In this case he did not check-row his field. The land was rich—phenomenally rich, he believed. If he was going to have a crop of corn here, he wanted a crop worth while.

On the uplands the farmers were satisfied with from thirty to fifty baskets of ear-corn to the acre. If this lowland was what he believed it was, Hiram was sure it would make twice that.

And at that his corn crop here would only average twenty-five dollars to the acre—not a phenomenal profit for Mrs. Atterson in that.

But the land would be getting into shape for a better crop, and although corn is a crop that will soon impoverish ground, if planted year after year on the same piece, Hiram knew that the humus in this soil on the lowland was almost inexhaustible.

So he marked his rows the long way of the field—running with the river.

One of the implements left by Uncle Jeptha had been a one-horse corn-planter with a fertilizer attachment. Hiram used this, dropping two or three grains twenty-four inches apart, and setting the fertilizer attachment to one hundred and fifty pounds to the acre.

He was until the next Wednesday night planting the piece. Meanwhile it had not rained, and the river continued to recede. It was now almost as low as it had been the day Lettie Bronson's boating party had been "wrecked" under the big sycamore.

Hiram had not seen the Bronsons for some weeks, but about the time he got his late corn planted, Mr. Bronson drove into the Atterson yard, and found Hiram cultivating his first corn with the five-tooth cultivator.

"Well, well, Hiram!" exclaimed the Westerner, looking with a broad smile over the field. "That's as pretty a field of corn as I ever saw. I don't believe there is a hill missing."

"Only a few on the far edge, where the moles have been at work."

"Moles don't eat corn, Hiram."

"So they say," returned the young farmer, quietly. "I never could make up my mind about it.

"I'm sure, however, that if they are only after slugs and worms which are drawn to the corn hills by the commercial fertilizer, the moles do fully as much damage as the slugs would.

"You see, they make a cavity under the corn hill, and the roots of the plant wither. Excuse me, but I'd rather have Mr. Mole in somebody else's garden."

Mr. Bronson laughed. "Well, what the little gray fellows eat won't kill us. But they do spoil otherwise handsome rows. How did you get such a good stand of corn, Hiram?"

"I tested the seed in a seed box early in the spring. I wouldn't plant corn any other way. Aside from the hills the moles have spoiled, and a few an old crow pulled up, I've got no re-planting to do.

"And replanted hills are always behind the crop, and seldom make anything but fodder. If it wasn't for the look of the field, I'd never re-plant a hill of corn.

"Of course, I've got to thin this—two grains in the hill is enough on this land."

Mr. Bronson looked at him with growing surprise.

"Why, my boy, you talk just as though you had tilled the ground for a score of years. Who taught you so much about farming?"

"One of the best farmers who ever lived," said Hiram, with a smile. "My father. And he taught me to go to the correct sources for information, too."

"I believe you!" exclaimed Mr. Bronson. "And you're going to have 'corn that's corn', as we say in my part of the country, on this piece of land."

"Wait!" said Hiram, smiling and shaking his head.

"Wait for what?"

"Wait till you see the corn on my bottom-land—if the river down there doesn't drown it out. If we don't have too much rain, I'm going to have corn on that river-bottom that will beat anything in this county, Mr. Bronson."

And the young farmer spoke with assurance.



CHAPTER XXV. THE BARBECUE

On the seventeenth day of June Hiram had "grappled out" a mess of potatoes for their dinner. They were larger than hen's eggs and came upon the table mealy and white.

Potatoes were selling at retail in Scoville for two dollars the bushel. Before the end of that week—after the lowland corn was planted—Hiram dug two rows of potatoes, sorted them, and carted them to town, together with some bunched beets, a few bunches of young carrots, radishes and salad.

The potatoes he sold for fifty cents the five-eighth basket, from house to house, and he brought back, for his load of vegetables, ten dollars and twenty cents, which he handed to Mrs. Atterson, much to that lady's joy.

"My soul and body, Hiram!" she exclaimed. "This is just a God-send—no less. Do you know that we've sold nigh twenty-five dollars' worth of stuff already this spring, besides that pair of pigs I let Pollock have, and the butter to St. Beris?"

"And it's only a beginning," Hiram told her. "Wait til' the peas come along—we'll have a mess for the table in a few days now. And the sweet corn and tomatoes.

"If you and Sister can do the selling, it will help out a whole lot, of course. I wish we had another horse."

"Or an automobile," said Sister, clapping her hands. "Wouldn't it be fine to run into town in an auto, with a lot of vegetables? Then Hiram could keep right at work with the horse and not have to stop to harness up for us."

"Shucks, child!" admonished Mrs. Atterson. "What big idees you do get in that noddle o' yourn."

The girls' boarding school and the two hotels proved good customers for Hiram's early vegetables; for nobody around Scoville had potatoes at this time, and Hiram's early peas were two weeks ahead of other people's.

Having got a certain number of towns folks to expect him at least thrice a week, when other farmers had green stuff for sale they could not easily "cut out" Hiram later in the season.

And not always did the young farmer have to leave his work at home to deliver the vegetables and Mrs. Atterson's butter. Sister, or the old lady herself, could go to town if the load was not too heavy.

Of course, it cost considerable to live. And hogfood and grain for the horse and cow had to be bought. Hiram was fattening four of the spring shoats against winter. Two they could sell and two kill for their own use.

"Goin' to be big doin's on the Fourth this year, Hiram," said Henry Pollock, meeting the young farmer on the road from town one day. "Heard about it?"

"In Scoville, do you mean? They're going to have a 'Safe and Sane' Fourth, the Banner says."

"Nope. We don't think much of goin' to town Fourth of July. And this year there's goin' to be a big picnic in Langdon's Grove—that's up the river, you know."

"A public picnic?"

"Sure. A barbecue, we call it," said Henry. "We have one at the Grove ev'ry year. This time the two Sunday Schools is goin' to join and have a big time. You and Sister don't want to miss it. That Mr. Bronson's goin' to give a whole side o' beef, they tell me, to roast over the fires."

"A big banquet is in prospect, is it?" asked Hiram, smiling.

"And a stew! Gee! you never eat one o' these barbecue stews, did ye? Some of us will go huntin' the day before, and there'll be birds, and squirrels, as well as chickens in that stew—and lima beans, and corn, and everything good you can think of!" and Henry smacked his lips in prospect.

Then he added, bethinking himself of his errand:

"Everybody chips in and gives the things to eat. What'll you give, Hiram?"

"Some vegetables," said Hiram, quickly. "Mrs. Atterson won't object, I guess. Do they want tomatoes for their stew?"

"Won't be no tomatoes ripe, Hiram," said Henry, decidedly.

"There won't, eh? You come out and take a look at mine," said Hiram, laughing.

Of all the rows of vegetables in Hiram's garden plot, the thriftiest and handsomest were the trellised tomato plants. It took nearly half of Sister's time to keep the plants tied up and pinched back, as Hiram had taught her.

But the stalks were already heavily laden with fruit; and those hanging lowest on the sturdy vines were already blushing.

"By Jo!" gasped Henry. "You've done it, ain't you? But the cannery won't take 'em yet awhile—and they'll all be gone before September."

"The cannery won't get many of my tomatoes," laughed Hiram. "And these vines properly trained and cultivated as they are, will bear fruit up to frost. You wait and see."

"I'll have to tell dad to come and look at these. I dunno, Hiram, if you can sell 'em at retail, but you'll git as much for 'em as dad does for his whole crop—just as you said."

"That's what I'm aiming for," responded Hiram. "But would the ladies who cook the barbecue stew care for tomatoes, do you think?"

"We never git tomatoes this early," said Henry. "How about potatoes? And there ain't many folks dug any of theirn yet, but you."

So, after speaking with Mrs. Atterson, Hiram agreed to supply a barrel of potatoes for the barbecue, and the day before the Fourth, one of the farmers came with a wagon to pick up the supplies.

Everybody at the Atterson farm would go to the grove—that was understood.

"If one knocks off work, the others can," declared Mother Atterson. "You see that things is left all right for the critters, Hiram, and we'll tend to things indoors so that we can be gone till night."

"And do, Hiram, look out for my poults the last thing," cried Sister.

Mrs. Larriper had given Sister a setting of ten turkey eggs and every one of them had hatched under one of Mrs. Atterson's motherly old hens. At first the girl had kept the young turkeys and their foster mother right near the house, so that she could watch them carefully.

But poults are rangy, and these being particularly strong and thrifty, they soon ran the old hen pretty nearly to death.

So Hiram had built a coop into which they could go at night, safe from any vermin, and set it far down in the east lot, near the woods. Sister usually went down with a little grain twice a day to call them up, and keep them tame.

"But when they get big enough to roost in the fall, I expect we'll have to gather that crop with a gun," Hiram told her, laughing.

Many of the farmers teams were strung out along the road long before Hiram was ready to set out. He had made sure that the spring wagon was in good shape, and he had built an extra seat for it, so that the four rode very comfortably.

Like every other Fourth of July, the sun was broiling hot! And the dust rose in clouds as the faster teams passed their slow old nag.

Mrs. Atterson sat up very primly in her best silk, holding a parasol and wearing a pair of lace mits that had appeared on state occasions for the past twenty years, at least.

Sister was growing like a weed, and it was hard to keep her skirts and sleeves at a proper length. But she was an entirely different looking girl from the boarding house slavey whom Hiram remembered so keenly back in Crawberry.

As for Old Lem Camp, he was as cheerful as Hiram had ever seen him, and showed a deal of interest in everything about the farm, and had proved himself, as Mrs. Atterson had prophesied, a great help.

Scarcely a house along the road was not shut up and the dooryard deserted—for everybody was going to the barbecue. All but the Dickerson family. Sam was at work in the fields, and the haggard Mrs. Dickerson looked dumbly from her porch, with a crying baby in her scrawny arms as the Attersons and Hiram passed.

But Pete was at the barbecue. He was there when Hiram arrived, and he was making himself quite as prominent as anybody.

Indeed, he made himself so obnoxious finally, that one of the rough men who was keeping up the fires threatened to chuck Pete into the biggest one, and then cool him off in the river.

Otherwise, however, the barbecue passed off very pleasantly. The men who governed it saw that no liquor was brought along, and the unruly element to which Pete belonged was kept under with an iron hand.

There was so little "fun", of a kind, in Pete's estimation that, after the big event of the day—the banquet—he and some of his friends disappeared. And the picnicking ground was a much quieter and pleasanter place after their departure.

The newcomers into the community made many friends and acquaintances that day. Sister was going to school in the fall, and she found many girls of her age whom she would meet there.

Mrs. Atterson met the older ladies, and was invited to join no less than two "Ladies' Aids", and, as she said, "if she called on all the folks she'd agreed to visit, she'd be goin' ev'ry day from then till Christmas!"

As for Hiram, the men and older boys were rather inclined to jolly him a bit. Not many of them had been upon the Atterson place to see what he had done, but they had heard some stories of his proposed crops that amused them.

When Mr. Bronson, however, whom the local men knew to be a big farmer in the Middle West, and who owned many farms out there now, spoke favorably of Hiram's work, the local men listened respectfully.

"The boy's got it in him to do something," the Westerner said, in his hearty fashion. "You're eating his potatoes now, I understand. Which one of you can dig early potatoes like those?

"And he's got the best stand of corn in the county."

"On that river-bottom, you mean?" asked one.

"And on the upland, too. You fellows want to look about you a little. Most of you don't see beyond the end of your noses. You watch out, or Hiram Strong is going to beat every last one of you this year—and that's a run-down farm he's got, at that."



CHAPTER XXVI. SISTER'S TURKEYS

But Lettie was not at the barbecue, and to tell the truth, Hiram Strong was disappointed.

Despite the fact that she had seemed inclined to snub him, the young farmer was vastly taken with the pretty girl. He had seen nobody about Scoville as attractive as Lettie—nor anywhere else, for that matter!

He was too proud to call at the Bronson place, although Mr. Bronson invited him whenever he saw Hiram. And at first, Lettie had asked him to come, too.

But the Western girl did not like being thwarted in any matter—even the smallest. And when Hiram would not come to take Pete Dickerson's place, the very much indulged girl had showed the young farmer that she was offended.

However, the afternoon at Langdon's Grove passed very pleasantly, and Hiram and his party did not arrive at the farm again until dusk had fallen.

"I'll go down and shut your turkeys up for the night, Sister," Hiram said, after he had done the other chores for he knew the girl would be afraid to go so far from the house by lantern-light.

And when he reached the turkey coop, 'way down in the field, Hiram was very glad indeed that he had come instead of the girl.

For the coop was empty. There wasn't a turkey inside, or thereabout. It had been dark an hour and more, then, and the poults should long since have been hovered in the coop.

Had some marauding fox, or other "varmint", run the young turkeys off their reservation? That seemed improbable at this time of year—and so early in the evening. Foxes do not usually go hunting before midnight, nor do other predatory animals.

Hiram had brought the barn lantern with him, and he took a look around the neighborhood of the empty coop.

"My goodness!" he mused, "Sister will cry her eyes out if anything's happened to those little turks. Now, what's this?"

The ground was cut up at a little distance from the coop. He examined the tracks closely.

They were fresh—very fresh indeed. The wheel tracks of a light wagon showed, and the prints of a horse's shod hoofs.

The wagon had been driven down from the main road, and had turned sharply here by the coop. Hiram knew, too, that it had stood there for some time, for the horse had moved uneasily.

Of course, that proved the driver had gotten out of the wagon and left the horse alone. Doubtless there was but one thief—for it was positive that the turkeys had been removed by a two-footed—not a four-footed—marauder.

"And who would be mean enough to steal Sister's turkeys? Almost everybody in the neighborhood has a few to fatten for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Who—did—this?"

He followed the wheel marks of the wagon to the road. He saw the track where it turned into the field, and where it turned out again. And it showed plainly that the thief came from town, and returned in that direction.

Of course, in the roadway it was impossible to trace the particular tracks made by the thief's horse and wagon. Too many other vehicles had been over the road within the past hour.

The thief must have driven into the field just after night-fall, plucked the ten young turkeys, one by one, out of the coop, tying their feet and flinging them into the bottom of his wagon. Covered with a bag, the frightened turkeys would never utter a peep while it remained dark.

"I hate to tell Sister—I can't tell her," Hiram said, as he went slowly back to the house. For Sister had been "counting chickens" again, and she had figured that, at eighteen cents per pound, live weight, the ten turkeys would pay for all the clothes she would need that winter, and give her "Christmas money", too.

The young farmer shrank from meeting the girl again that night, and he delayed going into the house as long as possible. Then he found they had all retired, leaving him a cold supper at the end of the kitchen table.

The disappearance of the turkeys kept Hiram tossing, wakeful, upon his bed for some hours. He could not fail to connect this robbery with the other things that had been done, during the past weeks, to injure those living at the Atterson farm.

Was the secret enemy really Peter Dickerson? And had Pete committed this crime now?

Yet the horse and wagon had come from the direction opposite the Dickerson farm, and had returned as it came.

"I don't know whether I am accusing that fellow wrongfully, or not," muttered Hiram, at last. "But I am going to find out. Sister isn't going to lose her turkeys without my doing everything in my power to get them back and punish the thief."

He usually arose in the morning before anybody else was astir, so it was easy for Hiram to slip out of the house and down to the field to the empty turkey coop.

The marks of horse and wagon were quite as plain in the faint light of dawn as they had been the night before. In the darkness the thief had driven his wagon over some small stumps, amid which his horse had scrambled in some difficulty, it was plain.

Hiram, tracing out these marks as a Red Indian follows a trail, saw something upon the edge of one of the half-decayed stumps that interested him greatly.

He stood up the next moment with this clue in his hand—a white, coarse hair, perhaps four inches in length.

"That was scraped off the horse's fetlock as he scrambled over this stump," muttered Hiram. "Now, who drives a white horse, or a horse with white feet, in this neighborhood?

"Can I narrow the search down in this way, I wonder?" and for some moments the youth stood there, in the growing light of early morning, canvassing the subject from that angle.



CHAPTER XXVII. RUN TO EARTH

A broad streak of crimson along the eastern horizon, over the treetops, announced the coming of the sun when Hiram Strong reached the automobile road to which he, on the previous night, had traced the thief that had stolen Sister's poults.

Now he looked at the track again. It surely had come from the direction of Scoville, and it turned back that way.

Yet he looked at the white horse-hair scraped off upon the stump, and he turned his back upon these signs and strode along the road toward his own home.

Smoke was just curling from the Atterson chimney; Sister, or Mrs. Atterson, was just building the fire. But they did not see Hiram as he went by.

Hiram's quest led him past the place and to the Dickerson farm. There nobody was yet astir, save the mules and horses in the barnyard, who called as he went by, hoping for their breakfast.

Hiram knew that the Dickersons had turkeys and, like most of the other farmers, cooped them in distant fields away from the house. He found three coops in the middle of an old oat-field tinder a spreading beech.

The old turks roosted upon the limbs of the beech at night; they were already up and away, hunting grasshoppers for breakfast. But quite a few poults were running and peeping about the coops, with two hen turkeys playing guard to them.

Hiram saw where a wagon had been driven in here, and turned, too. The tracks were made recently. And one of the coops was shut tight, although he knew by the rustling within that there were young turkeys in it.

It was too dark within the hutch, however, for the youth to number the poults confined there.

He strolled back across the fields to the rear of the Dickerson house. Passing the barnyard first, he halted and examined the bright bay horse, with white feet—the one that Pete had driven to the barbecue the day before—the only one Pete was ever allowed to drive off the farm.

The Dickersons, father and son, were not as early risers as most farmers in those parts. At least, they were not up betimes on this morning.

But Mrs. Dickerson had built the fire now and was stirring about the porch when Hiram arrived at the step, filling her kettle at the pump.

"Mornin', Mr. Strong," she said, in her startled way, eyeing Hiram askance.

She was a lean, sharp-featured woman, with a hopeless droop to her shoulders.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Dickerson," said Hiram, gravely. "How many young turkeys have you this year?"

The woman shrank back and almost dropped the kettle she had filled to the pump-bench. Her eyes glared.

Somewhere in the house a baby squatted; then a door banged and Hiram heard Dickerson's heavy step descending the stair.

"You have a coop of poults down there, Mrs. Dickerson," continued Hiram, confidently, "that I know belongs to us. I traced Pete's tracks with the wagon and the white-footed horse. Now, this is going to make trouble for Pete——"

"What's the matter with Pete, now?" demanded Dickerson's harsh voice, and he came out upon the porch.

He scowled at sight of Hiram, and continued:

"What are you roaming around here for, Strong? Can't you keep on your own side of the fence?"

"It's little I'll ever trouble you, Mr. Dickerson," said Hiram, "sharply, if you and yours don't trouble me, I can assure you."

"What's eating you now?" demanded the man, roughly.

"Why, I'll tell you, Mr. Dickerson," said Hiram, quickly. "Somebody's stolen our turkeys—ten of them. And I have found them down there where your turkeys roost. The natural inference is that somebody here knows about it——"

Dickerson—just out of his bed and as ugly as many people are when they first get up—leaped for the young farmer from the porch, and had him in his grip before Hiram could help himself.

The woman screamed. There was a racket in the house, for some of the children had been watching from the window.

"Dad's goin' to lick him!" squalled one of the girls.

"You come here and intermate that any of my family's thieves, do you?" the angry man roared.

"Stop that, Sam Dickerson!" cried his wife. She suddenly gained courage and ran to the struggling pair, and tried to haul Sam away from Hiram.

"The boy's right," she gasped. "I heard Pete tellin' little Sam last night what he'd done. It's come to a pretty pass, so it has, if you are goin' to uphold that bad boy in thieving——"

"Hush up, Maw!" cried Pete's voice from the house.

"Come out here, you scalawag!" ordered his father, relaxing his hold on Hiram.

Pete slouched out on the porch, wearing a grin that was half sheepish, half worried.

"What's this Strong says about turkeys?" demanded Sam Dickerson, sternly.

"'Tain't so!" declared Pete. "I ain't seen no turkeys."

"I have found them," said Hiram, quietly. "And the coopful is down yonder in your lot. You thought to fool me by turning into our farm from the direction of Scoville, and driving back that way; but you turned around in the road under that overhanging oak, where I picked Lettie Bronson off the back of the runaway horse last Spring.

"Now, those ten turkeys belong to Sister. She'll be heart-broken if anything happens to them. You have played me several mean tricks since I have been here, Pete Dickerson——"

"No, I ain't!" interrupted the boy.

"Who took the burr off the end of my axle and let me down in the road that night?" demanded Hiram, his rage rising.

Pete could not forbear a grin at this remembrance.

"And who tampered with our pump the next morning? And who watched and waited till we left the lower meadow that night we burned the rubbish, and then set fire to our woods——"

Mrs. Dickerson screamed again. "I knew that fire never come by accident," she moaned.

"You shut up, Maw!" admonished her hopeful son again.

"And now, I've got you," declared Hiram, with confidence. "I can tell those ten poults. I marked them for Sister long ago so that, if they went to the neighbors, they could be easily identified.

"They're in that shut-up coop down yonder," continued Hiram, "and unless you agree to bring them back at once, and put them in our coop, I shall hitch up and go to town, first thing, and get out a warrant for your arrest."

Sam had remained silent for a minute, or two. Now he said, decidedly:

"You needn't threaten no more, young feller. I can see plain enough that Pete's been carrying his fun too far——"

"Fun!" ejaculated Hiram.

"That's what I said," growled Sam. "He'll bring the turkeys back-and before he has his breakfast, too."

"All right," said Hiram, knowing full well that there was nothing to be made by quarreling with Sam Dickerson. "His returning the turkeys, however, will not keep me from speaking to the constable the very next time Pete plays any of his tricks around our place.

"It may be 'fun' for him; but it won't look so funny from the inside of the town jail."

He walked off after this threat. And he was sorry he had said it. For he had no real intention of having Pete arrested, and an empty threat is of no use to anybody.

The turkeys came back; Sister did not even know that they had been stolen, for when she went down to feed them about the middle of the forenoon, all ten came running to her call.

But Pete Dickerson ceased from troubling for a time, much to Hiram's satisfaction.

Meanwhile the crops were coming on finely. Hiram's tomatoes were bringing good prices in Scoville, and as he had such a quantity and was so much earlier than the other farmers around about, he did, as he told Henry he would do, "skim the cream off the market."

He bought some crates and baskets in town, too, and shipped some of the tomatoes to a produce man he knew in Crawberry—a man whom he could trust to treat him fairly. During the season that man's checks to Mrs. Atterson amounted to fifty-four dollars.

Three times a week the spring wagon went to town with vegetables for the school, the hotels, and their retail customers. The whole family worked long hours, and worked hard; but nobody complained.

No rain fell of any consequence until the latter part of July; and then there was no danger of the river overflowing and drowning out the corn.

And that corn! By the last of July it was waist high, growing rank and strong, and of that black-green color which delights the farmer's eye.

Mr. Bronson walked down to the river especially to see it. Like Hiram's upland corn, there was scarcely a hill missing, save where the muskrats had dug in from the river bank and disturbed the corn hills.

"That's the finest-looking corn in this county, bar none, Hiram," declared Bronson. "I have seldom seen better looking in the rich bottom-lands of the West. And you certainly do keep it clean, boy."

"No use in putting in a crop if you don't 'tend it," said the young farmer, sententiously.

"And what's this along here?" asked the gentleman, pointing to a row or two of small stuff along the inner edge of the field.

"I'm trying onions and celery down here. I want to put a commercial crop into this field next year—if we are let stay here—that will pay Mrs. Atterson and me a real profit," and Hiram laughed.

"What do you call a real profit?" inquired Mr. Bronson, seriously.

"Four hundred dollars an acre, net," said the young farmer, promptly.

"Why, Hiram, you can't do that!" cried the gentleman.

"It's being done—in other localities and on soil not so rich as this—and I believe I can do it."

"With onions or celery?" "Yes, sir." "Which—or both?" asked the Westerner, interested.

"I am trying them out here, as you see. I believe it will be celery. This soil is naturally wet, and celery is a glutton for water. Then, it is a late piece, and celery should be transplanted twice before it is put in the field, I believe."

"A lot of work, boy," said Mr. Bronson, shaking his head.

"Well, I never expect to get something for nothing," remarked Hiram.

"And how about the onions?"

"Why, they don't seem to do so well. There is something lacking in the land to make them do their best. I believe it is too cold. And, then, I am watching the onion market, and I am afraid that too many people have gone into the game in certain sections, and are bound to create an over-supply."

The gentleman looked at him curiously.

"You certainly are an able-minded youngster, Hiram," he observed. "I s'pose if you do so well here next year as you expect, a charge of dynamite wouldn't blast you away from the Atterson farm?"

"Why, Mr. Bronson," responded the young farmer, "I don't want to run a one-horse farm all my life. And this never can be much more. It isn't near enough to any big city to be a real truck farm—and I'm interested in bigger things.

"No, sir. The Atterson Eighty is only a stepping stone for me. I hope I'll go higher before long."



CHAPTER XXVIII. HARVEST

But Hiram was not at all sure that he would ever see a celery crop in this bottom-land. Pepper still "hung fire" and he would not go to Mr. Strickland with his option.

"I don't hafter," he told Hiram. "When I git ready I'll let ye know, be sure o' that."

The fact was that the railroad had made no further move. Mr. Strickland admitted to Mrs. Atterson that if the strip along the east boundary of the farm was condemned by the railroad, she ought to get a thousand dollars for it.

"But if the railroad board should change its mind again," added the lawyer, "sixteen hundred dollars would not be a speculative price to pay for your farm—and well Pepper knows it."

"Then Mr. Damocles's sword has got to hang over us, has it?" demanded the old lady.

"I am afraid so," admitted the lawyer, smiling.

Mrs. Atterson could not be more troubled than was Hiram himself. Youth feels the sting of such arrows of fortune more keenly than does age. We get "case-hardened" to trouble as the years bend our shoulders.

The thought that he might, after all, get nothing but a hundred dollars and his board for all the work he had done in preparation for the second year's crop sometimes embittered Hiram's thoughts.

Once, when he spoke to Pepper, and the snaky man sneered at him and laughed, the young farmer came near attacking him then and there in the street.

"I certainly could have given that Pepper as good a thrashing as ever he got," muttered Hiram. "And even Pete Dickerson never deserved one more than Pepper."

Pete fought shy of Hiram these days, and as the summer waned the young farmer gradually became less watchful and expectant of trouble from the direction of the west boundary of the Atterson Eighty.

But there was little breathing spell for him in the work of the farm.

"When we lay by the corn, you bet dad an' me goes fishing!" Henry Pollock told Hiram, one day.

But it wasn't often that the young farmer could take half a day off for any such pleasure.

"You've bit off more'n you kin chaw," observed Henry.

"That's all right; I'll keep chewing at it, just the same," returned Hiram cheerfully.

For the truck crop was bringing them in a bigger sum of money than even Hiram had expected. The season had been very favorable, indeed; Hiram's vegetables had come along in good time, and even the barrels of sweet corn he shipped to Crawberry brought a fair price—much better than he could have got at the local cannery.

When the tomato pack came on, however, he did sell many baskets of his "seconds" to the cannery. But the selected tomatoes he continued to ship to Crawberry, and having established a reputation with his produce man for handsome and evenly ripened fruit, the prices received were good all through the season.

He saw the sum for tomatoes pass the hundred and fifty dollar mark before frost struck the vines. Even then he was not satisfied. There was a small cellar under the Atterson house, and when the frosty nights of October came, Hiram dragged up the vines still bearing fruit, by the roots, and hung them in the cellar, where the tomatoes continued to ripen slowly nearly up to Thanksgiving.

Other crops did almost as well in proportion. He had put in no late potatoes; but in September he harvested the balance of his early crop and, as they were a good keeping variety, he knew there would be enough to keep the family supplied until the next season.

Of other roots, including a patch of well-grown mangels for Mrs. Atterson's handsome flock of chickens, there were plenty to carry the family over the winter.

As the frosts became harder Hiram dug his root pits in the high, light soil of the garden, drew pinetags to cover them, and, gradually, as the winter advanced, heaped the earth over the various piles of roots to keep them through the winter.

Meanwhile, in September, corn harvest had come on. The four acres Hiram had planted below the stables yielded a fair crop, that part of the land he had been able to enrich with coarse manure showing a much better average than the remainder.

The four acres yielded them something over one hundred and sixty baskets of sound corn which, as corn was then selling for fifty cents per bushel, meant that the crop was worth about forty dollars.

As near as Hiram could figure it had cost about fifteen dollars to raise the crop; therefore the profit to Mrs. Atterson was some twenty-five dollars.

Besides the profit from some of the garden crops, this was very small indeed; as Hiram said, it did not pay well enough to plant small patches of corn for them to fool with it much.

"The only way to make a good profit out of corn corn a place like this," he said to Henry, who would not be convinced, "is to have a big drove of hogs and turn them into the field to fatten on the standing corn."

"But that would be wasteful!" cried Henry, shocked at the suggestion.

"Big pork producers do not find it so," returned Hiram, confidently. "Or else one wants a drove of cattle to fatten, and cuts the corn green and shreds it, blowing it into a silo.

"The idea is to get the cost of the corn crop back through the price paid by the butcher for your stock, or hogs."

"Nobody ever did that around here," declared young Pollock.

"And that's why nobody gets ahead very fast around here. Henry, why don't you strike out and do something new—just to surprise 'em?

"Stop selling a little tad of this, and a little tad of that off the farm and stick to the good farmer's rule: 'Never sell anything off the place that can't walk off.'"

"I've heard that before," said Henry, sighing.

"And even then just so much fertility goes with every yoke of steers or pair of fat hogs. But it is less loss, in proportion, than when the corn, or oats, or wheat itself is sold."



CHAPTER XXIX. LETTIE BRONSON'S CORN HUSKING

Sister had begun school on the very first day it opened—in September. She was delighted, for although she had had "lessons" at the "institution", they had not been like this regular attendance, with other free and happy children, at a good country school.

Sister was growing not alone in body, but in mind. And the improvement in her appearance was something marvelous.

"It certainly does astonish me, every time I think o' that youngun and the way she looked when she come to me from the charity school," declared Mother Atterson.

"Who'd want a better lookin' young'un now? She'd be the pride of any mother's heart, she'd be.

"If there's folks belongin' to her, and they have neglected her all these years, in my opinion they're lackin' in sense, Hiram."

"They certainly have been lacking in the milk of human kindness," admitted the young farmer.

"Huh! That milk's easily soured in many folks," responded Mrs. Atterson. "But Sister's folks, whoever they be, will be sorry some day."

"You don't suppose she really has any family, do you?" demanded Hiram.

"No father nor mother, I expect. But many a family will get rid of a young'un too small to be of any use, when they probably have many children of their own.

"And if there was a little bait of money coming to the child, as that lawyer told the institution matron, that would be another reason for losing her in this great world."

"I'm afraid Sister will never find her folks, Mrs. Atterson," said Hiram, shaking his head.

"Huh! If she don't, it's no loss to her. It's loss to them," declared the old lady. "And I'd hate to have anybody come and take her away from us now."

Sister no longer wore her short hair in four "pigtails". She had learned to dress it neatly like other girls of her age, and although it would never be like the beautiful blue-black tresses of Lettie Bronson, Hiram had to admit that the soft brown of Sister's hair, waving so prettily over her forehead, made the girl's features more than a little attractive.

She was an entirely different person, too, from the one who had helped Lettie and her friends ashore from the grounded motor-boat that day, so long ago—and so Lettie herself thought when she rode into the Atterson yard one October day on her bay horse, and Sister met her on the porch.

"Why, you're Mrs. Atterson's girl, aren't you?" cried Lettie, leaning from her saddle to offer her hand to Sister. "I wouldn't have known you."

Sister was getting plump, she had roses in her cheeks, and she wore a neat, whole, and becoming dress.

"You're Miss Bronson," said Sister, gravely. "I wouldn't forget you."

Perhaps there was something in what Sister said that stung Lettie Bronson's memory. She flushed a little; but then she smiled most charmingly and asked for Hiram.

"Husking corn, Miss, with Henry Pollock, down on the bottom-land."

"Oh! way down there? Well! you tell him—Why, I'll want you to come, too," laughed Lettie, quite at her best now.

Nobody could fail to answer Lettie Bronson's smile with its reflection, when she chose to exert herself in that direction.

"Why, I just came to tell you both that on Friday we're going to have an old-fashioned husking-bee for all the young folks of the neighborhood, at our place. You must come yourself—er—Sister, and tell Hiram to come, too.

"Seven o'clock, sharp, remember—and I'll be dreadfully disappointed if you don't come," added Lettie, turning her horse's head homeward, and saying it with so much cordiality that her hearer's heart warmed.

"She is pretty," mused Sister, watching the bay horse and its rider flying along the road. "I don't blame Hiram for thinking she's the very finest girl in these parts.

"She is," declared Sister, emphatically, and shook herself.

Hiram had finished husking the lowland corn that day, with Henry's help, and it was all drawn in at night. When the last measured basket was heaped in the crib by lantern light, the young farmer added up the figures chalked up on the lintel of the door.

"For goodness' sake, Hiram! it isn't as much as that, is it?" gasped Henry, viewing the figures the young farmer wrote proudly in his memorandum book.

"Six acres—six hundred and eighty baskets of sound corn," crowed "Hiram. And it's corn that is corn, as Mr. Bronson says.

"It's not quite as hard as the upland corn, for the growing season was not quite long enough for it; but it's better than the average in the county——"

"Three hundred and forty bushel of shelled corn from six acres?" cried Henry. "I should say it was! It's worth fifty cents now right at the crib—a hundred and seventy dollars. Hiram! that'll make dad let me go to the agricultural college."

"What?" cried Hiram, surprised and pleased. "Have you really got that idea in your head?"

"I been gnawin' on it ever since you talked so last spring," admitted his friend, rather shyly. "I told father, and at first he pooh-poohed.

"But I kept on pointing out to him how much more you knowed than we did—"

"That's nonsense, Henry," interrupted Hiram. "Only about some things. I wouldn't want to set myself up over the farmers of this neighborhood as knowing so much."

"Well, you've proved it. Dad says so himself. He was taken all aback when I showed him how you had beat him on the tomato crop. And I been talking to him about your corn.

"That hit father where he lived," chuckled Henry, "for father's a corn-growing man—and always has been considered so in this county.

"He watched the way you tilled your crop, and he believed so much shallow cultivating was wrong, and said so. But he says you beat him on poor ground; and when I tell him what that lowland figures up, he'll throw up his hands.

"And I'm going to take a course in fertilizers, farm management, and the chemistry of soils," continued Henry.

"Just as you say, I believe we have been planting the wrong crops on the right land! Anyway, I'll find out. I believe we've got a good farm, but we're not getting out of it what we should."

"Well, Henry," admitted Hiram, slowly, "nothing's pleased me so much since I came into this neighborhood, as to hear you say this. You get all you can at the experiment station this winter, and I believe that your father will soon begin to believe that there is something in 'book farming', after all."

If it had not been for the hair-hung sword over them, Mrs. Atterson and Hiram would have taken great delight in the generous crops that had been vouchsafed to them.

"Still, we can't complain," said the old lady, "and for the first time for more'n twenty years I'm going to be really thankful at Thanksgiving time."

"Oh, I believe you!" cried Sister, who heard her. "No boarders."

"Nope," said the old lady, quietly. "You're wrong. For we're going to have boarders on Thanksgiving Day. I've writ to Crawberry. Anybody that's in the old house now that wants to come to eat dinner with us, can come. I'm going to cook the best dinner I ever cooked—and make a milkpail full of gravy."

"I know," said the good old soul, shaking her head, "that them two old maids I sold out to have half starved them boys. We ought to be able to stand even Fred Crackit, and Mr. Peebles, one day in the year."

"Well!" returned Sister, thoughtfully. "If you can stand 'em I can. I never did think I could forgive 'em all—so mean they was to me—and the hair-pulling and all.

"But I guess you're right, Mis' Atterson. It's heapin' coals of fire on their heads, like what the minister at the chapel says."

"Good Land o' Goshen, child!" exclaimed the old lady, briskly. "Hot coals would scotch 'em, and I only want to fill their stomachs for once."

The husking at the Bronsons was a very well attended feast, indeed. There was a great barn floor, and on this were heaped the ear-corn in the husks—not too much, for Lettie proposed having the floor cleared and swept for square dancing, and later for the supper.

She had a lot of her school friends at the husking, and at first the neighborhood boys and girls were bashful in the company of the city girls.

But after they got to work husking the corn, and a few red ears had been found (for which each girl or boy had to pay a forfeit) they became a very hilarious company indeed.

Now, Lettie, broadly hospitable, had invited the young folk far and wide. Even those whom she had not personally seen, were expected to attend.

So it was not surprising that Pete Dickerson should come, despite the fact that Mr. Bronson had once discharged him from his employ—and for serious cause.

But Pete was not a thin-skinned person. Where there was anything "doing" he wanted to cut a figure. And his desire to be important, and be marked by the company, began to make him objectionable before the evening was half over.

For instance, he thought it was funny to take a run down the long barn floor and leap over the heads of those huskers squatting about a heap of corn, and land with his heavy boots on the apex of the pile, thus scattering the ears in all directions.

He got long straws, too, and tickled the backs, of the girls' necks; or he dumped handfuls of bran down their backs, or shook oats into their hair—and the oats stuck.

Mr. Bronson could not see to everything; and Pete was very sly at his tricks. A girl would shriek in one corner, and the lout would quickly transport himself to a distant spot.

When the corn was swept aside, and the floor cleared for the dance, Pete went beyond the limit, however. He had found a pail of soft-soap in the shed and while the crowd was out of the barn, playing a "round game" in the yard while it was being swept, Pete slunk in with the soap and a swab, and managed to spread a good deal of the slippery stuff around on the boards.

A broom would not remove this soft-soap. When the hostler swept, he only spread it. And when the dancing began many a couple measured their length on the planks, to Pete's great delight.

But the hired man had observed Pete sneaking about while he was removing the last of the corn, and Hiram Strong discovered soft-soap on Pete's clothes, and the smell of it strong upon his unwashed hands.

"You get out of here," Mr. Bronson told the boy. "I had occasion to put you off my land once, and don't let me have to do it a third time," and he shoved him with no gentle hand through the door and down the driveway.

But Pete laid it all to Hiram. He called back over his shoulder:

"I'll be square with you, yet, Hi Strong! You wait!"

But Hiram bad been threatened so often from that quarter by now, that he was not much interested.



CHAPTER XXX. ONE SNOWY MIDNIGHT

The fun went on after that with more moderation, and everybody had a pleasant time. That is, so supposed Hiram Strong until, in going out of the barn again to get a breath of cool air after one of the dances, he almost stumbled over a figure hiding in a corner, and crying.

"Why, Sister!" he cried, taking the girl by the shoulders, and turning her about. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, I want to go home, Hi. This isn't any place for me. Let me—me run—run home!" she sobbed.

"I guess not! Who's bothered you? Has that Pete Dickerson come back?"

"No!" sobbed Sister.

"What is it, then?"

"They—they don't want me here. They don't like me."

"Who don't?" demanded Hiram, sternly.

"Those—those girls from St. Beris. I—I tried to dance, and I slipped on some of that horrid soap and—and fell down. And they said I was clumsy. And one said:

"'Oh, all these country girls are like that. I don't see what Let wanted them here for.'

"'So't we could all show off better,' said another, laughing some more.

"And I guess that's right enough," finished Sister. "They don't want me here. Only to make fun of. And I wish I hadn't come."

Hiram was smitten dumb for a moment. He had danced once with Lettie, but the other town girls had given him no opportunity to do so. And it was plain that Lettie's school friends preferred the few boys who had come up from town to any of the farmers' sons who had come to the husking.

"I guess you're right, Sister. They don't want us—much," admitted Hiram, slowly.

"Then let's both go home," said Sister, sadly.

"No. That wouldn't be serving Mr. Bronson—or Lettie—right. We were invited in good faith, I reckon, and the Bronsons haven't done anything to offend us.

"But you and I'll go back there and dance together. You dance with me—or with Henry; and I'll stick to the country girls. If Lettie Bronson's friends from boarding school think they are so much better than us folks out here in the country, let us show them that we can have a good time without them."

"Oh, I'll go back with you, Hiram," cried Sister, gladly, and the young fellow was a bit conscience-stricken as he noted her changed tone and saw the sparkle that came into her eye.

Had he neglected Sister because Lettie Bronson was about? Well! perhaps he had. But he made up for it with the attention he paid to Sister during the remainder of the evening.

They went home early, however, and Hiram felt somewhat grave after the corn husking. Had Lettie Bronson invited the country-bred young folk living about her father's home, to meet her boarding school friends, and the town boys, merely that the latter might be compared with the farmer-folk to their disfavor?

He could not believe that—really. Lettie Bronson might be thoughtless, and a little proud; but she was still a princess to Hiram, and he could not think this evil of her.

But there were too many duties every day for the young farmer to give much thought to such problems. Harvesting was not complete yet, and soon flurries of snow began to drive across the fields and threaten the approach of winter.

Finally the wind came out of the northwest for more than a day, and toward evening the flakes began to fall, faster and faster, thicker and thicker.

"It's going to be a snowy night—a real baby blizzard," declared Hiram, stamping his feet on the porch before coming into the warm kitchen with the milkpail.

"Oh, dear! And I thought you'd go over to Pollock's with me to-night, Hi," said Sister.

"Mabel an' I are goin' to make our Christmas presents together, and she's expecting me."

"Shucks! 'Twon't be fit for a girl to go out if it snows," said Mother Atterson.

But Hiram saw that Sister was much disappointed, and he had tried to be kinder to her since that night of the corn husking.

"What's a little snow?" he demanded, laughing. "Bundle up good, Sister, and I'll go over with you. I want to see Henry, anyway."

"Crazy young'uns," observed Mother Atterson. But she made no real objection. Whatever Hiram said was right, in the old lady's eyes.

They tramped through the snowy fields with a lantern, and found it half-knee deep in some drifts before they arrived at the Pollocks, short as had been the duration of the fall.

But they were welcomed vociferously at the neighbor's; preparations were made for a long evening's fun; for with the snow coming down so steadily there would be little work done out of doors the following day, so the family need not seek their beds early.

The Pollock children had made a good store of nuts, like the squirrels; and there was plenty of corn to pop, and molasses for candy, or corn-balls, and red apples to roast, and sweet cider from the casks in the cellar.

The older girls retired to a corner of the wide hearth with their work-boxes, and Hiram and Henry worked out several problems regarding the latter's eleven-week course at the agricultural college, which would begin the following week; while the young ones played games until they fell fast asleep in odd corners of the big kitchen.

It was nearly midnight, indeed, when Hiram and Sister started home. And it was still snowing, and snowing heavily.

"We'll have to get all the plows out to-morrow morning!" Henry shouted after them from the porch.

And it was no easy matter to wade home through the heavy drifts.

"I never could have done it without you, Hi," declared the girl, when she finally floundered onto the Atterson porch, panting and laughing.

"I'll take a look around the barns before I come in," remarked the careful young farmer.

This was a duty he never neglected, no matter how late he went to bed, nor how tired he was. Half way to the barn he halted. A light was waving wildly by the Dickerson back door.

It was a lantern, and Hiram knew that it was being whirled around and around somebody's head. He thought he heard, too, a shouting through the falling snow.

"Something's wrong over yonder," thought the young farmer.

He hesitated but for a moment. He had never stepped upon the Dickerson place, nor spoken to Sam Dickerson since the trouble about the turkeys. The lantern continued to swing. Eagerly as the snow came down, it could not blind Hiram to the waving light.

"I've got to see about this," he muttered, and started as fast as he could go through the drifts, across the fields.

Soon he heard the voice shouting. It was Sam Dickerson. And he evidently had been shouting to Hiram, seeing his lantern in the distance.

"Help, Strong! Help!" he called.

"What is it, man?" demanded Hiram, climbing the last pair of bars and struggling through the drifts in the dooryard.

"Will you take my horse and go for the doctor? I don't know where Pete is—down to Cale Schell's, I expect."

"What's the matter, Mr. Dickerson?"

"Sarah's fell down the bark stairs—fell backward. Struck her head an' ain't spoke since. Will you go, Mr. Strong?"

"Certainly. Which horse will I take?"

"The bay's saddled-under the shed—get any doctor—I don't care which one. But get him here."

"I will, Mr. Dickerson. Leave it to me," promised Hiram, and ran to the shed at once.



CHAPTER XXXI. "MR. DAMOCLES'S SWORD"

Hiram Strong was not likely to forget that long and arduous night. It was impossible to force the horse out of a walk, for the drifts were in some places to the creature's girth.

He stopped at the house for a minute and roused Mrs. Atterson and Old Lem and sent them over to help the unhappy Dickersons.

He was nearly an hour getting to the crossroads store. There were lights and revelry there. Some of the lingering crowd were snowbound for the night and were making merry with hard cider and provisions which Schell was not loath to sell them.

Pete was one of the number, and Hiram sent him home with the news of his mother's serious hurt.

He forced the horse to take him into town to Dr. Broderick. It was nearly two o'clock when he routed out the doctor, and it was four o'clock when the physician and himself, in a heavy sleigh and behind a pair of mules, reached the Dickerson farmhouse.

The woman had not returned to consciousness, and Mrs. Atterson remained through the day to do what she could. But it was many a tedious week before Mrs. Dickerson was on her feet again, and able to move about.

Meanwhile, more than one kindly act had Mother Atterson done for the neighbors who had seemed so careless of her rights. Pete never appeared when either Mrs. Atterson or Sister came to the house; but in his sour, gloomy way, Sam Dickerson seemed to be grateful.

Hiram kept away, as there was nothing he could do to help them. And he saw when Pete chanced to pass him, that the youth felt no more kindly toward him than he had before.

"Well, let him be as ugly as he wants to be—only let him keep away from the place and let our things alone," thought Hiram. "Goodness knows! I'm not anxious to be counted among Pete Dickerson's particular friends."

Thanksgiving came on apace, and every one of the old boarders of Mother Atterson had written that he would come to the farm to spend the holiday. Even Mr. Peebles acknowledged the invitation with thanks, but adding that he hoped Sister would not forget he must "eschew any viands at all greasy, and that his hot water was to be at 101, exactly."

"The poor ninny!" ejaculated Mother Atterson. "He doesn't know what he wants. Sister only poured it out of the teakettle, and he had to wait for it to cool, anyway, before he could drink it."

But it was determined to give the city folk a good time, and this determination was accomplished. Two of Sister's turkeys, bought and paid for in hard cash by Mother Atterson, graced the long table in the sitting-room.

Many of the good things with which the table was laden came from the farm. And, without Hiram and Sister, and Old Lem Camp, Mrs. Atterson made even Fred Crackit understand, these good things had not been possible!

But the Crawberry folk, as a whole, were much subdued. They had missed Mother Atterson dreadfully; and, really, they had felt some affection for their old landlady, after all.

After dinner Fred Crackit, in a speech that was designed to be humorous, presented a massive silver plated water-pitcher with "Mother Atterson" engraved upon it. And really, the old lady broke down at that.

"Good Land o' Goshen!" she exclaimed. "Why, you boys do think something of the old woman, after all, don't ye?

"I must say that I got ye out here more than anything to show ye what we could do in the country. 'Specially how it had improved Sister. And how Hiram Strong warn't the ninny you seemed to think he was. And that Mr. Camp only needed a chance to be something in the world again.

"Well, well! It wasn't a generous feeling I had toward you, mebbe; but I'm glad you come and—I hope you all had enough gravy."

So the occasion proved a very pleasant one indeed. And it made a happy break in the hard work of preparing for the winter.

The crops were all gathered ere this, and they could make up their books for the season just passed.

But there was wood to get in, for all along they had not had wood enough, and to try and get wood out of the snowy forest in winter for immediate use in the stoves was a task that Hiram did not enjoy.

He had Henry to help him saw a goodly pile before the first snow fell; and Mr. Camp split most of it and he and Sister piled it in the shed.

"We've got to haul up enough logs by March—or earlier—to have a wood sawing in earnest," announced Hiram. "We must get a gasoline engine and saw, and call on the neighbors for help, and have a sawing-bee."

"But what will be the use of that if we've got to leave here in February?" demanded Mrs. Atterson, worriedly. "The last time I saw that Pepper in town he grinned at me in a way that made me want to break my old umbrel' over his dratted head!"

"I don't care," said Hiram, sullenly. "I don't want to sit idle all winter. I'll cut the logs, anyway, and draw 'em out from time to time. If we have to leave, why, we have to, that's all."

"And we can't tell a thing to do about next year till we know what Pepper is going to do," groaned Mrs. Atterson.

"That is very true. But if he doesn't exercise his option before February tenth, we needn't worry any more. And after that will be time enough to make our plans for next season's crops," declared Hiram, trying to speak more cheerfully.

But Mrs. Atterson went around with clouded brow again, and was heard to whisper, more than once, something about "Mr. Damocles's sword."



CHAPTER XXXII. THE CLOUD IS LIFTED

Despite Hiram Strong's warning to his employer when they started work on the old Atterson Eighty, that she must expect no profit for this season's, work, the Christmas-tide, when they settled their accounts for the year, proved the young fellow to have been a bad prophet.

"Why, Hiram, after I pay you this hundred dollars, I shall have a little money left—I shall indeed. And all that corn in the crib—and stacks of fodder, beside the barn loft full, and the roots, and the chickens, and the pork, and the calf——"

"Why, Hiram! I'm a richer woman to-day than when I came out here to the farm, that's sure. How do you account for it?"

Hiram had to admit that they had been favored beyond his expectations.

"If that Pepper man would only come for'ard and say what he was going to do!" sighed Mother Atterson.

That was the continual complaint now. As the winter advanced all four of the family bore the option in mind continually. There was talk of the railroad going before the Legislature to ask for the condemnation of the property it needed, in the spring.

It seemed pretty well settled that the survey along the edge of the Atterson Eighty would be the route selected. And, if that was the case, why did Pepper not try to exercise his option?

Mr. Strickland had said that there was no way by which the real estate man's hand could be forced; so they had to abide Pepper's pleasure.

"If we only knew we'd stay," said Hiram, "I'd cut a few well grown pine trees, while I am cutting the firewood, have them dragged to the mill, and saw the boards we shall need if we go into the celery business this coming season."

"What do you want boards for?" demanded Henry, who chanced to be home over Christmas, and was at the house.

"For bleaching. Saves time, room, and trouble. Banking celery, even with a plow, is not alone old-fashioned, and cumbersome, but is apt to leave the blanched celery much dirtier."

"But you'll need an awful lot of board for six acres, Hiram!" gasped Henry.

"I don't know. I shall run the trenches four feet apart, and you mustn't suppose, Henry, that I shall blanch all six acres at once. The boards can be used over and over again."

"I didn't think of that," admitted his friend.

Henry was eagerly interested in his selected studies at the experiment station and college, and Abel Pollock followed his son's work there with growing approval, too.

"It does beat all," he admitted to Hiram, "what that boy has learned already about practical things. Book-farming ain't all flapdoodle, that's sure!"

So the year ended—quietly, peacefully, and with no little happiness in the Atterson farmhouse, despite the cloud that overshadowed the farm-title, and the doubts which faced them about the next season's work.

They sat up on New Year's eve to see the old year out and the new in, and had a merry evening although there were only the family. When the distant whistles blew at midnight they went out upon the back porch to listen.

It was a dark night, for thick clouds shrouded the stars. Only the unbroken coverlet of snow (it had fallen that morning) aided them to see about the empty fields.

In the far distance was the twinkle of a single light—that in an upper chamber of the Pollock house. Dickersons' was mantled in shadow, and those two houses were the only ones in sight of the Atterson place.

"And I was afraid when we came out here that I'd be dead of loneliness in a month—with no near neighbors," admitted Mother Atterson. "But I've been so busy that I ain't never minded it——

"What's that light, Hiram?"

Her cry was echoed by Sister. Behind the bam a sudden glow was spreading against the low-hung clouds. It was too far away for one of their out-buildings to be afire; but Hiram set off immediately, although he only had slippers on, for the corner of the barnyard fence.

When he reached this point he saw that one of the fodder stacks in the cornfield was afire. The whole top of the stack was ablaze.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried Sister, who had followed him. "What can we do?"

"Nothing,", said Hiram. "There's no wind, and it won't spread to another stack. But that one is past redemption, for sure!"

Hiram hastened back to the house and put on his boots. But he did not wade through the snow to the fodder stack that was burning so briskly. He merely made a detour around it, at some yards distant. Nowhere did he see the mark of a footprint.

How the stack had been set afire was a mystery. Hiram had stacked the fodder himself, with the help of Sister, who had pitched the bundles up to him. The young farmer did not smoke, and he seldom carried matches loose in his pockets.

Therefore, the idea that he had dropped a match in the fodder and a field mouse, burrowing for some nubbin of corn, had come across the match, nibbled the head, and so set the blaze, was scarcely feasible.

Yet, how else had the fire started?

When daylight came Hiram could find no footprint near the stack—only his own where he had circled it while it was blazing.

It was the stack nearest to the Dickerson line. Hiram, naturally, thought of Pete.

Since Mrs. Dickerson's sickness, Mother Atterson had been back and forth to help her neighbor, and whenever Sam Dickerson saw Hiram he was as friendly as it was in the nature of the man to be.

Hiram could not believe that Pete's father would now countenance any of his son's meannesses; yet when the young farmer went along the line fence, he saw fresh tracks across the Dickerson fields, and discovered where the person had stood, on the Dickerson side of the fence opposite the burned fodder stack.

But these footprints were all of three hundred feet from the stack, and there was not a mark in the snow upon Hiram's side of the fence, saving his own footprints.

"Maybe somebody merely ran across to look at the blaze. But it's strange I did not see him," thought Hiram.

He could not help being suspicious, however, and he prowled about the stacks and the barns more than ever at night. He could not shake off the feeling that the enemy in the dark was at work again.

January passed, and the fatal day—the tenth of February—drew nearer and nearer. If Pepper proposed to exercise his option he must do it on or before that date.

Neither Hiram nor Mrs. Atterson had seen the real estate man of late; but they had seen Mr. Strickland, and on the final day they drove to town to meet Pepper—if the man was going to show up—in the lawyer's office.

"I wouldn't trouble him, if I were you," advised the lawyer. "But if you insist, I'll send over for him."

"I want to know what he means by all this," declared Mrs. Atterson, angrily. "He's kept me on tenter-hooks for ten months, and there ought to be some punishment for the crime."

"I am afraid he has been within his rights," said the lawyer, smiling; but he sent his clerk for the real estate man, probably being very well convinced of the outcome of the affair.

In came the snaky Mr. Pepper. The moment he saw Mrs. Atterson and Hiram he began to cackle.

"Ye don't mean to say you come clean in here this stormy day to try and sell that farm to me?" asked the real estate man. "No, ma'am! Not for no sixteen hundred dollars. If you'll take twelve——"

Mrs. Atterson could not find words to reply to him; and Hiram felt like seizing the scoundrel by the scruff of his neck and throwing him down to the street. But it was Mr. Strickland who interposed:

"So you do not propose to exercise your option?"

"No, indeed-y!"

"How long since did you give up the idea of purchasing the Atterson place?" asked the lawyer, curiously.

"Pshaw! I gave up the idee 'way back there last spring," chuckled Pepper.

"You haven't the paper with you, have you, Mr. Pepper?" asked Mr. Strickland, quietly.

The real estate man looked wondrous sly and tapped the side of his nose with a lean finger.

"Why, I tore up that old paper long ago. It warn't no good to me," said Pepper. "I wouldn't take the farm at that price for a gift," and he departed with a sneering smile upon his lips.

"And well he did destroy it," declared Mr. Strickland. "It was a forgery—that is what it was. And if we could have once got Pepper in court with it, he would not have turned another scaly trick for some years to come."



CHAPTER XXXIII. "CELERY MAD"

The relief to the minds of Hiram Strong and Mrs. Atterson was tremendous.

Especially was the young farmer inspired to greater effort. He saw the second growing season before him. And he saw, too, that now, indeed, he had that chance to prove his efficiency which he had desired all the time.

The past year had cost him little for clothing or other expenses. He had banked the hundred dollars Mrs. Atterson had paid him at Christmas.

But he looked forward to something much bigger than the other hundred when the next Christmas-tide should come. Twenty-five per cent of all the profit of the Atterson Eighty during this second year was to be his own.

The moment "Mr. Damocles's sword", as Mother Atterson had called it, was lifted the young farmer jumped into the work.

He had already cut enough wood to last the family a year; now he got Mr. Pollock, with his team of mules, to haul it up to the house, and then sent for the power saw, asked the neighbors to help, and in less than half a day every stick was cut to stove length.

As he had time Hiram split this wood and Lem Camp piled it in the shed. Hiram knocked together some extra cold-frames, too, and bought some second-hand sash.

And he had already dug a pit for a twelve-foot hotbed. Now, a twelve-foot hotbed will start an enormous number of plants.

Hiram did not plan to have quite so much small stuff in the garden this year, however. He knew that he should have less time to work in the garden. He proposed having more potatoes, about as many tomatoes as the year before, but fewer roots to bunch, salads and the like. He must give the bulk of his time to the big commercial crop that he hoped to put into the bottom-land.

He had little fear of the river overflowing its banks late enough in the season to interfere with the celery crop. For the seedlings were to be handled in the cold-frames and garden-patch until it was time to set them in the trenches. And that would not be until July.

He contented himself with having the logs he cut drawn to the sawmill and the sawed planks brought down to the edge of the bottom-land, and did not propose to put a plow into the land until late June.

Meanwhile he started his celery seed in shallow boxes, and when the plants were an inch and a half, or so, tall, he pricked them out, two inches apart each way into the cold-frames.

Sister and Mr. Camp could help in this work, and they soon filled the cold-frames with celery plants destined to be reset in the garden plat later.

This "handling" of celery aids its growth and development in a most wonderful manner. At the second transplanting, Hiram snipped back the tops, and the roots as well, so that each plant would grow sturdily and not be too "stalky".

Mrs. Atterson declared they were all celery mad. "Whatever will you do with so much of the stuff, I haven't the least idee, Hiram. Can you sell it all? Why, it looks to me as though you had set out enough already to glut the Crawberry market."

"And I guess that's right," returned Hiram. "Especially if I shipped it all at once."

But he was aiming higher than the Crawberry market. He had been in correspondence with firms that handled celery exclusively in some of the big cities, and before ever he put the plow into the bottom-land he had arranged for the marketing of every stalk he could grow on his six acres.

It was a truth that the family of transplanted boarding house people worked harder this second spring than they had the first one. But they knew how better, too, and the garden work did not seem so arduous to Sister and Old Lem Camp.

Mrs. Atterson had a fine flock of hens, and they had laid well after the first of December, and the eggs had brought good prices. She planned to increase her flock, build larger yards, and in time make a business of poultry raising, as that would be something that she and Sister could practically handle alone.

Sister's turkeys had thrived so the year before that she had saved two hens and a handsome gobbler, and determined to breed turkeys for the fall market.

And Sister learned a few things before she had raised "that raft of poults," as Mother Atterson called them. Turkeys are certainly calculated to breed patience—especially if one expects to have a flock of young Toms and hens fit for killing at Thanksgiving-time.

She hatched the turkeys under motherly hens belonging to Mother Atterson, striving to breed poults that would not trail so far from the house; but as soon as the youngsters began to feel their wings they had their foster-mothers pretty well worn out. One flock tolled the old hen off at least a mile from the house and Hiram had some work enticing the poults back again.

There was no raid made upon her turkey coops this year, however. Pete Dickerson was not much in evidence during the spring and early summer. Mrs. Atterson went back and forth to the neighbors; but although whenever Hiram saw the farmer the latter put forth an effort to be pleasant to him, the two households did not well "mix".

Besides, during this busiest time of the year, when the crops were getting started, there seemed to be little opportunity for social intercourse. At least, so it seemed on the Atterson place.

They were a busy and well contented crew, and everything seemed to be running like clockwork, when suddenly "another dish of trouble", as Mother Atterson called it, was served them in a most unexpected manner.

Hiram was coming up from the barn one evening, long after dark, and had just caught sight of Sister standing on the porch waiting for him, when a sudden glow against the dark sky, made him turn.

The flash of fire passed on the instant, and Sister called to him:

"Oh, Hiram! did you see that shooting-star?"

"You never wished on it, Sis," said the young farmer.

"Oh, yes I did!" she returned, dancing down the steps to meet him.

"That quick?"

"Just that quick," she reiterated, seizing his arm and getting into step with him.

"And what was the wish?" demanded Hiram.

"Why—I won't ever get it if I tell you, will I?" she queried, shyly.

"Just as likely to as not, Sister," he said, with serious voice. "Wishes are funny things, you know. Sometimes the very best ones never come true."

"And I'm afraid mine will never come true," she sighed. "Oh, dear! I guess no amount of wishing will ever bring some things to pass."

"Maybe that's so, Sis," he said, chuckling. "I fancy that getting out and hustling for the thing you want is the best way to fulfill wishes."

"Oh, but I can't do that in this case," said the girl, shaking her head, and still speaking very seriously as they came to the porch steps.

"Maybe I can bring it about for you," teased Hiram.

"I guess not," she said. "I want so to be like other girls, Hiram! I'd like to be like that pretty Lettie Bronson. I'm not jealous of her looks and her clothes and her good times and all; no, that's not it," proclaimed Sister, with a little break in her voice.

"But I'd like to know who I really be. I want folks, and—and I want to have a real name of my own!"

"Why, bless you!" exclaimed the young fellow, "'Sister' is a nice name, I'm sure—and we all love it here."

"But it isn't a name. They call me Sissy Atterson at school. But it doesn't belong to me. I—I've thought lots about choosing a name for myself—a real fancy one, you know. There's lots of pretty, names," she said, reflectively.

"Cords of 'em," Hiram agreed.

"But, you see, they wouldn't really be mine," said the girl, earnestly. "Not even after I had chosen them. I want my very own name! I want to know who I am and all about myself. And"—with a half strangled sob—"I guess wishing will never bring me that, will it, Hiram?"

Never before had the young fellow heard Sister express herself upon this topic. He had no idea that the girl felt her unknown and practically unnamed existence so strongly.

"I wouldn't care, Sis," he said, patting her bent shoulders. "We love you here just as well as we would if you had ten names! Don't forget that.

"And maybe it won't be all a mystery some day. Your folks may look you up. They may come here and find you. And they'll be mighty proud of you—you've grown so tall and good looking. Of course they will!"

Sister listened to him and gave a little contented sigh. "And then they might want to take me away—and I'd fight, tooth and nail, if they tried it."

"What?" gasped Hiram.

"Of course I would!" said the girl. "Do you suppose I'd give up Mother Atterson for a dozen families—or for clothes—and houses—or, or anything?" and she ran into the house leaving the young farmer in some amazement.

"Ain't that the girl of it?" he muttered, at last. "Yet I bet she is in earnest about wanting to know about her folks."

And from that time Hiram thought more about Sister's problem himself than he had before. Once, when he went to Crawberry, he went to the charitable institution from which Mother Atterson had taken Sister. But the matron had heard nothing of the lawyer who had once come to talk over the child's affairs, and the path of inquiry seemed shut off right there by an impassable barrier.

However, this is ahead of our story. On this particular night Hiram washed at the pump, and then followed Sister in to supper.

Before they were half through Mr. Camp suddenly started from his chair and pointed through the window.

Flames were rising behind the barn again!

"Another stack burning!" exclaimed Hiram, and be shot out of the door, seizing a pail of water, hoping that he might put it out.

But the stack was doomed. He knew it the moment he saw the extent of the blaze.

He kept away from it, as he had before; yet he did not expect to pick up any trail of the incendiary near the stack.

"Twice in the same place is too much!" declared the young farmer, glowing with wrath. "I'm going to have this mystery explained, or know the reason why."

He left Mr. Camp to watch the burning fodder, to see that sparks from the stack did no harm, and lighting his lantern he went along the line fence again.

Yes! there were the footprints that he had expected to find. But the burning stack was even farther from the fence than the first one had been—and there were no marks of feet in the soft earth on Mrs. Atterson's side of the boundary.



CHAPTER XXXIV. CLEANING UP A PROFIT

Hiram crawled through the wires, and followed the plain foot-marks back to the Dickerson sheds. He lost them there, of course, but he knew by the size of the footprints that either Sam Dickerson or his oldest son had been over to the line fence.

"And that shooting-star!" considered Hiram. "There was something peculiar about that. I wonder if there wasn't a shooting star, also, away back there at New Year's when our other stack of fodder was burned?"

He loitered about the sheds for a few moments. It appeared as though all the Dickersons were indoors. Nobody interfered with him.

Of a sudden Hiram began to sniff an odor that seemed strange about a cart-shed. At least, no wise farmer would have naphtha, or gasoline, in his outbuildings, for it would make his insurance invalid.

But that was the smell Hiram discovered. And he was not long in finding the cause of it.

Back in a dark corner, upon a beam, lay a big sling-shot—one of those that boys swing around their heads with a stone in the heel of it, and then let go one end to shoot the missile to a distance.

The leather loop was saturated with the gasoline, and it had been scorched, too. The smell of burning, as well as the smell of gasoline, was very distinct.

Hiram took the sling-shot with him, and went up to the Dickerson house.

He had got along so well with the Dickersons for these past months that he honestly shrank from "starting anything" now. Yet he could not overlook this flagrant piece of malicious mischief. Indeed, it was more than that. Two stacks had already been burned, and it might be some of the outbuildings—or even Mrs. Atterson's house—next time!

Besides, Hiram felt himself responsible for his employer's property. The old lady could not afford to lose the fodder, and Hiram was determined that both of the burned stacks should be paid for in full.

He looked through the window of the Dickerson kitchen. The family was around the supper table-Mr. and Mrs. Dickerson, Pete, and the children, little and big. It was a cheerful family group, after all. Rough and uncouth as the farmer was, Dickerson likely had his feelings like other people. Instead of bursting right in at the door as had been Hiram's intention, and accusing Pete to his face, the indignant young fellow hesitated.

He hadn't any sympathy for Pete, not the slightest. If he gave him—or the elder Dickerson—a chance to clear up matters by making good to Mrs. Atterson for what she had lost, Hiram Strong decided that he was being very lenient indeed.

He stepped quietly onto the porch and rapped on the door. Then he backed off and waited for some response from within.

"Hullo, Mr. Strong!" exclaimed the farmer, coming himself to the "door. Why! is that your stack burning?"

"Yes, sir," said Hiram, quietly.

"Another one!"

"That is the second," admitted Hiram. "But I don't propose that another shall be set afire in just the same way."

Sam Dickerson stepped suddenly down to the young farmer's level, and asked:

"What do you mean by that? Do you know how it got afire?"

Hiram held out the sling-shot in the light of his lantern.

"A rag, saturated with gasoline, was wrapped around a pebble, then set afire, and stone and blazing rag were shot from our line fence into the fodderstack.

"I found the footprints of the incendiary on New Year's morning at the same place. And I'll wager a good deal that your son Pete's boots will fit the footprints over there at the line now!"

Sam Dickerson's face had turned exceedingly red, and then paled. But he spoke very quietly.

"What are you going to do with him, Mr. Strong?" he asked. "It will be five years for him at least, if you take it to court—and maybe longer."

"I don't believe, Mr. Dickerson, that you have upheld Pete in all the mean tricks he has played on me."

"Indeed I haven't! And since I got a look at myself—back there when the wife was hurt——"

Sam Dickerson's voice broke and he turned away for a moment so that his visitor should not see his face.

"Well!" he continued. "You've got Pete right this time—no doubt of that. I dunno what makes him such a mean whelp. I'll lambaste him good for this, now I tell you. But the stacks——"

"Make him pay for them out of his own money. Mrs. Atterson ought not to lose the stacks," said Hiram, slowly.

"Oh, he'll do that, anyway, you can bet!" exclaimed Dickerson, with conviction.

"I don't believe that sending a boy like him to jail will either improve his morals, or do anybody else any good," observed Hiram, reflectively.

"And it'll jest about finish his mother," spoke Sam.

"That's right, too," said the young farmer. "I tell you. I don't want to see him—not just now. But you do what you think is best about this matter, and make Peter pay the bill—ten dollars for the two stacks of fodder."

"He shall do it, Mr. Strong," declared Sam Dickerson, warmly. "And he shall beg your pardon, too, or I'll larrup him until he can't stand. He's too big for a lickin', but he ain't too big for me to lick!"

And the elder Dickerson was as good as his word. An hour later yells from the cart shed denoted that Pete was finally getting what he should have received when he was a younger boy.

Before noon Sam marched the youth over to Mrs. Atterson. Pete was very puffy about the eyes, and his cheeks were streaked with tears. Nor did he seem to care to more than sit upon the extreme edge of a chair.

But he paid Mrs. Atterson ten dollars, and then, nudged by his father, turned to Hiram and begged the young farmer's pardon.

"That's all right, etc.," said Hiram, laying his hand upon the boy's shoulder. "Just because we haven't got on well together heretofore, needn't make any difference between us after this.

"Come over and see me. If you have time this summer and want the work, I'll be glad to hire you to help handle my celery crop.

"Neighbors ought to be neighborly; and it won't do either of us any good to hug to ourselves any injury which we fancy the other has done. We'll be friends if you say so, Peter—though I tell you right now that if you turn another mean trick against me, I'll take the law into my own hands and give you worse than you've got already."

Pete looked sheepish enough, and shook hands. He knew very well that Hiram could do as he promised.

But from that time on the young farmer had no further trouble with him.

Meanwhile Hiram's crops on the Atterson Eighty grew almost as well this second season as they had the first. There was a bad drouth this year, and the upland corn did not do so well; yet the young farmer's corn crop compared well with the crops in the neighborhood.

He had put in but eight acres of corn this year; but they had plenty of old corn in the crib when it came time to take down this second season's crop.

It was upon the celery that Hiram bent all his energies. He had to pay out considerable for help, but that was no more than he expected. Celery takes a deal of handling.

When the long, hot, dry days came, when the uplands parched and the earth fairly seemed to radiate the heat, the acres of tender plants which Hiram and his helpers had just set out in the trenches began to wilt most discouragingly.

Henry Pollock, who did all he could to aid Hiram on the crop, shook his head in despair.

"It's a-layin' down on you, Hiram—it's a-layin' down on you. Another day like this and your celery crop will be pretty small pertaters!"

"And that would be a transformation worthy of the attention of all the agricultural schools, Henry," returned the young farmer, grimly laughing.

"You got a heart—to laugh at your own loss," said Henry.

"There isn't any loss—yet," declared Hiram.

"But there's bound to be," said his friend, a regular "Job's comforter" for the nonce.

"Look here, Henry; you'd have me give up too easy. 'Never say die!' That's the farmer's motto."

"Jinks!" exclaimed young Pollock, "they're dying all around us just the same—and their crops, too. We ain't going to have half a corn crop if this spell of dry weather keeps on. And the papers don't give us a sign of hope."

"When there doesn't seem to be a sign of hope is when the really up-to-date farmer begins to actually work," chuckled Hiram.

"And just tell me what you're going to do for this field of wilted celery?" demanded Henry.

"Come on up to the house and I'll get Mother Atterson to give us an early supper," quoth Hiram. "I'm going to town and I invite you to go with me."

Henry had got used by this time to Hiram's little mysteries. But this seemed to him a case where man had done all that could be done for the crop, and without Providential interposition, "the whole field would have to go to pot", as he expressed it.

And in his heart the young farmer knew that the outlook for a paying crop of celery right then was very small indeed. He had done his best in preparing the soil, in enriching it, in raising the sets and transplanting them—up to this point he had brought his big commercial crop, at considerable expense. If the drouth really "got" it, he would have, at the most, but a poor and stunted crop to ship in the Fall.

But Hiram Strong was not the fellow to throw up his hands and own himself beaten at such a time as this. Here was an obstacle that must be overcome. The harder the problem looked the more determined he was to solve it.

The two boys drove to town that evening and Hiram sought out a man who contracted to move houses, clean cisterns and wells, and various work of that kind. He knew this man had just the thing he needed, and after a conference with him, Hiram loaded some bulky paraphernalia into the light wagon—it was so dark Henry could not see what it was—and they drove home again.

"I'd like to know what the Jim Hickey you're about, Hiram," sniffed Henry, in disgust. "What's all this litter back here in the wagon?"

"You come over and give me a hand in the morning—early now, say by sun-up—and you'll find out. I want a couple of husky chaps like you," chuckled Hiram. "I'll get Pete Dickerson to work against me."

"If you do, you tell Pete he'll have to work lively," said Henry, with a grin. "I don't know what it is you want us to do, but I reckon I can keep my end up with Pete, from hoein' 'taters to cuttin' cord-wood."

"You can keep your end up with him, can you?" chuckled Hiram. "Well! I bet you can't in this game I'm going to put you two fellows up against."

"What! Pete Dickerson beat me at anything—unless it's sleeping?" grunted Henry, with vast disgust. "I'll keep my end up with him at anything."

And the more assured he was of this the more Hiram was amused. "Come on over early, Henry," said the young farmer, "and I'll show you that there's at least one thing in which you can't keep your end up with Pete."

His friend was almost angry when he started off across the fields for home; but he was mighty curious, too. That curiosity, if nothing more, would have brought him to the Atterson house in good season the following morning.

Already, however, Hiram and Pete—with the light wagon—had gone down to the riverside. Henry hurried after them and reached the celery field just as the red face of the sun appeared.

There had been little dew during the night and the tender transplants had scarcely lifted their heads. Indeed, the last acre set out the day before were flat.

On the bank of the river, and near that suffering acre, were Hiram and Pete Dickerson. Henry hurried to them, wondering at the thing he saw upon the bank.

Hiram was already laying out between the celery rows a long hosepipe. This was attached to a good-sized force-pump, the feedpipe of which was in the river. It was a two-man pump and was worked by an up-and-down "brake."

"Catch hold here, Henry," laughed Hiram. "One of you on each side now, and pump for all you're worth. And see if I'm not right, my boy. You can't keep your end up with Pete at this job; for if you do, the water won't flow!"

Henry admitted that he had, been badly sold by the joke; but he was enthusiastic in his praise of Hiram's ingenuity, too.

"Aw, say!" said the young farmer, "what do you suppose the Good Lord gave us brains for? Just so as to keep our fingers out of the fire? No, sir! With all this perfectly good and wet water running past my field, could I have the heart to let this celery die? I guess not!"

He had a fine spray nozzle on the pipe and the pipe itself was long enough so that, by moving the pump occasionally, he could water every square foot of the big piece. And the three young fellows, by changing about, went over the field every other day in about four hours without difficulty.

By and by the celery plants got rooted well; they no longer drooped in the morning; before the drouth was past the young farmer had as handsome a field of celery as one would wish. Indeed, when he began to ship the crop, even his earliest crates were rated A-1 by the produce men, and he bad no difficulty in selling the entire crop at the top of the market, right through the season.