterson I'm thinking about. And she had just made up her mind that she was anchored for the rest of her life. Besides, I don't think it is a wise thing to sell the property at that price."

"No. I wouldn't sell if I was her, for no sixteen hundred dollars."

"But she's got to, you see, Mr. Pollock. Pepper has the option signed by her Uncle Jeptha——"

"Jeptha Atterson was no fool," interrupted Pollock. "I can't understand his giving an option on the farm, with all this talk of the railroad crossing the river."

"But, Mr. Pollock!" exclaimed Hiram, eagerly, "you must know all about this option. You signed as a witness to Uncle Jeptha's signature."

"No! you don't mean that?" exclaimed the farmer. "My name to it, too?"

"Yes. And it was signed before Caleb Schell the notary public."

"So it was—so it was, boy!" declared the other, suddenly smiting his knee. "I remember I witnessed Uncle Jeptha's signature once. But that was way back there in the winter—before he was took sick."

"Yes, sir?" said Hiram, eagerly.

"That was an option on the old farm. So it was. But goodness me, boy, Pepper must have got him to renew it, or something. That option wouldn't have run till now."

Hiram told him the date the paper was executed.

"That's right, by Jo! It was in February."

"And it was for a year?"

Mr. Pollock stared at him in silence, evidently thinking deeply.

"If you remember all about it, then," Hiram continued, "it's hardly worth while going to Mr. Schell, I suppose."

"I remember, all right," said Pollock, slowly. "It was all done right there in Cale Schell's store. It was one rainy afternoon. There was several of us sitting around Cale's stove. Pepper was one of us. In comes Uncle Jeptha. Pepper got after him right away, but sort of on the quiet, to one side.

"I heard 'em. Pepper had made him an offer for the farm that was 'way down low, and the old man laughed at him.

"We hadn't none of us heard then the talk that came later about the railroad. But Pepper has a brother-in-law who's in the office of the company, and he thinks he gits inside information.

"So, for some reason, he thought the railroad was going to touch Uncle Jeptha's farm. O' course, it ain't. It's goin' over the river by Ayertown.

"I don't see what Pepper wants to take up the option for, anyway. Unless he sees that you're likely to make suthin' out o' the old place, and mebbe he's got a city feller on the string, to buy it."

"It doesn't matter what his reason is. Mrs. Atterson doesn't want to sell, and if that option is all right, she must," said Hiram. "And you are sure Uncle Jeptha gave it for twelve months?"

"Twelve months?" ejaculated Pollock, suddenly. "Why—no—that don't seem right," stammered the farmer, scratching his head.

"But that's the way the option reads."

"Well—mebbe. I didn't just read it myself—no, sir. They jest says to me:

"'Come here, Pollock, and witness these signatures' So, I done it—that's all. But I see Cale put on his specs and read the durn thing through before he stamped it. Yes, sir. Cale's the carefulest notary public we ever had around here.

"Say!" said Mr. Pollock. "You go to Cale and ask him. It don't seem to me the old man give Pepper so long a time."

"For how long was the option to run, then?" queried Hiram, excitedly.



"Wal, I wouldn't wanter say. I don't wanter git inter trouble with no neighbor. If Cale says a year is all right, then I'll say so, too. I wouldn't jest trust my memory."

"But there is some doubt in your mind, Mr. Pollock?"

"There is. A good deal of doubt," the farmer assured him. "But you ask Cale."

This was all that Hiram could get out of the elder Pollock. It was not very comforting. The young farmer was of two minds whether he should see Caleb Schell, or not.

But when he got back to the house for supper, and saw the doleful faces of the three waiting there, he couldn't stand inaction.

"If you don't mind, I want to go to town tonight, Mrs. Atterson," he told the old lady.

"All right, Hiram. I expect you've got to look out for yourself, boy. If you can get another job, you take it. It's a 'tarnal shame you didn't take up with that Bronson's offer when he come here after you."

"You needn't feel so," said Hiram. "You're no more at fault than I am. This thing just happened—nobody could foretell it. And I'm just as sorry as I can be for you, Mother Atterson."

The old woman wiped her eyes.

"Well, Hi, there's other things in this world to worry over besides gravy, I find," she said. "Some folks is born for trouble, and mebbe we're some of that kind."

It was not exactly Mr. Pollock's doubts that sent Hiram Strong down to the crossroads store that evening. For the farmer had seemed so uncertain that the boy couldn't trust to his memory at all.

No. It was Hiram's remembrance of Pepper's stammering when he spoke about the option. He hesitated to pronounce the length of time the option had been drawn for. Was it because he knew there was some trick about the time-limit?

Had the real estate man fooled old Uncle Jeptha in the beginning? The dead man had been very shrewd and careful. Everybody said so.

He was conscious and of acute mind right up to his death. If there was an option on the farm be surely would have said something about it to Mr. Strickland, or to some of the neighbors.

It looked to Hiram as though the old farmer must have believed that the option had expired before the day of his death.

Had Pepper only got the old man's promise for a shorter length of time, but substituted the paper reading "one year" when it was signed? Was that the mystery?

However, Hiram could not see how that would help Mrs. Atterson, for even testimony of witnesses who heard the discussion between the dead man and the real estate agent, could not controvert a written instrument. The young fellow knew that.

He harnessed the old horse to the light wagon and drove to the crossroads store kept by Caleb Schell. Many of the country people liked to trade with this man because his store was a social gathering-place.

Around a hot stove in the winter, and a cold stove at this time of year, the men gathered to discuss the state of the country, local politics, their neighbors' business, and any other topic which was suggested to their more or less idle minds.

On the outskirts of the group of older loafers, the growing crop of men who would later take their places in the soap-box forum lingered; while sky-larking about the verge of the crowd were smaller boys who were learning no good, to say the least, in attaching themselves to the older members of the company.

There will always be certain men in every community who take delight in poisoning the minds of the younger generation. We muzzle dogs, or shoot them when they go mad. The foul-mouthed man is far more vicious than the dog, and should be impounded.

Hiram hitched his horse to the rack before the store and entered the crowded place. The fumes of tobacco smoke, vinegar, cheese, and various other commodities gave a distinctive flavor to Caleb Schell's store—and not a pleasant one, to Hiram's mind.

Ordinarily he would have made any purchases he had to make, and gone out at once. But Schell was busy with several customers at the counter and he was forced to wait a chance to speak with the old man.

One of the first persons Hiram saw in the store was young Pete Dickerson, hanging about the edge of the crowd. Pete scowled at him and moved away. One of the men holding down a cracker-keg sighted Hiram and hailed him in a jovial tone:

"Hi, there, Mr. Strong! What's this we been hearin' about you? They say you had a run-in with Sam Dickerson. We been tryin' to git the pertic'lars out o' Pete, here, but he don't seem ter wanter talk about it," and the man guffawed heartily.

"Hear ye made Sam give back the tools he borrowed of the old man?" said another man, whom Hiram knew to be Mrs. Larriper's son-in-law.

"You are probably misinformed," said Hiram, quietly. "I know no reason why Mr. Dickerson and I should have trouble—unless other neighbors make trouble for us."

"Right, boy—right!" called Cale Schell, from behind the counter, where he could hear and comment upon all that went on in the middle of the room, despite the attention he had to give to his customers.

"Well, if you can git along with Sam and Pete, you'll do well," laughed another of the group.

The Dickersons seemed to be in disfavor in the community, and nobody cared whether Pete repeated what was said to his father, or not.

"I was told," pursued the first speaker, screwing up one eye and grinning at Hiram, "that you broke Sam's gun over his head and chased Pete a mile. That right, son?"

"You will get no information from me," returned Hiram, tartly.

"Why, Pete ought to be big enough to lick you alone, Strong," continued the tantalizer. "Hey, Pete! Don't sneak out. Come and tell us why you didn't give this chap the lickin' you said you was going to?"

Pete only glared at him and slunk out of the store. Hiram turned his back on the whole crowd and waited at the end of the counter for Mr. Schell. The storekeeper was a tall, portly man, with a gray mustache and side-whiskers, and a high bald forehead.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Strong?" he asked, finally having got rid of the customers who preceded Hiram.

Hiram, in a low voice, explained his mission. Schell nodded his head at once.

"Oh, yes," he said; "I remember about the option. I had forgotten it, for a fact; but Pepper was in here yesterday talking about it. He had been to your house."

"Then, sir, to the best of your remembrance, the option is all right?"

"Oh, certainly! Pollock witnessed it, and I put my seal on it. Yes, sir; Pepper can make the old lady sell. It's too bad, if she wants to remain there; but the price he is to pay isn't so bad——"

"You have no reason to doubt the validity of the option?" cried Hiram, in desperation.

"Assuredly not."

"Then why didn't Uncle Jeptha speak of it to somebody before he died, if the option had not run out at that time?"

"Humph!"

"You grant the old man was of sound mind?"

"Sound as a pine knot," agreed the storekeeper, still reflective.

"Then how is it he did not speak to his lawyer about the option when he saw Mr. Strickland within an hour of his death?"

"That does seem peculiar," admitted the storekeeper, slowly.

"And Mr. Pollock says he thinks there is something wrong about the option," went on Hiram, eagerly.

"Oh, Pollock! Pah!" returned Schell. "I don't suppose he even read it."

"But you did?"

"Assuredly. I always read every paper. If they don't want me to know what the agreement is, they can take it to some other Notary," declared the storekeeper with a jolly laugh.

"And you are sure that the option was to run a year?"

"Of course the option's all right—Hold on! A year, did you say? Why—seems to me—let's look this thing up," concluded Caleb Schell, suddenly.

He dived into his little office and produced a ledger from the safe. This he slapped down on the counter between them.

"I'm a careful man, I am," he told Hiram. "And I flatter myself I've got a good memory, too. Pepper was in here yesterday sputtering about the option and I remember now that he spoke of its running a year.

"But it seems to me," said Schell, pawing over the leaves of his ledger, "that the talk between him and old Uncle Jeptha was for a short time. The old man was mighty cautious—mighty cautious."

"That's what Mr. Pollock says," cried Hiram, eagerly.

"But you've seen the option?

"Yes."

"And it reads a year?

"Oh, yes."

"Then how you going to get around that?" demanded Schell, with conviction.

"But perhaps Uncle Jeptha signed the option thinking it was for a shorter time."

"That wouldn't help you none. The paper was signed. And why should Pepper have buncoed him—at that time?"

"Why should he be so eager to get the farm now?" asked Hiram.

"Well, I'll tell you. It ain't out yet. But two or three days ago the railroad board abandoned the route through Ayertown and it is agreed that the new bridge will be built along there by your farm somewhere.

"The river is as narrow there as it is anywhere for miles up and down, and they will stretch a bridge from the high bank on your side, across the meadows, to the high bank on the other side. It will cut out grades, you see. That's what has started Pepper up to grab off the farm while the option is valid."

"But, Mr. Schell, is the option valid?" cried Hiram, anxiously.

"I don't see how you're going to get around it. Ah! here's the place. When I have sealed a paper I make a note of it—what the matter was about and who the contracting parties were. I've done that for years. Let—me—see."

He adjusted his spectacles. He squinted at the page, covered closely with writing. Hiram saw him whispering the words he read to himself. Suddenly the blood flooded into the old man's face, and he looked up with a start at his interrogator.

"Do you mean to say that option's for a year? he demanded.

"That is the way it reads—now," whispered Hiram, watching him closely.

The old man turned the book around slowly on the counter. His stubbed finger pointed to the two or three scrawled lines written in a certain place.

Hiram read them slowly, with beating heart.



CHAPTER XX. AN ENEMY IN THE DARK

The whispered conference between Hiram Strong and the storekeeper could not be heard by the curious crowd around the cold stove; nor did it last for long.

Caleb Schell finally closed his ledger and put it away. Hiram shook hands with him and walked out.

On the platform outside, which was illuminated by a single smoky lantern, a group of small boys were giggling, and they watched Hiram unhitch the old horse and climb into the spring wagon with so much hilarity that the young farmer expected some trick.

The horse started off all right, he missed nothing from the wagon, and so he supposed that he was mistaken. The boys had merely been laughing at him because he was a stranger.

But as Hiram got some few yards from the hitching rack, the seat was suddenly pulled from under him, and he was left sprawling on his back in the bottom of the wagon.

A yell of derision from the crowd outside the store assured him that this was the cause of the boys' hilarity. Luckily his old horse was of quiet disposition, and he stopped dead in his tracks when the seat flew out of the back of the wagon.

A joke is a joke. No use in showing wrath over this foolish amusement of the crossroads boys. But Hiram got a little the best of them, after all.

The youngsters had scattered when the "accident" occurred. Hiram, getting out to pick up the seat, found the end of a strong hemp line fastened to it. The other end was tied to the hitching rack in front of the store.

Instead of casting off the line from the seat, Hiram walked back to the store and cast that end off.

"At any rate, I'm in a good coil of hemp rope," he said to one of the men who had come out to see the fun. "The fellow who owns it can come and prove property; but I shall ask a few questions of him."

There was no more laughter. The young farmer walked back to his wagon, set up the seat again, and drove on.

The roadway was dark, but having been used all his life to country roads at night, Hiram had no difficulty in seeing the path before him. Besides, the old horse knew his way home.

He drove on some eighth of a mile. Suddenly he felt that the wagon was not running true. One of the wheels was yawing. He drew in the old horse; but he was not quick enough.

The nigh forward wheel rolled off the end of the axle, and down came the wagon with a crash!

Hiram was thrown forward and came sprawling—on hands and knees—upon the ground, while the wheel rolled into the ditch. He was little hurt, although the accident might have been serious.

And in truth, he knew it to be no accident. A burr does not easily work off the end of an axle. He had greased the old wagon just before he started for the store, and he knew he had replaced each nut carefully.

This was a deliberately malicious trick—no boy's joke like the tying of the rope to his wagon seat. And the axle was broken. Although he had no lantern he could see that the wagon could not be used again without being repaired.

"Who did it?" was Hiram's unspoken question, as he slowly unharnessed the old horse, and then dragged the broken wagon entirely out of the road so that it would not be an obstruction for other vehicles.

His mind set instantly upon Pete Dickerson. He had not seen the boy when he came out of the crossroads store. If the fellow had removed this burr, he had done it without anybody seeing him, and had then run home.

The young farmer, much disturbed over this incident, mounted the back of the old horse, and paced home. He only told Mrs. Atterson that he had met with an accident and that the light wagon would have to be repaired before it could be used again.

That necessitated their going to town on Monday in the heavy wagon. And Hiram dragged the spring wagon to the blacksmith shop for repairs, on the way.

But before that, the enemy in the dark had struck again. When Hiram went to the barnyard to water the stock, Sunday morning, he found that somebody had been bothering the pump.

The bucket, or pump-valve, was gone. He had to take it apart, cut a new valve out of sole leather, and put the pump together again.

"We'll have to get a cross dog, if we remain here," he told Mrs. Atterson. "There is somebody in the neighborhood who means us harm."

"Them Dickersons!" exclaimed Mrs. Atterson.

"Perhaps. That Pete, maybe. If I once caught him up to his tricks I'd make him sorry enough."

"Tell the constable, Hi," cried Sister, angrily.

"That would make trouble for his folks. Maybe they don't know just how mean Pete is. A good thrashing—and the threat of another every time he did anything mean—would do him lots more good."

This wasn't nice Sunday work, but it was too far to carry water from the house to the horse trough, so Hiram had to repair the pump.

On Monday morning he routed out Sister and Mr. Camp at daybreak. He had been up and out for an hour himself, and on a bench under the shed he had heaped two or three bushels of radishes which he had pulled and washed, ready for bunching.

He showed his helpers how the pretty scarlet balls were to be bunched, and found that Sister took hold of the work with nimble fingers, while Mr. Camp did very well at the unaccustomed task.

"I don't know, Hi," said Mrs. Atterson, despondently, "that it's worth while your trying to sell any of the truck, if we're going to leave here so soon."

"We haven't left yet," he returned, trying to speak cheerfully. "And you might as well get every penny back that you can. Perhaps an arrangement can be made whereby we can stay and harvest the garden crop, at any rate."

"You can make up your mind that that Pepper man won't give us any leeway; he isn't that kind," declared Mother Atterson, with conviction.

Hiram made a quick sale of the radishes at several of the stores, where he got eighteen cents a dozen bunches; but some he sold at the big boarding-school—St. Beris—at a retail price.

"You can bring any other fresh vegetables you may have from time to time," the housekeeper told him. "Nobody ever raised any early vegetables about Scoville before. They are very welcome."

"Once we get a-going," said Hiram to Mrs. Atterson, "you or Sister can drive in with the spring wagon and dispose of the surplus vegetables. And you might get a small canning outfit—they come as cheap as fifteen dollars—and put up tomatoes, corn, peas, beans, and other things. Good canned stuff always sells well."

"Good Land o' Goshen, Hiram!" exclaimed the old lady, in desperation. "You talk jest as though we were going to stay on the farm."

"Well, let's go and see Mr. Strickland," replied the young farmer, and they set out for the lawyer's office.

Mrs. Atterson sat in the ante-room while Hiram asked to speak with the old lawyer in private for a minute. The conference was not for long, and when Hiram came back to his employer he said:

"Mr. Strickland has sent his junior clerk out for Pepper. He thinks we'd better talk the matter over quietly. And he wants to see the option, too."

"Oh, Hiram! There ain't no hope, is there?" groaned the old lady.

"Well, I tell you what!" exclaimed the young fellow, "we won't give in to him until we have to. Of course, if you refuse to sign a deed he can go to chancery and in the end you will have to pay the costs of the action.

"But perhaps, even at that, it might be well to hold him off until you have got the present crop out of the ground."

"Oh, I won't go to law," said Mrs. Atterson, decidedly. "No good ever come of that."

After a time Mr. Strickland invited them both into his private office. The attorney spoke quietly of other matters while they waited for Pepper.

But the real estate man did not appear. By and by Mr. Strickland's clerk came back with the report that Pepper had been called away suddenly on important business.

"They tell me he went Saturday," said the clerk. "He may not be back for a week. But he said he was going to buy the Atterson place when he returned—he's told several people around town so."

"Ah!" said Mr. Strickland, slowly. "Then he has left that threat hanging, like the Sword of Damocles—over Mrs. Atterson's head?"

"I don't know nothin' about that sword, Mr. Strickland, nor no other sword, 'cept a rusty one that my father carried when he was a hoss-sodger in the Rebellion," declared Mother Atterson, nervously. "But if that Pepper man's got one belonging to Mr. Damocles, I shouldn't be at all surprised. That Pepper looked to me like a man that would take anything he could lay his hands on—if he warn't watched!"

"Which is a true and just interpretation of Pepper's character, I believe," observed the lawyer, smiling.

"And we've got to give up the farm at his say-so—at any time?" demanded the old lady.

"If his option is good," said Mr. Strickland. "But I want to see the paper—and I can assure you, Mrs. Atterson, that I shall subject it to the closest possible scrutiny.

"There is a possibility that Pepper's option may be questioned before the courts. Do not build too many hopes on this," he added, quickly, seeing the old lady's face light up.

"You have a very good champion in this young man," and the lawyer nodded at Hiram.

"He suspected all was not right with the option and he has dug up the fact that the witness to your uncle's signature, and the man before whom the paper was attested, both believed the option was for a short time.

"Caleb Schell's book shows that it was for thirty days. Uncle Jeptha undoubtedly thought it was for that length of time and therefore the option expired several days before he died.

"Mr. Pepper may have fallen under temptation. He considered heretofore, like everybody else, that the railroad would pass us by in this section. Pepper gambled twenty dollars on its coming along the boundary of the Atterson farm—between you and Darrell's tract—and thought he had lost.

"Then suddenly the railroad board turned square around and voted for the condemnation of the original route. Pepper remembered the option he had risked twenty dollars on. If it was originally for thirty days, it was void, of course; but Uncle Jeptha is dead, and he hopes perhaps, that nobody else will dispute the validity of it."

"It's a forgery, then?" cried Mrs. Atterson.

"It may be a forgery. We do not know," said the lawyer, hastily. "At any rate, he has the paper, and he is a shrewd rascal."

Mrs. Atterson's face was a study.

"Do you mean to tell me we have got to lose the farm?" she demanded.

"My dear lady, that I cannot tell you. I must see this option. We must put it to the test——"

"But Schell and Pollock will testify that the option was for thirty days," cried Hiram.

"Perhaps. To the best of their remembrance and belief, it was for thirty days. A shrewd lawyer, however—and Pepper would employ a shrewd one—would turn their evidence inside out.

"No evidence—in theory, at least—can controvert a written instrument, signed, sealed, and delivered. Even Cale Schell's memoranda book cannot be taken as evidence, save in a contributory way. It is not direct. It is the carelessly scribbled record, in pencil, of a busy man.

"No. If Pepper puts forward the option we have got to see if that option has been tampered with—the paper itself, I mean. If the fellow substituted a different instrument, at the time of signing, from the one Uncle Jeptha thought he signed, you have no case—I tell you frankly, my dear lady."

"Then, it ain't no use. We got to lose the place, Hiram," said Mrs. Atterson, when they left the lawyer's office.

"I wouldn't lose heart. If Pepper is scared, he may not trouble you again."

"It's got ten months more to run," said she. "He can keep us guessin' all that time."

"That is so," agreed Hiram, nodding thoughtfully. "But, of course, as Mr. Strickland says, by raising a doubt as to the validity of the option we can hold him off for a while—maybe until we have made this year's crop."

"It's goin' to make me lay awake o' nights," sighed the old lady. "And I thought I'd got through with that when I stopped worryin' about the gravy."

"Well, we won't talk about next year," agreed Hiram. "I'll do the best I can for you through this season, if Pepper will let us alone. We've got the bottom land practically cleared; we might as well plough it and put in the corn there. If we make a crop you'll get all your money back and more. Mr. Strickland told me privately that the option, unless it read that way, would not cover the crops in the ground. And I read the option carefully. Crops were not mentioned."

So it was decided to go ahead with the work as already planned; but neither the young farmer, nor his employer, could look forward cheerfully to the future.

The uncertainty of what Pepper would eventually do was bound to be in their thought, day and night.



CHAPTER XXI. THE WELCOME TEMPEST

To some youths this matter of the option would have been such a clog that they would have lost interest and slighted the work. But not so with Hiram Strong.

He counted this day a lost one, however; he hated to leave the farm for a minute when there was so much to do.

But the next morning he got the plow into the four-acre corn lot; and he did nothing but the chores that week until the ground was entirely plowed. Then Henry Pollock came over and gave him another day's work and they finished grubbing the lowland.

The rubbish was piled in great heaps down there, ready for burning. As long as the rain held off, Hiram did not put fire to the bush-heaps.

But early in the following week the clouds began to gather in a quarter for rain, and late in the afternoon, when the air was still, he took a can of coal oil, and with Sister and Mr. Camp, and even Mrs. Atterson, at his heels, went down to the riverside to burn the brush heaps.

"There's not much danger of the fire spreading to the woods; but if it should," Hiram said, warningly, "it might, at this time of year, do your timber a couple of hundred dollars' worth of damage."

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Mother Atterson. "It does seem ridiculous to hear you talk that a-way. I never owned nothin' but a little bit of furniture before, and I expected the boarders to tear that all to pieces. I'm beginning to feel all puffed up and wealthy."

Hiram cut them all green pineboughs for beaters, and then set the fires, one after another. There were more than twenty of the great piles and soon the river bottom, from bend to bend, was filled with rolling clouds of smoke. As the dusk dropped, the yellow glare of the fire illuminated the scene.

Sister clapped her hands and cried:

"Ain't this bully? It beats the Fourth of July celebration in Crawberry. Oh, I'd rather be on the farm than go to heaven!"

They had brought their supper with them, and leaving the others to watch the fires, and see that the grass did not tempt the flames to the edge of the wood, Hiram cast bait into the river and, in an hour, drew out enough mullet and "bull-heads" to satisfy them all, when they were broiled over the hot coals of the first bonfire to be lighted.

They ate with much enjoyment. Between nine and ten o'clock the fires had all burned down to coals.

A circle of burned-over grass and rubbish surrounded each fire. There seemed no possibility that the flames could spread to the mat of dry leaves on the side hill.

So they went home, a lantern guiding their feet over the rough path through the timber, stopping at the spring for a long, thirst-quenching draught.

The sky was as black as ink. Now and again a faint flash in the westward proclaimed a tempest in that direction. But not a breath of wind was stirring, and the rain might not reach this section.

A dull red glow was reflected on the clouds over the river-bottom. When Hiram looked from his window, just as he was ready for bed, that glow seemed to have increased.

"Strange," he muttered. "It can't be that those fires have spread. There was no chance for them to spread. I—don't—understand it!"

He sat at the window and stared out through the darkness. There was little wind as yet; it was a fact, however, that the firelight flickered on the low-hung clouds with increasing radiance.

"Am I mad?" demanded the young farmer, suddenly leaping up and drawing on his garments again. "That fire is spreading."

He dressed fully, and ran softly down the stairs and left the house. When he came out in the clear the glow had not receded. There was a fire down the hillside, and it seemed increasing every moment.

He remembered the enemy in the dark, and without stopping to rouse the household, ran on toward the woods, his heart beating heavily in his bosom.

Slipping, falling at times, panting heavily because of the rough ground, Hiram came at last through the more open timber to the brink of that steep descent, at the bottom of which lay the smoky river-bottom.

And indeed, the whole of the lowland seemed filled with stifling clouds of smoke. Yet, from a dozen places along the foot of the hill, yellow flames were starting up, kindling higher, and devouring as fast as might be the leaves and tinder left from the wrack of winter.

The nearest bonfire had been a hundred yards from the foot of this hill. His care, Hiram knew, had left no chance of the dull coals in any of the twenty heaps spreading to the verge of the grove.

Man's hand had done this. An enemy, waiting and watching until they had left the field, had stolen down, gathered burning brands, and spread them along the bottom of the hill, where the increasing wind might scatter the fire until the whole grove was in a blaze.

Not only was Mrs. Atterson's timber in danger, but Darrell's tract and that lying beyond would be overwhelmed by the flames if they were allowed to spread.

On the other side, Dickerson had cut his timber a year or two before, clear to the river. The fire would not burn far over his line. Whoever had done this dastardly act, Dickerson's property would not be damaged.

But Hiram lent no time to trouble. His work was cut out for him right here and now—and well he knew it!

He had brought the small axe with him, having caught it up from the doorstep. Now he used it to cut a green bough, and then ran with the latter down the hill and set upon the fire-line like a madman.

The smoke, spread here and there by puffs of rising wind, half choked him. It stung his eyes until they distilled water enough to blind him. He thrashed and fought in the fumes and the murk of it, stumbling and slipping, one moment half-knee deep in quick-springing flames, the next almost overpowered by the smudge that rose from the beaten mat of leaves and rubbish.

It was a lone fight. He had to do it all. There had been no time to rouse either the neighbors, or the rest of the family.

If he did not overcome these flames—and well he knew it—Mother Atterson would arise in the morning to see all her goodly timber scorched, perhaps ruined!

"I must beat it out—beat it out!" thought Hiram, and the repetition of the words thrummed an accompaniment upon the drums of his ears as he thrashed away with a madman's strength.

For no sane person would have tackled such a hopeless task. Before him the flames suddenly leaped six feet or more into the air. They overtopped him as they writhed through a clump of green-briars. The wind puffed the flame toward him, and his face was scorched by the heat.

He lost his eyebrows completely, and the hair was crisped along the front brim of his hat.

Then with a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a tall pine in lurid yellow.

This pine, like a huge torch, began to give off a thick, black smoke. Would some wakeful neighboring farmer, seeing it, know the danger that menaced and come to Hiram's help?

For yards he had beaten flat the flames and stamped out every spark. Behind him was naught but rolling smoke. It was dark there. No flames were eating up the slope.

But toward Darrell's tract the fire seemed on the increase. He could not catch up with it. And this solitary, sentinel pine, ablaze now in all its head, threatened to fling sparks for a hundred yards.

If the wind continued to rise, the forest was doomed!

His green branch had burned to a crisp. He had lost his axe in the darkness and the smoke, and now he tore another bough, by main strength, from its parent stem.

Hiram Strong worked as though inspired; but to no purpose in the end. For the flames increased. Puff after puff of wind drove the fire on, scattering brands from the blazing pine; and now another, and another, tree caught. The glare of the conflagration increased.

He flung down the useless bough. Fire was all about him. He had to leap suddenly to one side to escape a burst of flame that had caught in a jungle of green-briars.

Then, of a sudden, a crash of thunder rolled and reverberated through the glen. Lightning for an instant lit up the meadows and the river. The glare of it almost blinded the young farmer and, out of the line of fire, he sank to the earth and covered his eyes, seared by the sudden, compelling light.

Again and again the thunder rolled, following the javelins of lightning that seemed to dart from the clouds to the earth. The tempest, so long muttering in the West, had come upon him unexpectedly, for he had given all his attention to the spreading fire.

And now came the rain—no refreshing, sweet, saturating shower; but a thunderous, blinding fall of water that first set the burning woods to steaming and then drowned out every spark of fire on upland as well as lowland.

It was a cloudburst—a downpour such as Hiram had seldom experienced before. Exhausted, he lay on the bank and let the pelting rain soak him to the skin.

He did not care. Half drowned by the beating rain, he only crowed his delight at the downpour. Every spark of fire was flooded out. The danger was past.

He finally arose, and staggered through the downpour to the house, only happy that—by a merciful interposition of Providence—the peril had been overcome.

He tore off his clothing on the stoop, there in the pitch darkness, and crept up to his bedroom where he rubbed himself down with a crash-towel, and finally tumbled into bed and slept like a log till broad daylight.



CHAPTER XXII. FIRST FRUITS

For the first time since they had come to the farm, Hiram was the last to get up in the house. And when he came down to breakfast, still trembling from the exertion of the previous night, Mrs. Atterson screamed at the sight of him.

"For the good Land o' Goshen!" she cried. "You look like a singed chicken, Hiram Strong! Whatever have you been doing to yourself?"

He told them of the fight he had had while they slept. But he could talk about it jokingly now, although Sister was inclined to snivel a little over his danger.

"That Dickerson boy ought to be lashed—Nine and thirty lashes—none too much—This sausage is good—humph!—and pancakes—fit for the gods—But he'll come back—do more damage—the butter, yes I I want butter—and syrup, though two spreads is reckless extravagance—Eh? eh? can't prove anything against that Dickerson lout?-well, mebbe not."

So Old Lem Camp commented upon the affair. But Hiram could not prove that the neighbor's boy had done any of these things which pointed to a malicious enemy.

The young farmer began to wonder if he could not lay a trap, and so bring about his undoing.

As soon as the ground was in fit condition again (for the nights rain had been heavy) Hiram scattered the lime he had planned to use upon the four acres of land plowed for corn, and dragged it in with a spike-toothed harrow.

Working as he was with one horse alone, this took considerable time, and when this corn land was ready, it was time for him to go through the garden piece again with the horse cultivator.

Sister and Lem Camp, both, had learned to use the man-weight wheel-hoe, and the fine stuff was thinned and the weeds well cut out. From time to time the young farmer had planted peas—both the dwarf and taller varieties—and now he risked putting in some early beans—"snap" and bush limas—and his first planting of sweet corn.

Of the latter he put in four rows across the garden, each, of sixty-five day, seventy-five day, and ninety day sugar corn—all of well-known kinds. He planned later to put in, every fortnight, four rows of a mid-length season corn, so as to have green corn for sale, and for the house, up to frost.

The potatoes were growing finely and he hilled them up for the first time. He marked his four-acre lot for field corn—cross-checking it three-feet, ten inches apart. This made twenty-seven hundred and fifty hills to the acre, and with the hand-planter—an ingenious but cheap machine—he dropped two and three kernels to the hill.

This upland, save where he had spread coarse stable manure, was not rich. Upon each corn-hill he had Sister throw half a handful of fertilizer. She followed him as he used the planter, and they planted and fertilized the entire four acres in less than two days.

The lime he had put into the land would release such fertility as remained dormant there; but Hiram did not expect a big crop of corn on that piece. If he made two good ears to the hill he would be satisfied.

He had knocked together a rough cold-frame, on the sunny side of the woodshed, to fit some old sash he had found in the barn. Into the rich earth sifted to make the bed in this frame, he transplanted tomato, egg-plant, pepper and other plants of a delicate nature. Early cabbage and cauliflower had already gone into the garden plot, and in the midst of an early and saturating rain, all day long, he had transplanted table-beets into the rows he had marked out for them.

This variety of vegetables were now all growing finely. He sold nearly six dollars' worth of radishes in town, and these radishes he showed Mrs. Atterson were really "clear profit." They had all been pulled from the rows of carrots and other small seeds.

There were several heavy rains after the tempest which had been so Providential; the ground was well saturated, and the river had risen until it roared between its banks in a voice that could be heard, on a still day, at the house.

The rains started the vegetation growing by leaps and bounds; weeds always increase faster than any other growing thing.

There was plenty for Hiram to do in the garden, and he kept Sister and Old Lem Camp busy, too. They were at it from the first faint streak of light in the morning until dark.

But they were well—and happy. Mother Atterson, her heart troubled by thought of "that Pepper-man," could not always repress her smiles. If the danger of losing the farm were past, she would have had nothing in the world to trouble her.

The hundred eggs she had purchased for five dollars had proven more than sixty per cent fertile. Some advice that Hiram had given her enabled Mrs. Atterson to handle the chickens so that the loss from disease was very small.

He knocked together for her a couple of pens, eight feet square, which could be moved about on the grass every day. In these pens the seventy, or more, chicks thrived immensely. And Sister was devoted to them.

Meanwhile the old white-faced cow, that had been a terror to Mother Atterson at the start, had found her calf, and it was a heifer.

"Take my advice and raise it," said Hiram. "She is a scrub, but she is a pretty good scrub. You'll see that she will give a good measure of milk. And what this farm needs is cattle.

"If you could make stable manure enough to cover the cleared acres a foot deep, you could raise almost any crop you might name—and make money by it. The land is impoverished by the use of commercial fertilizers, unbalanced by humus."

"Well, I guess You know, Hiram," admitted Mrs. Atterson. "And that calf certainly is a pretty creeter. It would be too bad to turn it into veal."

Hiram did not intend to raise the calf expensively, however. He took it away from its mother right at the start, and in two weeks it was eating grass, and guzzling skimmed milk and calf-meal, while the old cow was beginning to show her employer her value.

Mrs. Atterson bought a small churn and quickly learned that "slight" at butter-making which is absolutely essential if one would succeed in the dairy business.

The cow turned out to pasture early in May, too; so her keep was not so heavy a burden. She lowed some after the calf; but the latter was growing finely under Hiram's care, and Mrs. Atterson had at least two pounds of butter for sale each week, and the housekeeper at the St. Beris school paid her thirty-five cents a pound for it.

Hiram gradually picked up a retail route in the town, which customers paid more for the surplus vegetables—and butter—than could be obtained at the stores. He had taught Sister how to drive, and sometimes even Mrs. Atterson went in with the vegetables.

This relieved the young farmer and allowed him to work in the fields. And during these warm, growing May days, he found plenty to do. Just as the field corn pushed through the ground he went into the lot with his 14-tooth harrow and broke up the crust and so killed the ever-springing weeds.

With the spikes on the harrow "set back," no corn-plants were dragged out of the ground. This first harrowing, too, mixed the fertilizer with the soil, and gave the corn the start it so sadly needed.

Busy as bees, the four transplanted people at the Atterson farmhouse accomplished a great deal during these first weeks of the warming season. And all four of them—Mrs. Atterson, Sister, Old Lem, and Hiram himself—enjoyed the work to the full.



CHAPTER XXIII. TOMATOES AND TROUBLE

Hiram Strong had decided that the market prospects of Scoville prophesied a good price for early tomatoes. He advised, therefore, a good sized patch of this vegetable.

He had planted in the window boxes seed of several different varieties. He had transplanted to the coldframe strong plants numbering nearly five hundred. He believed that, under garden cultivation, a tomato plant that would not yield fifty cents worth of fruit was not worth bothering with, while a dollar from a single plant was not beyond the bounds of probability.

It was safe, Hiram very well knew, to set out tomato plants in this locality much before the middle of May; yet he was willing to take some risks, and go to some trouble, for the sake of getting early ripened tomatoes into the Scoville market.

As Henry Pollock had prophesied, Hiram did not see much of his friend during corn-planting time. The Pollocks put nearly fifty acres in corn, and the whole family helped in the work, including Mrs. Pollock herself, and down to the child next to the baby. This little toddler amused his younger brother, and brought water to the field for the workers.

Other families in the neighborhood did the same, Hiram noticed. They all strained every effort to put in corn, cultivating as big a crop as they possibly could handle.

This was why locally grown vegetables were scarce in Scoville. And the young farmer proposed to take advantage of this condition of affairs to the best of his ability.

If they were only to remain here on the farm long enough to handle this one crop, Hiram determined to make that crop pay his employer as well as possible, although he, himself, had no share in such profit.

Henry Pollock, however, came along while Hiram was making ready his plat in the garden for tomatoes. The young farmer was setting several rows of two-inch thick stakes across the garden, sixteen feet apart in the row, the rows four feet apart. The stakes themselves were about four feet out of the ground.

"What ye doin' there, Hiram?" asked Henry, curiously. "Building a fence?"

"Not exactly."

"Ain't goin' to have a chicken run out here in the garden, be ye?"

"I should hope not! The chickens on this place will never mix with the garden trucks, if I have any say about it," declared Hiram, laughing.

"By Jo!" exclaimed Henry. "Dad says Maw's dratted hens eat up a couple hundred dollars' worth of corn and clover every year for him-runnin' loose as they do."

"Why doesn't he build your mother proper runs, then, plant green stuff in several yards, and change the flock over, from yard to yard?" "Oh, hens won't do well shut up; Maw says so," said Henry, repeating the lazy farmer's unfounded declaration-probably originated ages ago, when poultry was first domesticated.

"I'll show you, next year, if we are around here," said Hiram, "whether poultry will do well enclosed in yards."

"I told mother you didn't let your chickens run free, and had no hens with them," said Henry, thoughtfully.

"No. I do not believe in letting anything on a farm get into lazy habits. A hen is primarily intended to lay eggs. I send them back to work when they have hatched out their brood.

"Those home-made brooders of ours keep the chicks quite as warm, and never peck the little fellows, or step upon them, as the old hen often does."

"That's right, I allow," admitted Henry, grinning broadly.

"And some hens will traipse chicks through the grass and weeds as far as turkeys. No, sir! Send the hens back to business, and let the chicks shift for themselves. They'll do better."

"Them there in the pens certainly do look healthy," said his friend. "But you ain't said what you was doin' here, Hiram, setting these stakes?"

"Why, I'll tell you," returned Hiram. "This is my tomato patch."

"By Jo!" ejaculated Henry. "You don't want to set tomatoes so fur apart, do you?"

"No, no," laughed Hiram. "The posts are to string wires on. The tomatoes will be two feet apart in the row. As they grow I tie them to the wires, and so keep the fruit off the ground.

"The tomato ripens better and more evenly, and the fruit will come earlier, especially if I pinch back the ends of the vine from time to time, and remove some of the side branches."

"We don't do all that to raise a tomato crop. And we'll put in five acres for the cannery this year, as usual," said Henry, with some scorn.

"We run the rows out four feet apart, like you do, throwing up a list, in fact. Then father goes ahead with a stick, making a hole for the plant every three feet, so't they'll be check-rowed and we can cultivate them both ways—and we all set the plants.

"We never hand-hoe 'em—it don't pay. The cannery isn't giving but fifteen cents a basket this year—and it's got to be a full five-eighths basket, too, for they weigh 'em."

Hiram looked at him with a quizzical smile.

"So you set about thirty-six hundred and forty plants to the acre?" he said.

"I reckon so."

"And you'll have five acres of tomatoes?"

"Yep. So Dad says. He has contracted for that many. But our plants don't begin to be big enough to set out yet. We have to keep 'em covered nights."

"And I expect to have about five hundred plants in this patch," said Hiram, smiling. "I tell you what, Henry."

"Huh?" said the other boy. "I bet I take in from my patch—net income, I mean—this year as much as your father gets at the cannery for his whole crop."

"Nonsense!" cried Henry. "Maybe Dad'll make a hundred, or a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Sometimes tomatoes run as high as thirty dollars an acre around here."

"Wait and see," said Hiram, laughing. "It is going to cost me more to raise my crop, and market it, that's true. But if your father doesn't do better with his five acres than you say, I'll beat him."

"You can't do it, Hiram," cried Henry. "I can try, anyway," said Hiram, more quietly, but with confidence. "We'll see."

"And say," Henry added, suddenly, "I was going to tell you something. You won't raise these tomatoes—nor no other crop—if Pete Dickerson can stop ye."

"What's the matter with Pete now?" asked Hiram, troubled by thought of the secret enemy who had already struck at him in the dark.

"He was blowing about what he'd do to you down at the crossroads last evening," said Henry. "He and his father both hate you like poison, I expect.

"And the fellers down to Cale Schell's are always stirrin' up trouble. They think it is sport. Why, Pete got so mad last night he could ha' chewed tacks!"

"I have said nothing about Pete to anybody," said Hiram, firmly.

"That don't matter. They say you have. They tell Pete a whole lot of stuff just to see him git riled.

"And last night he slopped over. He said if you reported around that he put fire to Mis' Atterson's woods, he'd put it to the house and barns! Oh, he was wild."

Hiram's face flushed, and then paled.

"Did Pete try to bum the woods, Hiram?" queried Henry, shrewdly.

"I never even said I thought so to you, have I?" asked the young farmer, sternly.

"Nope. I only heard that fire got into the woods by accident, when I was in town. Somebody was hunting through there for coon, and saw the burned-over place. That's all the fellers at Cale's place knew, too, I reckon; but they jest put it up to Pete to mad him."

"And they succeeded, did they?" said Hiram, sternly.

"I reckon."

"Loose-mouthed people make more trouble in a community than downright mean ones," declared Hiram. "If I have any serious trouble with the Dickersons, like enough it will be because of the interference of the other neighbors."

"But," said Henry, preparing to go on, "Pete wouldn't dare fire your stable now—after sayin' he'd do it. He ain't quite so big a fool as all that."

But Hiram was not so sure. He had this additional trouble on his mind from this very hour, though he never said a word to Mrs. Atterson about it.

But every night before he went to bed be made around of the outbuildings to make sure that everything was right before he slept.



CHAPTER XXIV. "CORN THAT'S CORN"

Hiram caught sight of Pepper in town one day and went after him. He knew the real estate man had returned from his business trip, and the fact that the matter of the option was hanging fire, and troubling Mrs. Atterson exceedingly, urged Hiram go counter to Mr. Strickland's advice.

The lawyer had said: "Let sleeping dogs lie." Pepper had made no move, however, and the uncertainty was very trying both for the young farmer and his employer.

"How about that option you talked about, Mr. Pepper?" asked the "youth. Are you going to exercise it?"

"I've got time enough, ain't I?" returned the real estate man, eyeing Hiram in his very slyest way.

"I expect you have—if it really runs a year."

"You seen it, didn't you?" demanded Pepper.

"But we'd like Mr. Strickland to see it."

"He's goin' to act for Mrs. Atterson?" queried the man, with a scowl.

"Oh, yes."

"Well, he'll see it-when I'm ready to take it up. Don't you fret," retorted Pepper, and turned away.

This did not encourage the young farmer, nor was there anything in the man's manner to yield hope to Mrs. Atterson that she could feel secure in her title to the farm. So Hiram said nothing to her about meeting the man.

But the youth was very much puzzled. It really did seem as though Pepper was afraid to show that paper to Mr. Strickland.

"There's something queer about it, I believe," declared the youth to himself. "Somewhere there is a trick. He's afraid of being tripped up on it. But, why does he wait, if he knows the railroad is going to demand a strip of the farm and he can get a good price for it?

"Perhaps he is waiting to make sure that the railroad will condemn a piece of Mrs. Atterson's farm. If the board should change the route again, Pepper would have a farm on his hands that he might not be able to sell immediately at a profit.

"For we must confess, that sixteen hundred dollars, as farms have sold in the past around here, is a good price for the Atterson place. That's why Uncle Jeptha was willing to give an option for a month—if that was, in the beginning, the understanding the old man had of his agreement with Pepper.

"However, we might as well go ahead with the work, and take what comes to us in the end. I know no other way to do," quoth Hiram, with a sigh.

For he could not be very cheerful with the prospect of making only a single crop on the place. His profit was to have come out of the second year's crop—and, he felt, out of that bottom land which had so charmed him on the day he and Henry Pollock had gone over the Atterson Place.

Riches lay buried in that six acres of bottom. Hiram had read up on onion culture, and he believed that, if he planted his seed in hot beds, and transplanted the young onions to the rich soil in this bottom, he could raise fully as large onions as they did in either Texas or the Bermudas.

"Of course, they have the advantage of a longer season down there," thought Hiram, "and cheap labor. But maybe I can get cheap labor right around here. The children of these farmers are used to working in the fields. I ought to be able to get help pretty cheap.

"And when it comes to the market—why, I've got the Texas growers, at least, skinned a little! I can reach either the Philadelphia or New York market in a day. Yes; given the right conditions, onions ought to pay big down there on that lowland."

But this was not the only crop possibility be turned over in his mind. There were other vegetables that would grow luxuriantly on that bottom land—providing, always, the flood did not come and fulfill Henry Pollock's prophecy.

"Two feet of water on that meadow, eh?" thought Hiram. "Well, that certainly would be bad. I wouldn't want that to happen after the ground was plowed this year, even. It would tear up the land, and sour it, and spoil it for a corn-crop, indeed."

So he was down a good deal to the river's edge, watching the ebb and flow of the stream. A heavy rain would, over night, fill the river to its very brim and the open field, even beyond the marshy spot, would be a-slop with standing water.

"It sure wouldn't grow alfalfa," chuckled Hiram to himself one day. "For the water rises here a good deal closer to the surface than four feet, and alfalfa farmers declare that if the springs rise that high, there is no use in putting in alfalfa. Why! I reckon just now the water is within four inches of the top of the ground."

If the river remained so high, and the low ground so saturated with water, he knew, too, that he could not get the six acres plowed in time to put in corn this year. And it was this year's crop he must think about first.

Even if Pepper did not exercise his option, and turn Mrs. Atterson out of the place, a big commercial crop of onions, or any other better-paying crop, could only be tried the second year.

Hiram had got his seed corn for the upland piece of the man who raised the best corn in the community. He had tried the fertility of each ear, discarded those which proved weakly, or infertile, and his stand of corn for the four acres, which was now half hand high, was the best of any farmer between the Atterson place and town.

But this corn was a hundred-and-ten-day variety. The farmer he got it of told him that he had raised a crop from a piece planted the day before the Fourth of July; but it was safer to get it in at least by June fifteenth.

And here it was past June first, and the meadow land had not yet been plowed.

"However," Hiram said to Henry, when they walked down to the riverside on Sunday afternoon, "I'm going ahead on Faith—just as the minister said in church this morning. If Faith can move mountains, we'll give it a chance to move something right down here."

"I dunno, Hiram," returned the other boy, shaking his head. "Father says he'll git in here for you with three head and a Number 3 plow by the middle of this week if you say so—'nless it rains again, of course. But he's afeared you're goin' to waste Mrs. Atterson's money for her."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," quoted Hiram, grimly. "If a farmer didn't take chances every year, the whole world would starve to death!"

"Well," returned Henry, smiling too, "let the other fellow take the chances—that's dad's motter."

"Yes. And the 'chancey' fellow skims the cream of things every time. No, sir!" declared the young fellow, "I'm going to be among the cream-skimmers, or I won't be a farmer at all."

So the plow was put into the bottom-land Wednesday—and put in deep. By Friday night the whole piece was plowed and partly harrowed.

Hiram had drawn lime for this bottom-land, proposing to use beside only a small amount of fertilizer. He spread this lime from his one-horse wagon, while Henry drag-harrowed behind him, and by Saturday noon the job was done.

The horses had not mired at all, much to Mr. Pollock's surprise. And the plow had bit deep. All the heavy sod of the piece was covered well, and the seed bed was fairly level—for corn.

Although the Pollocks did not work on Saturday afternoon, Hiram did not feel as though he could stop at this time. Most of the farmers had already planted their last piece of corn. Monday would be the fifteenth of the month.

So the young farmer got his home-made corn-row marker down to the river-bottom and began marking the piece that afternoon.

This marker ran out three rows at each trip across the field, and with a white stake at either end, the youth managed to run his rows very straight. He had a good eye.